Look Development Artist

Description

Summary:

The Look Development Artist works with the Look Development Lead or Supervisor to define all the technical and creative aspects needed to create the appearance for CG assets for a particular project. The Look Development Artist should be able to use a variety of methods and renderers to satisfy a production’s creative needs.

Responsibilities:

• Work with the show supervisors to create final looks, templates and materials for CG characters and environments to be used in production and interpret artistic direction from Supervisors.
• Working with  the lead of supervisor of a show, define shader requirements, creating shader networks in Maya and Houdini, modifying shader parameters, applying texture maps, and iteratively refining the look to accomplish the art direction goals and integrating solutions into production pipeline.
• Participate as a team member in determining various design and technical solutions; provides feedback to other team members of the production.
• Setup scene templates for Lighters and run shots under guidance of Lighting Supervisor.
• Work closely with texture artists to create necessary texture maps for application to creatures, props and environments
• Work closely with grooming artists and technical animators to create fur, hair, or cloth rigs for application to creatures, props and environments
• Write and/or modify custom shaders, define standard render passes for a project
• Work closely with Lead Lighting TD's and supervisors to ensure that all assets work within the scope of lighting & color pipeline requirements.
• Work with a team of artists in a hands-on capacity to ensure technically and artistically proper implementation of look developed assets
• Keep other supervisors apprised of issues arising in pre-production and shot production and offer creative solutions to those issues.

Qualifications:

• 3+ years production experience in feature film VFX, 5+ years preferred.
• Experience in photo-real material/surfacing look development in visual effects production.
• Experience in shot lighting and finaling.
• Experience with fur and hair grooming and cloth simulation
• Superior eye for light, shade, color, and detail in creating photo-real shaders and materials.
• A passion for highly detailed work on a mix of characters, hard-surface assets and environments.
• Able to create photorealistic textures from reference and clean UV layouts
• Ability to balance quick turnaround with achieving a high degree of aesthetic quality.
• Be willing to share knowledge and experience with others
• Must possess strong initiative, excellent communication, time management and problem-solving skills.
• Must be able to work in a collaborative environment, taking direction positively from the Leads and Supervisors while keeping production staff updated on progress and scheduling conflicts.
• Must have advanced experience with Autodesk Maya, Mental Ray, Adobe Photoshop and a variety of rendering technologies.
• Must have experience modifying shading network GUI's and defining templates for other artists.
• Familiarity with zBrush, Mudbox, Crazy Bump, Mari or other texture and normal/displacement map generation is a plus.
• Experience with Maya hair, Yeti, Shave and a Haircut, and nCloth an asset
• Possess familiarity with asset management systems and procedures.
• Experience with shader programming for Mental Ray and / or Renderman (RSL, Slim templates, etc.) and scripting/programming languages (python, MEL, PERL, C, C++) is a plus.
• Linux experience preferred
• TriPlanar and camera projection experience a plus