r/vfx

I'm an ex-VFX artist with 15 years in the industry, and I recently dipped back in. I saw some posts on here about Gen AI and people worried about their jobs. I just did a project—I'm not posting it yet as I don't know if it'll be crossing the rules here—but we basically had a production pipeline with about five people, and Gen AI fit in where it did.

It was very interesting to see what it can and can't do. In my opinion, it's going to be added to the pipeline. It has its place, but there were definitely certain things where we think its role is mainly as a renderer. There are certainly things that it could not do, and it needed the help of traditional visual effects tools. They had to be used in concert to get the job done.

Text-to-video absolutely cannot work. It won't work. It's just absolutely impossible. I don't even know why the Gen AI guys actually thought that medium of text-to-video would succeed. But image-to-video and video-to-video? That's definitely where it's at. text to video is so beyond frustrating it is wild. The only reason i can think of it is a thing because it causes multiple retries to get what you want which is more tokens spent for the providers. No determinisim. Which you need 100% in vfx work.

I could later, if there's interest and I get the clear, post the project. It is high quality. Five people, money was spent on it, and I would say there was about 100x cost savings in what we were able to accomplish. But we learned a lot about what the tools can and can't do. When I was working, the project we did would cost between 5-7m to get done. I didn't spend over 60K on this.

Certainly, actors are going to be okay, and of course animatiors, riggers. Voice actors are absolutely going to be okay. I don't even know what they're worrying about. The audio Gen AI stuff is so far off, it is wild. You just cant get nuance direction out of the tools. IMO, all the preproduction jobs are okay.

From my career in visual effects, Uncanny Valley was a big problem. To cross it took billions of dollars and tens of years, decades even, to get across that. Gen AI has huge Uncanny Valley problems, as I think we all realize. So we made sure out project was 'animated' stylistically. We took that animated approach because, you know, we're professionals and we've been through that circus before. We're a team of very experienced professionals.

That is essentially my thoughts on it: it's definitely going to be a renderer, another tool in the toolbox. Throughout my career, I've used many. I'd say like every couple of years I was switching renderers, doing a different renderer. I think that's the same thing here. Gen AI is going to be a renderer.

So Yeah, looking forward to your thoughts. I'd like to share my project because it was a really great learning experience of what was possible and all the different techniques that had to be used to get a shot done. Again, a lot of software had to be used, just like doing visual effects to get something done.

Budget notes:

3 mins. 5 people. VA and composer, storyboard artist, concept artist that could do previz, and gen ai technical artist.

49 500 USD of which 2660 was gen ai credits across various image and video models.

I've been working for some years now and I can remember very few projects in which the studio I was working in has received properly filmed lensgrids, even in decently sized and somewhat well known productions the grids are often badly aligned, don't cover the whole image, or are not even filmed with the same resolution as the main plates. Sometimes it truly seems as though whoever filmed it has absolutely no idea why they're doing that, or how to do it properly.

I'm guessing most of the time is probably due to time constraints, and I am not trying to judge, I know that it is impossible to do everything perfectly, but I am still curious as to why this happens so often (and also want to vent a little ngl), is this an industry wide issue or have I just had terrible luck so far? Thanks!

Hey animators of reddit, Im working on my end sem academic project on character animation and specifically understanding about acting and realism. If the pros out here can help me with it that would be great! I want to understand what goes in your mind when animating characters and what is your process of animating them. How important do you think acting is and what is your perception of realism in animation. Any other tips would be awesome.

Also since its an academic project, if we could meet online today where we can discuss about it then that would be really really awesome! Thanks!

Looking for some advice on lens grids -

I have a shoot coming up, and I'm not typically a VFX sup, but an animator...in this case I have to be the supervisor and get some lens grid shots, as we are using anamorphic lenses. The shots will be locked so we won't be matchmoving, but will be integrating a CGI character

In terms of practicality and budget, I'm limited to a 600x1200mm sized panel – I was going to get a dot grid printed (using the Syntheys online dot grid maker app) printed on aluminium composite or heavy foam core.

Unsure yet of what the focus distance is going to be but I imagine it migth be between 4-5m , which then leads me to coclude this panel wont be nearly big enough to fill the frame when we shoot grids at this ditance.

What can be done if its too small? Can you move the grids around and shoot multiple takes and somehow feed these into software, or stitch them...? I imagine this is asking for errors

Alternatively, if I print a bigger size, say 2400x1200mm I won't be able to transport it on a rigid substrate easily, and it will blow the budget, so I would have to be on a roll, which then makes it hard to mount square and flat on a wall ...etc.

