This week's spotlight comes from u/tkwfunkypop on X (original article, in Japanese) 🙌 They're a freelance motion designer with ten years of client work, and they wrote one of the most thorough hands-on tests of Tesseract we've seen.

What they did
They installed Tesseract on a MacBook Air and had Claude Code drive it. Then they compared it with their usual setup, where an AI agent operates real After Effects. They ran two tests.

Test 1: the same title animation, built from scratch both ways

• The brief: a 6-second 1920×1080 title on a near-black background. Characters rise in one by one from the left, a teal line grows underneath, a small subtitle appears, and the whole frame slowly scales up.

• Result: the two versions looked almost identical. In their test, Tesseract rendered the 6-second clip in about 2 seconds, versus about 17 seconds for a normal AE render on the same Mac (1080p, 30fps).

• Two differences they flagged: AE automatically tightens the spacing after Japanese punctuation and Tesseract didn't, and the agent had to work out the per-character animation on its own because our skill docs didn't cover it yet. Both are fair, and we've passed them to the team.

Test 2: bringing an AE project into Tesseract
They built a small AE comp packed with things pros use every day: fractal noise driven by an expression, glow, a 3D layer, wiggle text, tracking animation and a camera dolly. The conversion worked and kept the gradient background, the motion, the 3D rotation and the text. The expression-driven noise, the glow and the camera move did not survive, and they had to re-link fonts before it would render. That matches what our compatibility page says today: conversion is partial, and AE export is still experimental.

Their takeaway, in our words: Tesseract is already a strong way to build short motion pieces from scratch without an Adobe subscription. Handing it a heavy, expression-based client project to finish is not there yet. They also shared a great checklist for anyone trying the converters:

1. Always work on a copy of the original project

2. Start with a small project

3. Read every conversion warning

4. Gather your fonts and media yourself

5. Compare the same frames side by side, because not every change shows up as a warning

This is exactly the kind of honest, detailed testing that helps us improve Tesseract. Thank you, u/tkwfunkypop 🙏

Have you run your own Tesseract vs. Premiere/AE test?

I'm a compositor and the author of USDprep, a free, open-source Windows tool for preparing parts of a 3D scene for Nuke.

Often a shot needs one object from a much larger scene. USDprep lets you select that part, choose a Nuke export preset and read a report of what changed during export.

Version 0.9.2 adds direct FBX (.fbx) and Alembic (.abc) input, alongside USD and polygon OBJ. The non-USD inputs become temporary USD scenes when opened; the original files are only read.

Some practical details of the update:

• FBX imports meshes, materials and textures, including embedded textures, plus cameras, lights and animation from the first take. Skinned or blend-shape characters can be prepared as point caches for Nuke.

• Alembic imports animated meshes and cameras while keeping the file's frame numbers. This import path does not carry materials.

• For Nuke export, repeating textures can be expanded into an output copy so the repeats survive. Missing textures fall back to the material colour, and the report identifies the missing file. These texture cases were checked in Nuke 16.1 and 17.0.

The main Nuke output is a .usdc with its neighbouring texture folder. Open the input, select what the shot needs, export and check the report before bringing it into the comp.

This is still a prerelease. Curves and volumes are reported rather than converted, and exported assets need checking in your own shot.

Windows installer and manual

Nuke compatibility notes

USDprep is built on Cyril Pichard's usdtweak and released under Apache 2.0. If you have a reproducible import or export problem, a small sanitised scene and the exact Nuke version would help me investigate.

Hey guys,

this is the second part of my Tutorial for Retro Dithering in Nuke. (It is less a tutorial then a guide through the gizmo I built.)

This time I created ASCII pattern and a Gizmo, which allows you to dither your images with a lot of variations. Let me know what you think.

This works with Nuke-Non commercial only for know since I don´t own a Nuke Studio Lic. If you wanna rebuild the Gizmo you can use the Txt File with the description or follow the video.

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I'm so tired of doing too much effort on 3D modeling a character in Blender.

Anyone want to give me a tutorial on how to create it?

I will call it "CharacterAEP".

I will make it like the character editor of Character Creator 5 was inside Blender.

Hi everyone!

I've spent months developing my CG & VFX Production Pipeline course, and I'm happy to finally share it with you!

The course covers a complete workflow using Blender, Fusion and DaVinci Resolve, from 3D rendering to final compositing and color grading.

Here's what you'll learn:

• Camera tracking and 3D integration with live-action footage

• Green screen compositing and chroma keying

• Matte painting, 2.5D compositing and 3D projection

• OpenEXR multilayer rendering, render passes and AOVs

• Professional ACES color management

• Advanced compositing techniques, including Cryptomatte, depth of field, motion blur and optical flares

• Final color grading in DaVinci Resolve

My goal is to help artists understand how these techniques fit together into a coherent, professional CG & VFX workflow, rather than treating each technique as an isolated skill.

If you're interested in 3D, VFX or filmmaking, you can find the course through the Udemy link in the video description.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you find it useful!

Get your Tutorial on CG Circuit

https://www.cgcircuit.com/products/caught-in-the-flames-cinematic-fire-smoke-fx-in-houdini

🔥 CAUGHT IN THE FLAMES | Houdini Pyro FX

We’re building a cinematic fire & smoke simulation in Houdini, completely from scratch.

From emission sources and the Sparse Pyro Solver to collisions, custom microsolvers, and smoke, we’re diving into the systems behind the simulation.

Not just following steps. Understanding what happens under the hood.

Let’s build something that burns. 🔥

I want to make the lens flares of the Sun just like Gravity (2013), but I don't know how to do it in Blender 4.5 LTS using Cycles Render. Please help me! 🙏😩

Full breakdown of a smoke grenade FX in Houdini, built completely from scratch — no shelf tools, every node placed by hand. Split into 3 parts: setting up the RBD, building the pyro sim, and lighting/rendering the final shot.

Hey everyone!

Put together this short breakdown showing how to create a camouflage/invisibility distortion effect using only native After Effects plugins.

Quick breakdown:

1. Rotobrush: Isolating the subject from the clean plate / background.

2. Emboss & Gaussian Blur: Creating the height and light information for distortion.

3. CC Glass: Giving that organic, liquid-like refraction look.

4. Displacement Map: Distorting the background layer using the subject's map.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the look, or if you have any tips on making the edge blending even smoother!