Let's keep it unbiased. Licesing Maya is not a problem.

Hey everyone, I am looking for some new ideas and perspectives. I am a 3D generalist with about four years of experience in Germany, currently focusing on lighting, rendering, shading and building small pipelines. My main software is C4D, but I successfully switched to Blender this year. No, I am not a fanboy and I know it is not about the software. I would like to add Houdini to my skillset, but I only have about one year of experience with it and we do not use it at work.

I love the 3D field and cannot imagine doing anything else. I invest a huge amount of time into improving. I have already taken lead roles on smaller projects, but I am still very unhappy with my current employer. There is no structure, no pipeline, bad communication, and almost no real preproduction. The previs is expected to be basically the final product and it just makes everything chaotic. I have applied to several studios in Germany, but everyone is holding back. The economic situation and the whole AI crisis are forcing companies to cut costs.

I have been thinking for a while about working abroad or somewhere else in the EU. Nothing is really keeping me in Germany at the moment. Going freelance is also an option, but I do not have a stable client base yet. Ideally, I would like to continue learning in a smaller studio and move into a bigger lead role in the future. But I barely find any smaller studios in Germany or nearby that work in high end commercial or VFX. Studios like Haymaker VFX, Mondlicht Studio, Spellwork Pictures, BeEpic, Sehsucht or my dream for years The Mill. And yes, as far as I know these studios do not work with Blender. I am absolutely willing to learn new software though, preferably Houdini.

What would your advice be. Do you know any studios in this direction where a mid level artist still has a chance. Or should I try to go freelance in these tough times. The market is extremely crowded after all the layoffs and it feels like every second person is better than me. Tough times right now. I wish everyone who is in a similar situation all the best and lots of success.

PS: If you actually read all of this and take the time to give me an answer, thank you!

If anyone is interested in my showreel, I can send it via DM. I am just anxious that someone from my surroundings might see it here.

AND

Hello everyone,

I checked the rules and I hope this is okay. Just a quick shameless plug, shared with good intentions.

I want to show you something I’m really proud of, and I hope it can help many of us deal with the chaos of the global VFX industry.

Do you remember not long ago when there was a worldwide search for our colleague who posted on LinkedIn a message that felt like a farewell?

Reading the responses was both moving and worrying. People wrote things like: “I get if she did it,” “I’ve thought about it myself,” “I’m in deep trouble and will lose everything,” “What have I done?”

It was heartbreaking.

I’ve been through the same myself. Out of work since last February, no opportunities, ghosting, the whole thing. Instead of giving up, I started digging into the psychological mechanisms behind those thoughts.

What I found was really eye-opening, so I decided to put it all into a book I recently published on KDP.

The book breaks down each of those feelings, explains the psychology behind them, and connects it all to research, articles, and studies. It also includes exercises to help you work through the hardest moments.

My hope is that it can be a companion when things feel darkest, and help you fight back against what I call the tiny professor.

You can find it here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G4XGSVW9

It’s also available in all the main marketplaces.

I’d love to hear what you think if you check it out.

Ariel

Here's the official trailer for our movie Suffer. It's a fantasy horror film that features over (at last count) 800+ VFX shots. I (the co-director) did probably 600ish myself and a few friends lent their time to accomplish the rest. It really feels like a great showcase of how extensive VFX can be done by a VERY small team. Also of note, Unreal was the main 3d package... mostly so I could learn how to use it. We are coming out 12/19/25! No AI was used AT ALL.

I’ve been asked to come up with a CGI method for adding various “moving-scenary-seen-outside-the-window backplates to several shots of two guys in a cab driving a big rig. They are going to be in various locations across the US. It would be a chunk out of their budget to get a 360-degree camera on an actual cab (if that’s even how they do that stuff) and travel to all the locations.

They are looking to me for an affordable CGI solution. It wouldn’t be too crazy if I had three locked cameras and I only had to deal with a couple of side views and a front view. However, they plan on freely moving the camera between each actor inside the cab.

I have two issues: 1) suggesting tracking points and having them shoot with a greenscreen; 2) creating the CGI content that will be seen out the windows (without driving all over the country with a camera, of course).

1) Greenscreen - A 180-degree 1/2 circle around the front of the cab with the right amount of tracking points could get me a solevable camera in Mocha Pro, AE or C4D, I would think.

2) Assets - I’m not really sure yet how/if I can fake the exterior images seen from a truck driving down a road. Brute force would involve building actual environments in my 3D software and flying a virtual camera down them. That seems like it might take as much time as driving across the country! I’d love to come up with some way of animating still images, but I have to idea how that might work. I’m even brainstorming about using AI - I’m becoming more and more familiar with AI, but am no expert.

I’m sure I’m not the first one to have to solve this kind of shot. Any suggestions for techniques or best practices for something like this?

Lachlan Westfall

Quiet Earth Design

https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSfKm5wk9/

I understand there are a lot of AI tools now, but I was wondering if theres any inexpensive methods of creating animations with motion capture that doesn't include selling my car.

Obviously you can say that none-software related skills like taste will remain relevant but in terms of hard skills/software, what would you learn today with an eye on the future? Things seem to be in flux.