Any tips greatly appreciated!

EDIT: other info - lenses are the Atlas Mercury 1.5x anamorphic kit on an Alexa LF mini – DP wants to shoot with the camera at 90 degrees rotation. 16:9, 4k output.

I enjoy reading this sub, and I love hearing from artists. But as a VFX Software Developer, I very rarely hear from the R&D programmers, the TDs, the DCC Plugin devs, etc..

How are you guys navigating this tumultuous period in the VFX industry? Are you trying to find a role in ML instead? How much are you relying on coding assistants for your work? Or is it business as usual for you guys?

I just want to hear from you all, and see how you’re doing, and if there’s any tips and tricks to navigating the new AI VFX landscape.

FWIW - I’m an Unreal Engine dev. But have dabbled in C++ plugins in other DCCs and a considerable amount of pipeline work in Python.

87461 nodes...

So out of interest (and with the help of ChatGPT) I analysed the final versions of 234 shots/comps from 50 most recent project folders. There are plenty of WIP versions in there, but I only included one final-ish version per shot/comp.

My top 20 nodes:

1. Grade: 7056
2. Merge2: 6777
3. Reformat: 4221
4. Blur: 3165
5. Transform: 2856
6. Bezier: 2757 (I'm old!)
7. Shuffle: 2392
8. Keyer: 1743
9. Crop: 1691
10. ColorCorrect: 1563
11. Multiply: 1497
12. Copy: 1060
13. Switch: 932
14. Colorspace: 823
15. FilterErode: 822
16. TimeOffset: 718
17. Retime: 712
18. Noise: 674
19. Clamp: 674
20. Premult: 550

Other (mildly) interesting bits:

Roto or RotoPaint didn't fit into the top 100 :D Still happily riding the good old bezier and transform masked instead.

Merge operations were fun too. About 58% (3923) were over, followed by multiply 660, copy 635, max 370 and plus 268.

About avg comp sizes: Median: 176 nodes. Mean: 374 nodes. The largest had 2,952 nodes, and 10% had at least 913 nodes. So a handful of monster scripts heavily skewed the average.

One in every seven nodes was a Dot. (Skipped this in top node analysis). Sounds neat, but as mainly working solo, it's usually somewhat spiderwebby.

(Only) 2.85% of all nodes were disabled. I really dislike leaving disabled nodes in the graph.

There was 98621 connections in total.

Ask me anything!

Hey everyone,

I’m a 25yo 3D artist and I’m looking for some realistic feedback or perspective from people who have been in a similar spot.

It’s been almost two years since I finished my 3D studies. My original goal was to fully dedicate my post-grad time to building a strong Asset / Hard Surface modeling reel, while simultaneously working on a backup plan (a non-3D job) to navigate the current industry situation.

Fast forward to today, I’ve made painfully little progress on my portfolio, a big part of the initial delay was finishing up some leftover university studies made during my 3D course, but right now, I’m stuck in a cycle of poor discipline and frustration.

Ironically, I actually landed some freelance 3D gigs outside the VFX domain (mostly product/archviz stuff). Since I’m just starting out as a freelancer, I don't have a full/time schedule yet, so time isn't strictly the issue, I have free hours, but I struggle to actually sit down and build momentum on my personal projects, I’m starting to realize that forcing myself to do only hard surface assets is completely burning me out. I consider myself decent at modeling, and the hero asset I’m working on right now is actually turning out great, but I’m working at an agonizingly slow pace.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about picking up something new in parallel to reignite that spark. Sculpting is an option, but since I already know organic topology workflows, it wouldn't force me to learn a new technical pipeline. On the other hand, procedural modeling in Houdini has really caught my attention, stuff like building etc... I’d love to experiment with procedural environment assets because it keeps me in the modeling realm while offering a totally different, technical approach. My biggest fear, though, is that diving into a huge tool like Houdini will eat away what little time and energy I currently have for my hard surface models.

My goal for the next year is to hit a solid milestone where my main hero pieces are finished, giving me space to get a stable non-3D job while I finish the rest of the reel on the side. Living in a remote area without a driver's license yet has definitely added to this feeling of being trapped in a lock-in phase. I’d really love to hear your thoughts on whether I should stay fully focused on my current modeling path or start diversifying into procedural skills, and how you usually break through the mental block when you have free time but just can't execute.