Film
In VFX/animation production such as Pixar or Industrial Light and Magic or game studios, a technical director's (TD) responsibilities vary from studio to studio and as such, the term is not very well defined.
Typically, a TD is a mix of an artist and a programmer, responsible for the more technical aspects of film production, such as programming shaders, developing character rigs and animation setups, performing complex simulation tasks and setting up the pipeline how the data is passed from one stage in the film production to the next. In contrast to a programmer, a TD would normally not work on large programming projects but rather make heavy use of scripting languages such as Python, MEL, or MAXScript or shell scripting. Another responsibility of a TD is to look after any technical problems the regular artists encounter and to develop custom tools to improve the artists' workflow.
"Technical Artist", "Technical Animator" and "Generalist TD" are sometimes used as synonyms, and frequently, the role of a TD is more precisely defined, for example "Effects TD", "Lighting TD", "Modeling TD", "Pipeline TD", "Creature TD", "Hair TD", "Cloth TD", "Matchmove TD" etc.
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