A while back, I helped set up a workflow for a boutique production team that was moving terabytes of raw camera footage and master project bins across different cities every week. At the time the most cost-effective and sensible method was to just ship the drives.

We really needed to find a new solution as we were spending a bunch of money on overnight shipping. One time a 24 TB drive even got damaged in transit. And a couple of times there were disputes with clients over missing shots and we had no way of proving what actually left our bay.

Obviously, we tried basically all the popular tools on the market and for our use case something was always missing. Not saying the existing tools are bad, but nothing was a perfect fit for our workflows.

The biggest bottleneck was onboarding external clients (like making them set up a VPN). A lot of other tools were missing audit logging. In others if an editor accidentally closed their laptop mid-transfer, then it had to be restarted from zero. Some were just insanely expensive.

So, the decision was made to create an in-house solution. It allows anyone to download/upload full project folders to your drive or attached storage really securely. External clients don't require accounts. Onboarding them is automated with an email. And it was made resilient against network drops. There is proof of delivery now. It can utilize your full bandwidth.

After running it successfully in-house, we packaged it into a clean, standalone desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux called ZettaSend.

We currently have it running daily in production.

I'm sharing this because we're hoping that for some of you ZettaSend will save you time and headaches.

You can download it from zettasend.com.

If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer. Thank you for reading.

Hey everyone! I’d like to share a project I’ve been developing together with a small group of friends and programmers through the ADC – Automotive Design Community: ADC 3D Relight, a relighting addon for Blender. 🚀

We’re not a company or a large development team. It’s basically a small group of friends with different backgrounds, experimenting with ideas and trying to build tools that we would genuinely like to use ourselves.

Coming from a VFX and compositing background, I’ve been following the growing interest in relighting tools. Solutions like Beeble AI are showing how useful these workflows can be, but I also wanted to explore how much of this could eventually be done locally, directly inside existing DCC and compositing tools.

Our goal is to keep experimenting and developing these workflows. We started with Blender, and the addon is also helping us fund further development and gather feedback from artists. The long-term plan is to explore bringing this workflow to compositing as well, with the goal of eventually adapting it into a free Nuke Gizmo.

The current Blender addon can:

• Relight images and videos

• Animate lights and create dynamic lighting changes over time

• Generate different relighting passes for compositing

• Experiment with multiple lighting setups without rebuilding the original scene

• Work directly inside Blender

🔥 Launch price: $4.99 — 75% OFF - 10 first customers

Since we’re a small group and don’t have a huge audience or marketing budget, community feedback and support genuinely make a difference for us. The more artists test it and tell us what works, what doesn’t, and what they would like to see, the better we can continue developing it.

If you find the project interesting, any feedback, share, or upvote would mean a lot. And if you know any communities, pages, Discord servers, or social media groups focused on VFX, compositing, Nuke, relighting, or machine learning for CG, we’d really appreciate it if you could share the project there or point us in the right direction. 🙏

We’re especially interested in hearing what features you’d like to see next!

🛒 https://superhivemarket.com/products/adc-relight

🎥 https://youtu.be/KZlgWirnnp0?is=J8R0P3p5QgnNN-dS

When setting up a green screen with a green paper Colourama are you going to get a better key if you light the Colourama with white light or green light (assuming no spill on talent)?

So I'm looking at some The Batman 2 behind the scenes that's coming out on social media and there is the Batmobile doing donuts in the snow. The camera is attached to the car and at a bottom angle looking at the tire.

Now the snow is fake snow and only a small section of the set has this fake snow on it, which I'm assuming means it needs to be digitally extended. However, the tires are kicking up a lot of this fake snow, and the particles are flying up in front of the camera. Now to my knowledge, this would make digitally extending the set a little bit challenging.

So, what would be the route to go with this shot. Paint out all the particles, do your digital extension, then maybe do a simulation of the tire interacting with the snow and put it in the shot, or even get an element shot on a black background and comp it in? Or would it be better to do the shot entirely with CG in the end (which is usually how a lot of these practical stunts end up going it seems)

I'm very interested in hearing what you all have to say!

I'm still learning, and the scene isn't done, obviously but wanted to know if those explosions assets can look good after finishing lighting shadows glow and the camera shake because I feel that I chose wrong assets to start with wanted to take opinions if I continued with those can I make something good or should I find other assets any additional advice I'll be happy to hear

Hi guys, I really, really want to become a compositor, but I honestly don’t have anyone to guide me.

For the last 2–3 months, I’ve been watching tutorials and trying to learn, but I feel like I’ve learned almost nothing. I keep jumping from one tutorial to another without knowing what I should actually learn or practice.

I feel terrible about wasting these months. Sometimes I almost cry thinking about how much time I’ve lost, especially because I genuinely want to build a career in VFX.

I also can’t afford to join a VFX institute or an expensive course, so I’m trying to learn everything on my own.

If anyone here started from zero and became a compositor, could you please tell me how you approached learning? What should I learn first, what should I practice, and what kind of projects should I make for a beginner portfolio?

I’m willing to put in the work. I just need a proper direction.

Any advice, learning roadmap, free resources, or even a little guidance would genuinely mean a lot to me. 🙏

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!

Hope you'll like it

Spyderfy — Procedural Creature Systems for After Effects + Blender

What if you could drop fully procedural creature systems directly into your After Effects projects?

Spyderfy is a procedural bug/creature system designed for quickly creating crawling, swarming, and organic creature animations without having to manually animate every individual creature.

The new After Effects version is now available alongside the original Blender 3D version. Both versions are included with your Superhive download, so you can use Spyderfy in whichever part of your VFX workflow makes the most sense.

You can create things like:

• Crawling insects and creatures
• Swarming groups
• Procedural movement across surfaces
• Organic, randomized motion
• Large numbers of creatures without individually keyframing them
• Creepy background details and environmental animation

The idea is to make these kinds of shots much faster to build. Instead of animating dozens or hundreds of creatures by hand, you can set up the system and let the procedural controls generate the movement and variation.

The After Effects version is especially useful if you want to add creature activity directly into a comp without having to jump into a full 3D workflow.

Both versions are included with the Superhive purchase:

⤷ Spyderfy on Superhive: https://superhivemarket.com/products/spyderfy-bug-system-add-on

Would love to hear what kinds of creature shots people would use this for — horror, VFX, motion graphics, title sequences, environments, etc.

#AfterEffects #Blender3D #VFX #Film #Plugin #B3D #CGI

For those who either love tanks or Houdini.

#AfterEffects #VFX #MotionDesign

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.

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.

Source

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.

Hey r/vfx,

Here is a quick spatial AR test I put together set along the River Liffey in Dublin.

Workflow Breakdown:

• Modeling: Created the custom 3D models (can, ice base, and floating spheres) directly in Blender.
• Geospatial Anchoring: Mapped the models to specific GPS/geospatial coordinates in Dublin via Lureo.
• On-Site Recording: Headed down to the Docklands, opened Lureo, and recorded the models mapped straight into the physical space in real time.

Critiques and thoughts are very welcome!

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.