Lighting & Compositing Artist with 9+ years of experience in CGI. Expert in rendering, lighting pipelines, and look development with a track record of optimizing workflows, leading creative teams, and implementing new technologies.
Lighting & Look Development
- Lighting Workflow & Pipeline: Designed and implemented studio-wide lighting pipelines at Attraktion! GmbH. Streamlined rendering and established unified lighting styles across extensive product collections and 300+ production shots. (2016–2024)
- Look Development: Led look development for a wide range of assets, ensuring artistic consistency and technical readiness across cinematic projects. (2014–2024)
- Product Visualization: Executed high-fidelity product visualizations for industrial equipment, jewelry, and furniture, establishing physically accurate PBR textures, custom studio lighting rigs, and transforming raw CAD data into production-ready geometry. (2024–2026)
Compositing
- Master Templates & Automation: Authored master Nuke templates that standardized the look and streamlined compositing workflows for multiple large-scale, single-shot media attractions. (2016–2024)
- Multi-Pass Compositing: Integrated complex multi-pass render elements, deep compositing workflows, and seamless 2D/3D integration for high-end cinematic delivery. (2016–2026)
Unreal Engine
- Pipeline Integration & Tech Art: Pioneered the integration of Unreal Engine 5 into the studio pipeline alongside the TD. Developed core project structures, master materials, stylized volumetric effects, and atmospheric cinematic lighting. (2023–2024)
- Environment & FX: Generated terrains in Houdini for Unreal Landscapes, utilized PCG (Procedural Content Generation) for asset scattering, and developed stylized scene transitions using Niagara FX. (2023–2024)
- Performance Optimization: Resolved complex engine bottlenecks, optimized real-time lighting/rendering configurations, and authored standardized rendering templates and documentation. (2023–2024)
Team Leadership
- Lighting Team Management: Led a team of junior and mid-level lighting artists, providing technical direction and creative mentorship. Defined the visual baseline for the department, authored pipeline documentation, and conducted daily sequence reviews. (2020–2024)
Skills
- Software: Nuke, Unreal Engine, Houdini, Maya, Substance, Redshift, Arnold
- Core Areas: Lighting, Compositing, Lookdev, Environment Building, Visual Direction
- Programming & Scripting: Python, VEX
Expert in workflow automation, Houdini procedural tools, Unreal Engine pipeline integration, and Python-based tool development for asset libraries and render management.
Rendering & Lighting Pipelines
- Pipeline Development: Collaborated closely with TDs to establish robust rendering and lighting pipelines for Maya, Arnold, and Redshift, alongside creating custom tools for everyday production use. (2016–2024)
- Workflow Maintenance: Designed and maintained studio-wide Redshift and Arnold rendering workflows tailored specifically for Maya environments. (2016–2024)
- Technical Troubleshooting: Spearheaded the resolution of complex rendering and compositing bottlenecks, collaborating directly with development teams to debug deep pipeline issues. (2020–2024)
Unreal Engine
- Pipeline Integration: Pioneered the integration of Unreal Engine 5 into the production pipeline; co-developed workflow/pipeline automation alongside the TD and established core project structures. (2023–2024)
- Technical Art & Materials: Developed master materials utilized across all movie assets, including stylized material effects and volumetric god rays. (2023–2024)
- Performance Optimization: Resolved complex engine performance bottlenecks, optimized lighting/rendering configurations, and authored standardized rendering templates and documentation. (2023–2024)
- Lighting & Atmosphere: Crafted cinematic lighting and atmospheric effects to establish mood and visual depth across complex environments and individual shots. (2023–2024)
- Environment & Procedural Art: Led environment creation by generating terrains in Houdini, exporting them to Unreal Landscapes, and utilizing PCG (Procedural Content Generation) for asset scattering. (2023–2024)
- Niagara FX: Utilized Niagara FX to create complex, stylized transitions between cinematic scenes. (2023–2024)
Procedural Pipeline
