r/vfx • u/ZiggyisStarman • Apr 30 '26
Hey fellow Visual Effects community stoked to share what we have been working on for the past year over at he VES Technology Committee call it a playbook and usage guide to map key data from on-set capture to delivery.
FYI I am one of the co-authors of the Guide. If you have questions or feedback make sure to reach out.
You can find the guide here : https://ves-on-set-data.org/dashboard/?tab=Introduction
Here is the full information on the release :
The Visual Effects Society (VES), the industry’s global professional honorary society, today released its VES On-Set VFX Data Collection and Usage Guide. Developed over the past year by the VES Technology Committee, this practical on-set resource maps key data sets and capture workflows – giving productions, vendors, and technology teams a shared playbook for using and capturing on‑set data more effectively.
The Guide was designed to establish a common language between on‑set VFX, production, VFX facilities, and technology teams, ultimately enabling clearer communication, smoother handoffs, and better-aligned expectations across departments. This comprehensive Guide explains the major on‑set data sets, their capture methods, their practical applications, and their intended stakeholders, so that every participant across the production understands what information exists and how it can support their work.
In addition to defining data sets, the Guide documents both current and emerging on‑set data capture workflows. This aims to inform stakeholders about potential data sources and to highlight how these choices impact production pipelines, timelines, and budgets, while also laying the groundwork for future efforts around data hierarchies, database development, and workflow automation.
The Guide also underscores that this data has significant value for every department on a production. It supports collaboration, optimizes workflows, and enables better-informed creative and operational decisions. By advocating for open access and visibility for these data sets, the Guide encourages all teams to engage with and benefit from this shared knowledge, strengthening collective outcomes and overall production efficiency.
“Our intent with this Guide is to streamline the filmmaking process by enabling every department to be more well-informed,” said Sheena Duggal, the Guide’s lead author and member of the VES Technology Committee. “Multiple departments can utilize the same data – for instance, the VFX team’s LiDAR scans can be repurposed across departments to support set construction, stunt planning, and other production needs. It’s just a matter of educating and communicating clearly so that everyone can benefit.”
“In today’s hybrid of real-time virtual production, AI, and traditional pipelines, the VFX department is responsible for not just post, but on-set data capture, continuity, and asset integrity from pre-production through final delivery,” explained Jim Geduldick, contributing author to the Guide. “That framework was the key lens that we used in thinking through these workflows and how they relate to each department.”
The Guide was created for the VES Technology Committee by Sheena Duggal, with contributions from Sam Richards, Jim Geduldick, and Jake Morrison, and technical support from Jean-Francois Panisset. It is licensed under the Creative Commons CC‑BY 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, including for commercial purposes, provided appropriate credit is given to the creator.
To view the Guide, visit: https://ves-on-set-data.org/
Join the VES for a webinar on May 12 to explore the Guide with some of its creators: https://vesglobal.org/event/webinar-introduction-to-ves-on-set-vfx-data-collection-and-usage-guide-online/
r/vfx • u/axiomatic- • Mar 15 '25
We've been getting a lot of posts asking about the state of the industry. This post is designed to give you some quick information about that topic which the mods hope will help reduce the number of queries the sub receives on this specific topic.
As of early 2025, the VFX industry has been through a very rough 18-24 months where there has been a large contraction in the volume of work and this in turn has impacted hiring through-out the industry.
Here's why the industry is where it is:
The combination of all of this resulted in a loss of a lot of VFX jobs, the closing of a number of VFX facilities and large shifts in work throughout the industry.
The question is, what does this mean for you?
Here's my thoughts on what you should know if you're considering a long term career in VFX:
Work in the VFX Industry is still valid optional to choose as a career path but there are some caveats.
Before you jump in, you should know that VFX is likely to be a very competitive and difficult industry to break into for the foreseeable future.
If you're interested in any highly competitive career then you have to really want it, and it would also be a smart move to diversify your education so you have flexibility while you work to make your dream happen.
While some people find nice stable jobs a lot of VFX professionals don't find easy stability like some careers.
Because a future career in VFX is both competitive and pretty unstable, I think you should be wary of spending lots of money on expensive specialty schools.
With all of that said VFX can be a wonderful career.
It's full of amazing people and really challenging work. It has elements of technical, artistic, creative and problem solving work, which can make it engaging and fulfilling. And it generally pays pretty well precisely because it's not easy. It's taken me all over the world and had me meet amazing, wonderful, people (and a lot of arseholes too!) I love the industry and am thankful for all my experiences in it!
