Lighting Artist – Temporary Contract

Rodeo FX is hiring a Lighting Artist on a temporary contract basis in Montreal, Canada. This role sits within the 3D department and is responsible for building lighting setups, refining renders, and delivering final outputs to the Compositing team in a VFX pipeline. It suits a CG lighting professional who works with autonomy, reads a shot’s needs quickly, and understands how light functions as a storytelling tool.

About the Role

The Lighting Artist works within Rodeo FX’s 3D department alongside Lighting, CG, and Compositing Supervisors to realize the visual direction of each sequence. Day to day, this means building and iterating lighting setups in Houdini, reviewing renders through QC passes, addressing dailies notes, and optimizing scenes to manage machine load across the VFX pipeline. The work spans individual shots through to full sequences, with consistent communication required across departments to keep the render pipeline moving.

Key Responsibilities

• Build tailored lighting setups in Houdini for each shot and sequence, maintaining rigor and autonomy throughout the production workflow.
• Refine renders to ensure CG elements integrate cleanly before handoff to the Compositing department.
• Identify and resolve rendering artifacts and technical issues prior to submission, actively participating in QC passes.
• Optimize scene structure and machine load without sacrificing render quality, following established naming conventions and versioning protocols.
• Communicate render status, flag technical issues to Production, and provide realistic time estimates when delays arise.
• Document lighting setups and methods in Confluence and contribute findings to technical dailies to support knowledge sharing across the team.

What You Bring

• Solid professional experience as a Lighting Artist in a VFX studio or feature film production environment.
• Proficiency in Houdini as the primary tool for lighting and rendering workflows.
• A working understanding of shading, render optimization, and how lighting integrates with compositing in a production pipeline.
• Experience reading and responding to dailies notes with speed and accuracy.
• Familiarity with scene structure conventions, versioning, and cross-department communication standards used in post-production.

Why This Role

Rodeo FX is a Montreal-based VFX studio with credits across major feature film and episodic television productions, known for high-end photoreal work that demands technical and artistic precision. This Lighting Artist contract puts you inside a structured 3D pipeline with real mentorship pathways, internal training, and a team culture that values sharing tools and methods rather than hoarding them. For a lighting professional looking to work at a serious production level, this is a credible place to do it.

Apply now for the Lighting Artist position at Rodeo FX and bring your lighting work into a production pipeline that takes the craft seriously.