Crowd TD

Framestore is hiring a Crowd TD to join their Melbourne, Australia studio on high-end visual effects film productions. This role sits within the CG department and is responsible for simulating and animating large-scale crowds of digital characters that populate the worlds of feature film VFX projects. It suits a technically grounded TD who thinks creatively about motion, behaviour, and how thousands of characters read as a believable mass within a final composited image.

About the Role

Framestore’s crowd team works across ambitious feature film productions, collaborating directly with CG and VFX Supervisors to deliver crowd simulations that hold up at every stage of the VFX pipeline. Day to day, the Crowd TD moves between building locomotion systems, running simulations, and coordinating with Rigging, Animation, and Lighting to make sure crowd assets integrate cleanly into the broader production. It is hands-on technical work that requires an eye for performance as much as an understanding of simulation systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Create and run crowd simulations to the brief set by the CG or VFX Supervisor, managing scale and complexity across multiple shots.
• Develop locomotion cycles and motion behaviours that produce varied, believable performances across tens of thousands of simulated characters.
• Work within the existing VFX pipeline using both proprietary Framestore tools and industry-standard crowd simulation software.
• Collaborate with Rigging, Animation, Motion Capture, and Lighting teams to ensure crowd assets and outputs meet the technical requirements of each department.
• Support the research and development of new crowd tools and workflows that extend the capability of the team on future productions.
• Maintain clear communication with Production and department Leads to track deliverables and meet shot deadlines without compromising quality standards.

What You Bring

• Proven experience as a Crowd TD or in a comparable simulation role on feature film or high-end episodic television productions.
• Practical knowledge of crowd simulation software such as Golaem, Massive, or Houdini within a production environment.
• Solid understanding of character rigging and animation principles as they apply to crowd agent setup and motion behaviour.
• Experience reading and interpreting briefs from VFX Supervisors and translating them into technical simulation decisions.
• Familiarity with motion capture data and how it feeds into crowd locomotion systems.

Why This Role

Framestore is a multi-Oscar-winning VFX studio with a long track record on some of the most technically demanding feature film productions made in the last two decades. The Melbourne studio gives Crowd TDs direct access to Framestore’s global pipeline and the chance to contribute to tools development that shapes how the discipline evolves. This is the kind of role where the work ends up on screen at a scale that few other animation studios can offer.

Apply now for the Crowd TD position at Framestore and bring large-scale digital worlds to life from Melbourne.