Senior CG Lighting Artist
On-site · New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Job Summary
Senior CG Lighting Artist to integrate facial performances into cross-department workflows, focusing on face replacement, lighting from live action plates onto characters, and collaboration with VFX Supervisors/TDs to evolve tools and pipelines. Responsibilities include implementing best practices in the face replacement pipeline, matching poses and expressions to animation, maintaining mood and tone across sequences, collaborating with outsource vendors and CG artists, ensuring cohesive character consistency across facial replacements, and delivering high-quality lighting and visual performance for a hybrid puppetry/animation-driven project. Required expertise spans Houdini, Arnold, Nuke, PBR workflows, camera/lighting concepts, and a strong eye for cinematic lighting; preferred skills include UV/texturing, Unreal, Maya, ZBrush, scripting, and experience with hybrid VFX and digital puppetry workflows.
Required Qualifications
- 5+ years experience in high-end, live action VFX films, with a strong emphasis on beauty lighting.
- Expert knowledge and proficiency of Houdini and rendering in Arnold.
- Basic knowledge of compositing in Nuke to create and refine slap comps for presentation and handoff to the compositing team.
- Deep understanding of visual language- color, scale, perspective, proportion, spatial awareness, motion blur, depth of field, etc
- Comprehensive knowledge of physically based rendering and optimizations, using Arnold or similar engines.
- Understanding of photography, exposure, color grading, lens and camera behavior, and HDR workflows.
- Strong eye for cinematic and real-world lighting, color grading, and shot continuity.
- Robust problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and the ability to adapt quickly to unique or proprietary workflows.
- An artistic mindset and willingness to receive and implement constructive feedback, whether that’s with draw-overs, over the shoulder adjustments, or team meetings.
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