What are the responsibilities and job description for the Houdini Crowd TD position at Pixomondo?
About Pixomondo:
PXO creates industry-leading Virtual Production and Visual Effects for premium Film and Episodic content. With over 20 industry awards and nominations, PXO, a Sony Pictures Entertainment company, is a trusted partner for storytellers and showrunners worldwide. The company has been creating iconic work since 2001, from Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award winning Hugo and HBO’s Emmy winning Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, through to Amazon’s The Boys, Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and many more.
In Virtual Production, PXO helps clients to realize their creative vision, from production through to post-production. Using interactive technology and proprietary software and solutions, PXO brings ideas to life by virtually immersing filmmakers in the worlds they imagined, throughout every stage of the creative process. The company’s latest LED volume work includes House of the Dragon, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Netflix’s upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender.
PXO has seven studios and three LED volumes in the US, UK, Germany and Canada.
PXO is seeking a skilled Crowd Technical Director to create photorealistic crowd simulations, using Houdini and custom tools. This role involves integrating outputs from Asset, Layout, and Animation departments, as well as handling motion capture clips for crowd layout and simulation.
Responsibilities:
- Prototype, develop and extend current Houdini crowd pipelines.
- Manage and organize motion for crowds
- Animation and simulations on shots or sequences
- Creating show-specific tools and setups to complement the crowd pipeline.
- Setting-up / troubleshooting crowd simulations
- Setup and run cloth simulations on Crowd
Qualifications:
- Strong knowledge of Houdini Software
- Strong crowd and layout skills including asset integration, scene setup and running simulations
- Experience working on high end VFX or animated feature-film productions
- Experience working with motion capture and/or clip-based animation.
- Experience with VEX, Python and Houdini APIs
- Experience with Arnold
Desirable Experience:
- Experience working with cloth simulations and Vellum
- Understanding of 'Maya-to-Houdini' workflow
- Deadline experience is a plus
- Pixar USD understanding is a plus
- Excellent problem-solving and debugging skills
- Excellent communication and teamwork skills
Additional Requirements
- Must be eligible to work in Canada.
- This position can sit in British Columbia, Ontario or Quebec.