Texture and Matte Painting Engineer

Description

Sony Pictures Imageworks is seeking a strong programmer to join the software development team in Vancouver, BC.

Responsibilities:
The Texture and Matte Painting Pipeline Engineer is in charge of for maintaining, designing and implementing tools, workflows and low-level pipeline frameworks for all departments involved in texture, matte or projection painting. Responsibilities would include supporting and developing some of our core texture and matte publishing libraries, as well as application-specific tools and workflows for the whole studio. The position requires strong software development skills, with a production-minded approach, and the ability to collaborate closely with both artists and engineers.

Required Skills:
Experience programming in Python and C++
Experience writing GUIs using the Qt framework (C++, PyQt or PySide)
Experience writing C++ plugins for Cinema4D
Knowledge of shading, compositing, lighting and studio pipeline development
Good communication skills and an aptitude for working in small teams

Desired Skills:
Experience writing Python tools for Mari, Nuke and Katana 
Experience with Maya’s mel and Python APIs
Knowledge of production-related colorspace issues
Bachelor in Computer Science or equivalent
Experience with UNIX / Linux

To apply, please send your CV/resume and cover letter to recruiting@imageworks.com with the job title in the email subject line.

About the Team: Front End Dev
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The Front End Team is responsible for designing, implementing and maintaining the pipeline and artist toolsets for a wide gamut of production departments, including Story, Modeling, Rigging, Texturing, Matte Painting, Layout, Animation, and Character FX, such as hair, cloth and skin simulation. Typical examples of tasks the team deals with are:
- dealing with huge environments made up of thousands of assets, and determining how best to interact with them in a software package like Maya, with multiple departments modifying the scene simultaneously.
- collaborating closely with lead animators to identify and build specifications for tools that would help artists work more efficiently, including pose libraries, character picking interfaces, or faster proxy rig representations.
- managing cross-application workflows, like loading assets in Mari in order to paint and publish textures, taking special care that UV layouts and naming conventions are properly respected.
- writing tools and Maya plugins for the creative manipulation of hair and cloth simulated elements, in order to reduce the time it would otherwise take to achieve a perfect dynamic solution to an artistic problem.

Direct collaboration with artists and an understanding of production workflows, while still maintaining a balance between pragmatism and proper software engineering methodologies, are key to being successful on this team. It's also critical to be comfortable working within an established codebase, and to understand when to leverage existing solutions instead of reinventing the wheel.