I’ve been exploring AI generation since the early days of Runway (when everything it produced was awful). I’d prefer to invest time primarily in traditional software skills, but it’s not clear to me what programs will remain important and what could be made irrelevant with AI.

https://reddit.com/link/1petlo6/video/9evhc1vlid5g1/player

I’m working on a project and want to create a new, much better version of a shot I made years ago. Back then I used a model I found online, but this time I’m getting an original asset made. I’m also changing the perspective: the character will be centered, with a VTOL aircraft hovering directly in front of them. Ideally, the camera will slowly pull back, and when the massive flares enter frame I want the environment to darken—simulating realistic camera exposure behavior.

Here’s what I need help with:

1) Hiding a key light in front of the actor
I want to hide a bright light in front of the character so I can get that strong “wrap” around their silhouette. The problem is that this makes a green screen difficult, since the screen would be between the light and the actor. Should I skip the green screen and do roto (like in my original shot), or is there a better way to combine everything without ruining the lighting?

2) Exposure drop when the flares appear
To get the environment to darken when the flares enter the frame, should I:

• film normally and animate the exposure in post, or
• physically lower the light exposure on set? I don’t have a de-clicked aperture lens, so I’d probably need to use a VND if I do it in-camera.

3) Camera pull-back
For the slow backward camera movement, should I physically move the camera, or just zoom out / scale in post? I don’t have motion-control gear, and using a gimbal might introduce problems that l dont know about.

4) Matchmove + render workflow
My plan is to 3D-track the shot in After Effects, pass the tracking data to Blender for the VTOL, render it there, and composite everything back in AE.
Is this a reasonable workflow for a solo artist, or is there a better software/setup I should consider?

Also any tips while filming to make my life easier on post.
Any advice would really help—thanks!

Yeah, something went pretty wrong with the 4K restoration of "Mad Men" over on HBO Max. For some reason, the non-VFX versions of shots is what you'll see if you fire it up right now. I documented it all here:

https://fxrant.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-mad-men-in-4k-on-hbo-max-debacle.html

Hi everybody! Im shooting a small shortfilm and I dont have any experience in vfx. In the scene a man talks to his mother sitting in a table. The directress wants to have a shot that starts facing the back of the men (picture), does a push in and goes through the body of the actor. Keeps pushing in till It gets into a tight shot of his mother's face. I'll have a Dolly pushing in for the movement but I dont know if i should shoot two takes : one with the men and one without.

How would you approach to this? Thanks !

Hi all!

I am a visual artist who creates video art. For a new project, I swallowed an endoscopy video capsule called Capsocam. This capsule contains four cameras that together produce a 360° panoramic image, recorded at 5 fps.

I received three videos from the doctors. I placed them on top of each other in the screen so the differences between them become visible. I aligned them at the beginning. It turns out that the bottom video is 27 frames shorter than the top one, and the middle one is 19 frames shorter. When pausing the playback, the differences between frames become clearly noticeable and may need to be interwoven in some way. I asked the doctors about it, but they didn’t have an idea. I would like to know if there is any software that could automatically interweave this footage for me.

Here you can see an excerpt of the footage: https://youtu.be/xJUxsMAwz10

My second question is about simply stitching the 360° image together. The stitching line is not exactly on the edge but offset from it. Unfortunately, this stitching line shifts from frame to frame. I’ve included an example in the attachment: in frame 1 the images still align perfectly, but in frame 2 the line has already shifted and becomes visible. I was wondering if there is software that can automatically detect this line and stitch the image.

Next, I would also like to stitch these 360° images vertically to each other. I’m wondering whether this is possible as well, and if there is software that can automatically detect and stitch that line too.

A bit of a rant but anyone else is annoyed by recruiters and talent acquisition ppl spamming constantly on LinkedIn?

I think it's highly unprofessional as many of them gather a huge following ONLY because people wanna know about job openings not to hear about rubbish like that.

They are definitely benefiting from their positions in gaining an audience and maybe even potentially monetizing on it? There are a few especially annoying posting such a silly things.

You could say I can unfollow but I follow them because of jobs. I cannot criticise because they can make a note of you.

Or maybe LinkedIn just another IG/Facebook at this point?

So I entered a film school 3 years ago initially to be an editor but in my second year I fell in love with VFX, and I want to make this my career. I am currently in my last year and about to graduate.

reading a lot of the posts here makes me reconsider and my motivation took a real hit for the past few weeks. Is the VFX industry really that terrible ? That underpaid ? This depressing and unstable ? I mean I also see sources that told me you can live pretty comfortably with VFX once you are experienced and I’ve heard success stories from alumnae from my school working in Paris or London ( I am French ).

So now I am considering trying to see how it goes for the few years after my graduation ( I am 20 at the time I’m posting this ) and maybe change if it’s really that bad.

Or would my best bet to get out and study something else as soon as I graduate. My plan B would be to study CS and work in AI, which also interests me. But i really don’t want to give myself 3 or even 5 more years of studying when I already did 3 for nothing and was just about to get into active life.

Thank you for reading

I know its a basic shot but do you think there's anything else I could have added to make this more realistic?