Hasta La Motion!

Position Summary:

The Senior Environment Technical Directors are responsible for designing and constructing Environment scenes that match the photographic quality of the plates they are dealing with.

They must have a proactive approach and a broad technical and artistic knowledge that allows them to manage and develop a shot from an early stage to the final renders understanding and supporting the Digital Matte Painters and the Compositors that they might work with.

Although their main duties are related with the technical set-up of the shots, they have to be able to proficiently use Photoshop in order to manipulate the provided plates and photo references, creating the final images that need to be projected onto the geometry.

The Senior Environment Technical Directors work under the guidance and direction of the project Lead, Head of Department and the show Supervisors.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Identify the best approach for the given task in terms of:

• Aesthetic quality that matches the plate

• Flexibility with a set up that can be easily changed/modified based on supervisors feedback

• Efficiency at set up time and render time

• Usability by other TDs, especially Junior Environment TDs

• Construct and release Environment scenes based on the approaches agreed with the lead Environment TD.

• Create and Render Environments. This could be any of the following:

• UV/camera projection set up

• modelling, lighting and shadin

• Check and release the renders, or the Nuke scripts for the comp department to gather.

• Regularly release dailies so that progress on a shot can be assessed.

• Attend dailies sessions and obtain feedback from supervisors.

• Report any day-to-day problems or concerns to the lead Environment TD on the show and any software issues to the appropriate support team.

• Work with the Environment HOD to improve the feature set and stability of our tool set.

• Improve his or her knowledge and understanding of MPC’s Environment tool set and pipeline.

• Act as a mentor to Junior and Mid-Level Environment TDs in the department, aiding them in developing their creative and technical abilities and knowledge.

• Adequately document Environment practical methods, and ensure that documentation is available centrally for use by the Environment Department as a whole.

Experience, Skills and Abilities Required at Minimum:

• A Senior Environment TD should have at least five years experience in Generalist/Environment work, either in commercials, TV or features

• Basic understanding of Renderman compliant renders and LINUX

• Autodesk Maya: Basic knowledge of hard surface modelling and general software interface, with a deep understanding of UV texturing and camera mapping techniques

• proficiency with Adobe Photoshop

• Good knowledge of The Foundry Nuke (or any other node based compositing software)

• Excellent understanding and ability to manage composition, colour and lighting

• Capacity to work collaboratively with other Technical Directors, Matte Painters and Compositors

• Excellent learning and communication skills

• Strong organizational skills with the ability to handle complex projects within a fast paced, dynamic, deadline driven environment, according to leads and supervisors expectations

• Creative problem solving

• Proactive and open to comments and critics approach

• Mel or Python scripting is a plus

if you are interested apply online at:

http://www.moving-picture.com/index….rticle&id=1060

We are currently looking for experienced Modellers to join our team.

Duties, Responsibilities and Requirements:

* Modellers will work on a variety of assets from environments to characters and in styles ranging from realistic to cartoony
* A strong understanding and sympathy for real world materials is essential and must be demonstrated in your previous work
* You will attend daily progress reviews to obtain feedback from supervisors
* You will continuously work to improve your knowledge of MPC’s pipeline
* Previous experience with Maya is required
* Technical proficiency with building models for deformations (like blendshapes, deformers and muscle/skin simulators) is a must
* You must have the ability to interpret models from both 3D scans or 2D artwork
* Good understanding of the entire visual effects process, from shooting to modelling to animation and rendering
* Proven technical and creative ability in a broadcast or feature-film production environment
* Good problem-solving skills
* General understanding of linux/unix-based operating systems
* Ability to take direction and structure working practices so that design changes can be efficiently made
* Desire to learn from others and to take on increasingly challenging shots
* Capable of using initiative to effectively communicate and problem solve
* A traditional arts background with emphasis on photo-realistic character work and environments would be an advantage

if you are interested please apply online at:

http://www.moving-picture.com/index….rticle&id=1060

Key Coordinator Responsibilities

* Supporting the Producers and Supervisors in implementing project plans and meeting deadlines
* Assisting in both the creation and maintenance of show/department schedules
* Working with artists to implement scheduled deliveries and milestones, along with reporting back status of tasks and milestone targets
* Scheduling meetings and daily reviews, note taking and database management.
* Organising reference materials and tracking incoming and outgoing deliveries to and from clients.

