Disney Looking for R&D Creature/Simulation Engineer at Vancouver, BC Full Time

Position Summary

We are looking for engineers for our Creatures R&D team to help develop software that brings to life photo-realistic digital characters for major motion pictures.

We’re looking for engineers with experience in modeling, rigging, and animation of bodies and faces; soft-body dynamic simulation of cloth, hair, and flesh; and 3D asset management. We are especially looking for engineers with experience in creature animation in Houdini.

ILM has been creating lifelike digital creatures for over 30 years, and we have some of the most powerful tools in the industry. We push our tools and techniques to achieve never-before-seen effects, and we are making our most powerful tools easy to learn and efficient to use, both for new and experienced artists.

If you are interested in the role, please apply even if your experience and skills don’t perfectly match our ideal credentials.

What You’ll Do

• Work in a collaborative, distributed team of full-time software engineers, and work directly with highly specialized and talented artists in ILM’s studios in San Francisco, Singapore, Vancouver, London, and Sydney
• Design innovative algorithms, artist-friendly user interfaces, template-based asset management systems, and automated batch processes that scale to high volume visual effects production; design systems that simplify complex creature setup and shot simulation processes
• Integrate commercial and open-source systems into the ILM production pipeline
• Work in a large, complex, mature, and dynamic code base
• Split time between long-term software development projects and day-to-day production support

What We’re Looking For

• BS or advanced degree in computer science or related field, or equivalent experience
• 3+ years of experience in professional software development and/or VFX production
• Proficiency in C++ and/or Python on Linux
• Thorough knowledge of technology related to creature modeling, animation, and simulation: rigging, geometric deformation and caching, physically-based soft-body simulation, procedural geometry, etc.
• Experience with Maya and/or Houdini, as both a user and plugin developer
• Knowledge of industry-standard scene data formats: Alembic, USD, OpenVDB, etc.
• Experience designing interfaces using GUI toolkits: Qt, PySide, etc.
• Thorough knowledge of software design/development principles: design patterns, object-oriented design, test-driven development, agile methodology, etc.

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