Senior Render Technical Director
This position is onsite, based in Vancouver, BC. (Some remote work may be considered) All applicants must reside in the lower Mainland of BC, Canada.
About Zoic
Zoic Studios is a Visual Effects company that specializes in high end visual effects for television, film, and advertising. Our mantra is Visual Evolution - we focus on every part of the process, from the final picture to the pipeline used to create them.
Are you looking for your next creative and technical challenge? Come join our team!
Why Join Zoic?
- We are an Artist owned and operated VFX studio.
- We love what we do and always stay curious about new technology and techniques.
- We respect work/life balance in a hectic industry.
- We work with a team from all walks of life and backgrounds.
There’s an exciting project that we’re working on at Zoic. It's a stop-motion animated feature that will continue on into the Fall of 2025.
For this particular show a lot of our Zoic employees assigned to the project will be working within our Zoic Vancouver Studios, in the Gastown Area (close to Waterfront Station Downtown). Coming together as a team within our studio will help create the excitement and positive work environment we want for this special project.
General Summary
The Render Technical Director (TD) works with other production departments and dailies teams to ensure required renders complete successfully, identify problems, independently debug them, utilize generalist skills to fix shots and assets, and coordinate efforts with other departments, as needed. The TD Render will be proactive in getting ahead of issues and engaged in anticipating needs of production.
Job Functions
- Provide technical support to all of production in the areas of rendering, disk utilization, and workflow.
- Debug memory problems such as Out Of Memory errors and memory leaks caused by heavy geometry, heavy shading networks, large texture files, large effects installs, render instance malfunction, motion blur, dense fog layer passes, and expensive lighting trace paths.
- Monitor work proactively to improve sets and assets performance. Manage render time and memory resources. Build test cases to identify the root cause of production scene breakage. Work to reduce noise, eliminates fireflies, improves low quality fog layers. Decode system output logs/stats to diagnose heavy or failed renders.
- Work within confined Time/Memory limits, establishing ways to enable delivery of extremely large assets from Effects Department to Lighting Department, without compromising the integrity of the intended packet.
- Help optimize renders to ensure fast turnaround and reasonable render times and memory.
- Picture debugging, fixing faulty shading introduced by poor micropolygonal dicing. Eliminate unnecessary trace paths to enhance render performance. Identify low sample areas that need improvement while installing appropriate sample fixes.
- Collaborate with Effects and Lighting artists to develop solutions to correct visual artifacts; debug efforts in cleanup and fix artifacts in our final images to ensure they meet our high visual standards.
- Assist all departments with setting up review renders needed at all phases of production; run sequence reviews, controlling playback, and respond to needs of the room.
- Interface with production, systems, and tools to address technical issues in these overlapping areas. Guide problem solving conversations across departments.
- Monitor renders on the render farm, disk space organization, and ensure efficient usage of systems resources.
Qualifications
- Specializes in rendering using RenderMan.
- Education in computer science, mathematics, engineering, or a related field.
- Required skills include scripting / programming in C, C++, Python, or similar languages, as well as familiarity with one or more key production software programs such as Maya, RenderMan, Nuke, Katana, or Houdini.
- Heavy familiarity with computer visual effects concepts such as rendering and compositing.
- A strong eye coupled with a strong sense of technical cost, guiding sequences towards the right solution for a problem.
- A helpful, customer-service attitude coupled with a dedicated sense for debugging complicated pipeline issues.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills are required for communicating with the team, management, and other departments.
- Ability to switch contexts under pressure, transitioning amongst solo and collaborative tasks.
- Ability to work independently and as part of a team, open to direction and responsive to changing production needs with calm professionalism.
Additional information
- British Columbia Employees Pay Range: $40 - $55 (The actual base salary offered will depend on a variety of factors, including without limitation, the qualifications of the individual applicant for the position, years of relevant experience, level of education attained, certifications or other professional licenses held, and if applicable, the location of the position)
- Candidates MUST be located in the Lower Mainland, British Columbia. This Role requires the candidate to work onsite, within our Vancouver Studio in Gastown. (Some remote work may be considered)
- Zoic does not cover relocation costs.
- Any and all remote positions require the candidate to have a reliable internet connection via ethernet and work on Pacific Standard Time.
- This job description contains the basic requirements for the position and is NOT intended to be a complete list of responsibilities; other duties may be assigned.
- Due to the sheer volume of applications we receive, we regret that only those selected to interview will be contacted.
This position is based in Vancouver. All applicants must reside in British Columbia.
Permanent Residents and Canadians only, please.,
Top Skills
What We Do
"Visual Evolution" is our mission-to evolve the story, art, and technology of the moving image, and through this evolution, broaden the audience for moving images.
Partnership, integrity, and enthusiasm are the key founding principles at Zoic. Our projects are born in think tanks, where every idea has value and potential. Good ideas are fleshed out, and a plan for achieving a visual representation of the idea is set early in the creative process. During production we remain accountable to our word and, as changes occur, we change together. We believe that partnerships that remain intact finish with integrity. Most importantly, we love what we do.
Zoic is a company of accomplished artists and producers who understand story, process, and relationships. Our team has a proven record of success. They are masters in their fields of 3D, Compositing, and Production Management. Their reputations, in turn, attract additional talent and encourage a strong work ethic.
We have built a digital infrastructure, which is flexible and strong to support the staff. It is a "liquid" pipeline, designed by our team for rapid expansion and contraction. It is resolution- independent and changeable based on project needs. Leading visual technology firms provide additional support and insight to the latest methods. We work with these partners as we do with our creative partners: by promoting visual evolution as fast as technology allows.
What we do can seem complex and foreign--even incomprehensible. It is our intention to educate and encourage others to embrace this change and together create something new.
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