Internship FAQ
Simply follow this link to find the online application form.
What Skills Are Required For The Internship?
SideFX is seeking candidates who are comfortable working in most areas of the Houdini 3D Animation package.
Interns will be judged by the quality of the work in their demo reel. Skills in modelling, dynamics, particles, volumes, animation, lighting, and rendering are all required. Interns must be self motivated and accustomed to working with minimal supervision. However, interns should also be comfortable working within a team, and take direction well. Interns must be able to use the resources available to them to seek out solutions to their problems.
This is an excellent learning opportunity. Interns are not 'taught' in a classroom style, but instead will work on a variety of projects. Interns have access to the Houdini developers and Technical Support staff to answer questions. Interns are also invited to social events with Houdini users from local companies. This 'networking' is a great way to make contacts with prospective employers. Interns are able to use work that they have created here on their demo reels.
Internships typically run from 4-6 months in duration.
Internships run all year. Each intern will have their own start/end dates.
What Kind Of Work Do Interns Do?
Animation/VFX: Work with the Marketing Department to create animations, destruction and effects sims, to showcase new features in Houdini. Some of these animations are short, where 1 intern works on the whole project. Some of the animations are long, and are a team effort of several interns.
Orbolt Asset Store: Work with our Orbolt team to create more assets for our Orbolt store. Some coding skills are useful for this internship. Having your asset posted on our Orbolt site is a great way to connect with the best Houdini users and studios.
Documentation: Work with our Documentation Team. These interns must have excellent writing skills and be able to explain difficult Houdini terms clearly. Some teaching experience is often helpful with this. Documentation interns explore new areas of Houdini and write up “How To” summaries of the best way to achieve an effect. Example work can be seen here: http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini13.0/howto/
Games Tech: Interns will work alongside our Santa Monica Games team to create content for our marketing and training initiatives with games studios. Candidate must have a strong interest in procedural asset creation for games. Portfolio should contain examples of game-ready assets and/or environment and level designs. Experience with Houdini and Unity is a must, UDK is a plus. In general the candidate should be familiar with optimizing poly counts for runtime, skinning/weighting, making use of mocap data, uv modeling and texturing, and also generating normal maps for low-res polys using a hi-res model. Although not a requirement, familiarity with the Houdini Digital Asset workflow, Houdini attributes, and the Houdini UI would be a plus. Scripting experience for Unity preferred.
All our interns are expected to work well with minimal supervision. All interns are welcome to ask questions of our developers and support staff. We encourage all our interns to submit RFEs, (request for enhancements), and bugs to our developers.
How Do I Get A Work Permit? Will Side Effects Help Me?
Interns that need a work permit must arrange it completely on their own. For Canada interns should apply for a Working Holiday Visa. For the USA interns should have an F-1 Student Exchange Visa.
SideFX is unable to 'sponsor' anyone for an internship. In Canada Side Effects can not clear this job through Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC). The internship posting does not qualify under the “Information Technology Worker” category.
Here are some sites that might help you when looking into a work permit:
Does SideFX Pay My Airfare Or Housing?
No. However, we can send you contact information of other interns that are in the same term as you, in case you want to coordinate your travel, or share housing. We can also send you contact information of interns that are just finishing their term, who may have an apartment that is available.
Here is a good site for apartment hunting: https://toronto.craigslist.org/search/sub