What You'll Do

- Lead the creation, population, and management of complex crowd simulations using Houdini.
- Define the overall approach for crowd behaviour, agent systems, and shot execution across the show.
- Guide the development, optimisation, and maintenance of agent libraries, including animation clips, behaviour logic, and visual diversity.
- Oversee the design and implementation of believable background character performances that support story, staging, and composition.
- Ensure procedural animation techniques, motion cycles, and agent variation are utilised effectively for realism and efficiency.
- Review crowd setups at both individual shot and sequence levels to maintain visual continuity and technical consistency.
- Troubleshoot advanced simulation challenges — agent navigation, avoidance, pathing, behaviour trees, and blending issues.
- Work closely with Lighting and FX to ensure crowd elements render correctly, meet quality standards, and integrate seamlessly into final frames.
- Identify workflow bottlenecks and propose pipeline and tool improvements for better performance and scalability.

Collaboration & Workflow

- Partner with Animation, Layout, CFX, Lighting, and FX to ensure crowd elements support artistic vision and meet technical requirements.
- Attend and lead crowd‑specific reviews, dailies, and planning meetings to align with creative direction and production priorities.
- Collaborate with the CG Supervisor and Production to forecast complexity, schedule needs, and resource planning for crowd‑heavy sequences.




- Work closely with Pipeline/TD teams to build or refine crowd tools, behaviours, debug utilities, and agent libraries.
- Provide mentorship, guidance, and technical support to crowd artists of all levels.
- Document workflows, maintain department standards, and ensure consistent naming, organisation, and caching practices across the team.

Time Management & Communication

- Prioritise tasks for the crowd team and ensure timely delivery of high‑quality assets and simulations across multiple sequences.
- Communicate clearly with Production about progress, issues, dependencies, and any risks to delivery.
- Adapt to evolving creative notes and balance iteration speed with long‑term technical stability.
- Prepare organised scenes, readable networks, and clean handoffs for downstream departments.
- Facilitate efficient troubleshooting and maintain a calm, solution‑oriented approach during production peaks.

What You'll Bring

Experience

- Previous experience as a Crowd Lead or Supervisor in feature animation, TV, VFX, or real‑time productions.
- Extensive experience with Houdini Crowd and familiarity with tools such as Golaem, Massive, or proprietary systems.




- Experience leading small teams and providing feedback, task scoping, and technical direction.

Skills & Communication

- Strong understanding of animation principles, crowd behaviour, motion editing, and scene choreography.
- Advanced proficiency in node‑based procedural workflows.
- Solid understanding of simulation, caching, optimisation, and shot performance tuning.
- Experience with rendering workflows and troubleshooting render‑related crowd issues.
- Excellent communication and leadership skills; able to mentor, guide, and collaborate effectively across departments.
- Experience with Maya, ShotGrid, and pipeline collaboration tools is a plus.
- Scripting abilities (Python, VEX) are a solid asset for automating workflows and building tools.

Portfolio Requirements

- Demonstrate large‑scale or complex agent interactions.
- Show use of Houdini with shot breakdowns.
- Provide clear examples of behaviour logic, motion variation, clipping/cycle usage, and agent diversity.
- Include shots showing integration with environments, lighting, layout, and FX.
- Present problem‑solving examples, technical notes, or tool‑building contributions.
- Showcase any team‑lead responsibilities, such as direction and review notes or pipeline improvements.

Benefits

Pay Range: $1,900 - $2,100 CAD per week

Flexible work environment, extended health and wellness coverage from day 1, and RRSP matching are among the benefits. For more details, visit our website.

📌 Crowd Lead - Houdini (TV Featurette) (Montreal)
🏢 Bardel Entertainment
📍 Montreal