Senior 3D Product Render Artist

Senior 3D Product Render Artist

Department: Creative

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: Mississauga

Compensation: CA$150,000 - CA$175,000 / year

Description

The Role

We'd like to conduct an experiment. Visit dbrand.com. Take a leisurely scroll through our product displays. Now, try to guess which images you saw were real-life photography and which were renders.

If you're struggling, it means we did a good job. If you aren't, you might be able to do an even better one.

We're looking for a Senior 3D Product Render Artist: someone who can take a raw CAD file from our Industrial Designers and turn it into an image asset so convincing that tech publications are fooled into believing we got early iPhone access. Someone who owns every render from raw STEP file to final frame. Most importantly, someone who doesn't need an Art Director looking over their shoulder during the process.

That individual probably works in-house at a consumer hardware brand right now. Or at least, the agency that brand hired. Maybe they're in deep with the concept render community, dreaming up devices that don't exist yet, but look real enough to get confused for actual hardware leaks. Or perhaps they're topping the charts on ArtStation's Industrial & Product Design channel. To be perfectly honest, we don't particularly care what they're doing right now. We care about what they can do here, for us.

Do the above paragraphs describe you? Of course not. You don't work here... yet. But if you have the skills we need, you certainly could.

The Environment

Still here? Excellent. dbrand thrives where other eCommerce companies have failed because our customers enjoy an uncanny degree of commitment, engagement, and access from us. Maintaining an internal culture of excellence, the likes of which our highly-engaged audience demands, is critical to dbrand's current and future success.

As our Senior 3D Product Render Artist, your work will be scrutinized. Not just by us, but by our millions of customers, site visitors, and social media followers. Remember: our audience owns the exact devices you're rendering. They know what the chamfer looks like, how the anodization plays with the light, and whether the colour on their screen matches the device in their hand. They also have opinions. Strong ones, posted publicly, with a high degree of visibility. Get something wrong and you'll hear about it within seconds of publication.

Your role is to make sure they never get the chance. You'll live within our Photography team, feeding renders to our website, social channels, video projects, and packaging. You'll work with our Graphic Designers and Software Engineers to animate product pages, and with our Videography team to build 3D scenes and motion graphics. Full pipeline, start to finish: refine, shade, layout, light, render - and even animate, when the brief calls for it.

Agility is key. During peak seasons, you might be staring down the barrel of 1,000 renders spanning the launch calendars of Apple, Google and Samsung. Every one of them has to be both perfect and on time. Brute force won't get you there. What will: scene systems, procedural shaders, render templates, and a pipeline where the first SKU takes hours and the second takes minutes. The question isn't whether you can render 1,000 assets - it's whether you can build the machine that does, then spend your time on the hero shots that matter.

Agility cuts the other way, too. Sometimes, speed is more important than perfection. Picture this: a new phone leaks. The creative team sparks an idea for a social media post... but we don't have an asset to use. We get on a 5-minute call to talk about the idea. You disappear for a few hours into Blender. Next thing you know, we've turned stills for a product page into a million views on an Instagram Reel.

At times, you'll spend the better part of a week building a hero animation that has to survive frame-by-frame scrutiny from an audience on Reddit who obsesses over the device. Other days, the brief might be "if we post this by EOD, it'll probably go viral." Both are the job. The trick is being able to switch gears depending on the requirements.

At dbrand, your renders won't die in a slide deck. They'll be the first thing millions of people see when a new iPhone drops, and the last thing our competitors see before they fail to copy your work. Let's see if you've got what it takes...

The Characteristics

• Agile: You're nimble. You're adaptable. You thrive in an environment where priorities can change in an instant.
• Analytical: Your decisions are driven by only one thing: data. You continue to master all the tools necessary to surface insights.
• Collaborative: You enjoy purposeful meetings. You value the contributions and perspectives of your colleagues as much as you do your CEO.
• Curious: You're eager to learn new concepts and master new skills. There's no useless tool in your arsenal.
• Disciplined: You never allow the details to slip, understanding that every bit of minutiae forms the bigger picture.
• Enthusiastic: You exhibit a contagious passion for solving problems OR finding solutions.
• Innovative: You develop new approaches to complex problems.
• Perfectionist: You persist until the smallest detail has been optimized. Giving less than 100% is not an option.
• Persistent: You've never failed. You've only experienced speed bumps on your path to success.
• Reliable: You live up to both verbal and written agreements. You can be trusted to work effectively, without oversight.

The Responsibilities and Qualifications

The Responsibilities

In order to make a positive impact as part of our team, your focus in this role will be to:

• Own realistic product renders for the dbrand website end to end, from engineering CAD through to final export.
• Build and maintain scene systems, so a new SKU on an existing product line comes out consistent with the rest of the catalogue in a fraction of the time.
• Create animated 3D elements for dbrand drop pages.
• Turn still-shot prep into same-day social cuts when the brief calls for it.
• Create animated 3D scenes and motion graphics for dbrand videos.
• Create ad-hoc 3D elements as needed.
• Hold both quality and schedule through peak season, when the render count runs into four figures.

The Qualifications

• 5-10 years' professional experience.
• Native fluency in Blender or Cinema 4D. Additional skills in Houdini, 3ds Max, or Unreal Engine are an asset, but not required.
• Knowledge of converting industry standard CAD (STEP, STL, OBJ) files into workable 3D assets for production.
• Advanced skills in shading / texturing / UV mapping / lighting / rendering.
• Proficient knowledge of photographic and cinematic techniques (composition, advanced lighting, depth of field, editing) related to computer graphics production.
• Working skills in 3D modelling / rigging / animation.
• Ability to take Industrial CAD files of products through a full pipeline (refine, shade, layout, light, render, animate) to create technically proficient and creatively advanced cinematic compositions (i.e. reels for YouTube videos and TikTok, etc.).
• Core competency in Adobe software suite (Photoshop, Illustrator).
• Ability to self-direct and take ownership of a project within a given creative mandate.
• An impeccable communication style - your grasp of the English language is flawless.
• Detail-oriented, self-sufficient, resourceful, organized, and proactive.
• The instinct to help teammates thrive and the openness to learn from past experiences.
• The ability to solve complex problems (or know where to find the answer).
• Commitment to long-term growth and learning opportunities.
• Nice to haves:
  • Experience creating high-concept creative advertising animations.
  • Basic knowledge of CGI VFX techniques (3D tracking, match move, HDRI lighting, etc.).
  • Basic knowledge of titling / captioning / transitions.
  • Basic knowledge of video codecs / compression schemes / aspect ratios.

The Moment of Truth

The job starts between $150,000 and $175,000 per year based on experience, with health, dental, vision, GRSP, and profit-sharing benefits. The position is fully remote, but when required, our HQ is located a few minutes west of Pearson Airport.

Still think you have what it takes to thrive in our agile, high-growth, fast-paced environment?

To be perfectly honest, we doubt it.

You're welcome to prove us wrong.

Vacancy Disclosure: This is a new role.