Key Coordinator Skills

* The ideal candidate will have experience coordinating on at least two significant projects of 80+ shots in an established VFX facility
* A solid understanding of CG production pipelines and post production in general is needed, though a willingness to learn and adapt would be greatly beneficial
* Excellent people skills and a proven ability to work in a team environment
* Strong project management skills and a sensitivity towards deadline related deliveries
* At a technical level a familiarity with standard Microsoft office applications is essential, especially Excel and Word, with further knowledge in Filemaker Pro and Microsoft Project being advantageous
* An ability to handle multiple tasks under varying degrees of pressure is a must. Essentially someone who is dynamic, resourceful and organised is very much what we are looking for.

The VFX Coordinator position at MPC offers great scope for professional and personal development, so for dedicated candidates with an eye to the future there would be various opportunities to progress into Senior production roles on upcoming projects.

if you are interested apply online at:

http://www.moving-picture.com/index….rticle&id=1060

MPC is looking for a senior software architect and developer to join the infrastructure group within our Software team. Over recent MPC has grown from a London based VFX production house to a global organisation with offices in Vancouver, LA, New York and Bangalore.

As we continue to transform our software stack to support the growing business, we are looking for a person to help redesign our underlying database schemas to enable a truly global view of our metadata. Our databases are core to our entire business; from production scheduling tasks, VFX assets, to storing statistical information of our high performance compute farm stats. On a daily basis we generate, maintain and analyse terabytes of a multitude of different, large datasets. Storing and classifying these datasets within our custom asset management systems and providing high performance, stable and robust interfaces for our users and applications around the world is critical to our continuing success and this new position will play an important role.

Duties and Responsibilities:

* As part of a team, design and develop software for core services.
* Develop next-generation in-house digital- asset/content management system
* Developing next generation of our multi-site replication setup
* Analyse and improve existing database schemas
* Deployment of these systems across multiple facilities
* Maintaining and providing support for these systems
* Working with Systems team to ensure software and infrastructure are developed hand in hand to maximise performance and reliability.

Requirements:

* Proven experience with developing business critical, highly scalable database systems processing high volumes of transactions.
* Experience of all aspects of the development process of such systems from design, development, deployment to maintenance and support.
* Digital asset management systems experience would be an advantage.
* Computer Science graduate
* Solid development experience with Python, C++ and RDBMS such as MySQL.
* Systems administration experience with UNIX/Linux systems,

if you are interested, please apply online at:

http://www.moving-picture.com/index….rticle&id=1060

We are currently seeking a Systems Developer to join our Software team to develop and maintain tools to help manage our critical technical resources. Working closely with our team to top-notch systems administrators and developers you will work on projects such as managing hundreds of TBs of high performance storage, increasing efficiency of our render farm and improving management of our overall system operations.

This role would suit an experienced system administrator looking to take on a development role, or an experienced developer wanting to get more involved in system operations.

Key Tasks/duties:

* Work with the Systems and Software teams to develop, maintain and support in-house tools with a particular focus on data management
* Ensure systems software can continue to scale reliably
* Help drive the strategy for our in-house system operations tools

* Troubleshooting issues that affect production
* Help identify upcoming business requirements, recommend and implement solutions, and provide input for the design of next generation technology.
* Maintain documentation for in-house software
* Ensure software written is compliant with in-house coding standards.
* Improve quality of software, implement automated tests for software developed

Essential Skills and Experience:

* At least 3 years experience of scripting language development in either Perl or Python in a Linux or UNIX environment.
* Proven experience of working on complex projects involving networking, databases, large data structures and generally pushing the limits.
* Strong database development skills, ideally MySQL, with experience of techniques such as replication, proxies and sharding
* Good knowledge of Linux including NFS, rsync, Apache, networking, backup techniques
* Experience of developing with SOA / web services
* Know your way around version control systems like Subversion and git.
* Good knowledge of low level systems development with C, system calls, make, patch etc.
* Pro-active approach to solving problems, improving systems.
* An enthusiasm for understanding how we make high end VFX and how we can make it better.
* Great communication skills, able to talk to technical peers and non-technical users alike and gain their trust and respect.

Salary: Competitive remuneration package

This is an exciting opportunity to work in the movie industry at the leading edge of VFX production, continually pushing the limits of technology. If you are interested please apply online at:

http://www.moving-picture.com/index….rticle&id=1060