- Marble Shorts: Engineered a fully automated procedural animation pipeline in Houdini Solaris that generates physics-based marble runs from MIDI (.mid) inputs. The pipeline orchestrates audio synthesis, rigid-body dynamics, particle simulations, project-wide render variations, Nuke compositing, FFmpeg encoding, post-cleanup, and automated delivery to social platforms using a custom web application. GitHub (2026)
- 3D Visualization Automation: Engineered a procedural pipeline using Houdini TOPs to automate furniture rendering workflows. Developed a turnkey system that processes 3D models to automatically output specified camera angles, lighting configurations, material variations, and perfectly framed, centered assets. (2025–2026)
IT Support & Systems Management
- Render Farm Administration: Architected, configured, and managed multi-node on-premise render farms, optimizing resource scheduling and job queues to eliminate bottlenecks and ensure 24/7 uptime. (2016–2024)
- Workstation Lifecycle Management: Directed hardware/software diagnostics, OS provisioning (Windows/Linux), and automated software deployment across high-performance artist workstations to minimize creative downtime. (2016–2024)
Skills
- Programming & Scripting: Python, VEX, Shell Scripting, Git, JavaScript
- Software: Houdini (Solaris), Maya, Unreal Engine, Nuke, Redshift, Arnold
- Core Areas: Pipeline Automation, Procedural Asset Generation (PCG), Tools Development, Render Management
Adaptable IT and Systems Engineer specializing in infrastructure automation, network storage, and local systems administration. Adept at bridging traditional IT support with modern DevOps practices—leveraging Python automation, GitOps, Docker containerization, and advanced AI integration to maximize operational efficiency.
IT Support & Systems Management
- Render Farm Administration: Architected, configured, and managed multi-node on-premise render farms (2016–2024); optimized scheduling and job queues to eliminate bottlenecks and ensure 24/7 pipeline uptime.
- Workstation Lifecycle Management: Directed diagnostics, OS provisioning (Windows/Linux), and automated software deployment across high-performance artist workstations, minimizing creative downtime.
Infrastructure & DevSecOps
- GitOps & Containerization: Maintained a high-availability home server using Docker and GitOps workflows, successfully migrating core services away from proprietary cloud ecosystems.
- Security & Network Storage: Engineered secure, zero-trust remote access utilizing Cloudflare Tunnels and implemented a strict 3-2-1 backup strategy for network-attached storage (NAS).
- Observability & Monitoring: Deployed Uptime Kuma for continuous infrastructure monitoring, configuring real-time automated alerting to proactively mitigate system degradation.
Programming & Automation
- Workflow Automation: Engineered custom Python pipelines for real-time directory synchronization, cross-network file validation, and automated path fixing across large asset libraries.
- Version Control & CI/CD: Established Git-based version control workflows and integrated GitHub Secrets to ensure secure, automated credential and environment variable management.
Web Development & Engineering
- Personal Portfolio Website: Developed a high-performance portfolio (sydoryk.com) using Astro.js and TypeScript, applying responsive design with modern HTML, CSS, and Sass.
- Content Automation (MultiCast): Built a custom web application for automated content scheduling and publishing, integrating text generation APIs and direct pipelines to major social platforms.
AI Integration & Automation
- LLM Implementation: Architected workflows integrating frontier models (Claude, Gemini, GPT) and local open-weight LLMs (DeepSeek, Qwen) for coding assistance and workflow acceleration.
- Custom AI Tooling: Deployed custom AI skills and agentic frameworks, strategically balancing model planning versus execution to optimize cost, latency, and accuracy.
Technical Skills
- Programming & Automation: Python, Shell Scripting (Bash/PowerShell), Git, CI/CD Workflows
- DevOps & Infrastructure: Docker, GitOps, Cloudflare Zero Trust, NAS, Render Farm Infrastructure
- Web Technologies: Astro.js, TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML5/CSS3, Sass, Node.js
- Operating Systems: Linux (Ubuntu/Debian/RHEL), Windows / Windows Server
- AI & Intelligent Systems: Local LLM Deployment, Prompt Engineering, Agentic Workflows