Lighting Artist

YOUR ROLE

Squeeze is looking for a senior lighting artist with experience in the animation industry. We are looking for someone who can develop the pipeline, set a rigorous working method in the lighting department and improve it. The selected candidate will be in charge of lighting key plans and will optimize the quality of each plan.

YOUR MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES

Play a key role in the migration of the studio's lighting pipeline from Maya/Redshift to Houdini/Solaris/USD/Redshift by designing production templates, establishing lighting standards, and delivering high-quality lighting while ensuring the technical efficiency of the production pipeline.

Key Responsibilities

• Template & Light Rig Development: Design, document, and deploy master lighting rigs and production scene templates, enabling junior lighting artists to work efficiently and consistently.

• Key Shot Lighting: Handle the lighting of complex, hero, or reference shots that establish the visual standard for production.

• Optimization: Analyze and optimize render times, scene performance, and memory usage for complex USD-based productions.

• Pipeline Transition & Mentorship: Support the team during the migration from Maya to Houdini/Solaris by sharing best practices, mentoring artists, and making USD concepts accessible and easy to understand.

• Compositing & Pipeline Collaboration: Work closely with the Compositing team and Pipeline Technical Directors (TDs) to ensure a smooth, efficient, and reliable rendering pipeline.

• Make light sequences, key plans and spread the light rigs to create attractive images with an understanding of the architecture of a shot and the visual continuity of an entire sequence. 

• Make light sequences, key plans and spread the light rigs;

• Ensure that the lighting follows the vision established by the VFX supervisor or the Director;

• Establish rendering passes for compositing;

• Optimize work techniques and develop methods for a more efficient production;

• Collaborate with the compositing departments to elaborate quality visuals.

YOU ARE

Teamwork & Communication: Migrating to a new pipeline is a collaborative effort. The ideal candidate is patient, approachable, an effective mentor, and open to change.

• Autonomy & Problem-Solving: Comfortable working with emerging technologies such as USD and Solaris. Enjoys solving technical challenges, researching solutions independently, and helping establish new production standards.

• Technical Discipline: A poorly structured USD setup can impact the entire production pipeline. The candidate must demonstrate exceptional attention to detail and maintain clean, robust, and production-ready scene organization.

• Able to multitask, prioritize and solve problems;

• Able to prioritize production needs and tasks;

• Creative;

• Open to constructive criticism;

• Rigorous.

YOU HAVE

• 5 years of experience in lighting for animation productions with 2 years Solaris/Houdini;

• Education related to the position and the animation industry (DEC, AEC, Bachelor, etc.);

Required Technical Skills

Production Lighting Expertise: Strong background in production lighting on animated feature films, premium television series, game cinematics, or other high-end 3D animation productions. Must possess an excellent eye for lighting, color, and composition to create compelling visual atmospheres, faithfully execute the artistic vision, and maintain visual consistency throughout a sequence.

• Houdini & Solaris (LOPs): Strong proficiency in Houdini for lighting is preferred. However, candidates with a strong lighting background but little Houdini experience will be considered if they demonstrate a willingness to learn and quickly catch up with the Houdini/Solaris pipeline. Practical experience working in Solaris is highly desirable.

• USD Pipeline: Excellent understanding of USD concepts, including layers, opinions, composition arcs, overrides, and variants. Ability to navigate, assemble, and package assets and scenes using USD.

• Nuke (Compositing): Pre-compositing experience is required. The candidate must be able to effectively utilize Nuke templates provided by the Compositing Supervisor, manage AOVs and Light Path Expressions (LPEs), and collaborate with the Compositing team.

• Rendering Engines: Production experience with Redshift in Solaris - this is the studio's renderer, before and after the migration. Experience with another USD/Hydra renderer in Solaris (Karma, Arnold, RenderMan) is acceptable, provided the candidate is ready to work in Redshift from day one.

• experienced production lighting artist who is proficient with modern USD (Universal Scene Description) workflows and the Solaris environment in Houdini.

• Strong knowledge of Nuke enables them to deliver clean pre-composites and collaborate effectively with the Compositing team

• Excellent comprehension of light, contrast, colour palettes and graphic compositing;

• Creative and technical skills;

• Knowledge of Python or ability for scripting, a plus.

• Past experience with Maya is a plus, solely for referencing legacy Maya light rigs.

  Scripting knowledge (Python, VEX) to automate tasks within Houdini and optimize production workflows is a plus.