But it will challenge you. It will, at times, be extremely stressful. And there will be days you hate it and question why you ever wanted to do this to begin with! I think most jobs are a bit like that though.
In closing I'd just like to say my intent here is to give you both an optimistic and also restrained view of the industry. It is not for everyone and it is absolutely going to change in the future.
Some people will tell you AI is going to replace all of us, or that the industry will stangle itself and all the work will end up being done by sweat shops in South East Asia. And while I think those people are mostly wrong it's not like I can actually see the future.
Ultimately I just believe that if you're young, you're passionate, and you want to make movies or be paid to make amazing digital art, then you should start doing that while keeping your eye on this industry. If it works out, then great because it can be a cool career. And if it doesn't then you will need to transition to something else. That's something that's happened to many people in many industries for many reasons through-out history. The future is not a nice straight line road for most people. But if you start driving you can end up in some amazing places.
Feel free to post questions below.
r/vfx • u/Threshold_seeker • 5h ago
Just finished watching Hammer horror the Devil Rides Out. During the car chase scene there is a moment when a car windscreen suddenly becomes opaque, completely obscuring it. It's a cracking effect. Could anyone hazard a guess about how it may have been created?
r/vfx • u/MrDukeSilver_ • 4h ago
Howdy fellas, I’m new here, I need help figuring out this shot, so the opening scene of the short film I’m doing is a concert, i walk through the crowd up to the band and film them until they’re done. Now the problem is, I like the crowd of the first take but the bands performance of the second, and it’s quite dark and the crowd is basically just black silhouettes so I thought I could join the two takes with a mask and I’d just lay the one with the nice crowd on top of the one with the nice band.
I used to do compositing but haven’t done it in ages so I’m kinda blanking on the exact process of doing this, surely I’d have to blend the two takes at some point because there is no point where the audience is actually covering the whole band, also it’s handheld so I’d have to track it, right? But that would mess up the hand held look? Yeah if anyone knows how to do this the easiest way, I’d be very happy about some advice.
r/vfx • u/jovaughn117 • 1d ago
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r/vfx • u/Serin-019 • 1d ago
... After first imagining it like 11 years ago.
I think I've made a thing that is almost unlightable - or at least extremely difficult to light in a manner that shows off all the different aspects of the things going on here.
Atmo - therefore rayleigh scattering and golden hour
Clouds - therefore long shadows in the atmo and on the terrina
Terrain - thus displacement based detail.
All on a curved not particularly uniform shape that's kinda a very flat spheroid.
I've come to the conclusion that using separate lights to control each of the above separately might be the only way to tune it all appropriately.
So here's my question: Am I nuts? Doing this wrong?
r/vfx • u/worldofgaur • 1d ago
Inspired by 'Oblivion' movie.
r/vfx • u/obadoba_bigman • 1d ago
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Hi guys, I am learning Flame currently, so I'm practicing by comping my animations into footage I've shot. If you know anything about Flame, I'd love to hear how you would improve what I've made.
I animated the Mandelbulb in Mandelbulber 2. The footage was shot on my FX3. I graded my footage first, then comped in the artwork.
Thank you!
Hi everyone!
I'm a multidisciplinary multimedia artist working across illustration, animation, music, experimental video and 3D.
My workflow is quite varied: I constantly jump between Ableton Live, TouchDesigner, Affinity, Blender, datamoshing and various image-processing techniques. I particularly enjoy experimenting with degraded imagery, VHS aesthetics, textures and hybrid visual processes.
Blender is becoming an increasingly central part of my practice, mainly because of its versatility. I'm not focused on one particular type of 3D work: I might explore organic modeling one day, procedural environments the next, or animation and abstract visuals.
I recently bought a 16" MacBook Pro M5 Pro (18-core CPU / 20-core GPU / 48GB RAM) for around €3,550.
It's excellent for my general creative workflow, especially music production, but I'm wondering whether this is the right investment as I spend more time in Blender.
I'm considering either keeping it or buying a cheaper MacBook for music and general creative work, then building a dedicated NVIDIA workstation later (RTX 5070 Ti / 5080, potentially with a Ryzen 9 9950X).
Compared with my old GTX 1660 desktop, using Blender 5.2:
Eevee — BlenderKit landscape
3,653 objects / 646K vertices / 1.15M triangles
| Test | GTX 1660 | M5 Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Two Solid viewports | 9–10 FPS | 18 FPS |
| Solid + Rendered | 6 FPS | 9.3 FPS |
| Final Eevee frame | ~1m23s | ~1m24s |
Cycles — another BlenderKit scene
2,308 objects / 195K triangles / 4096 max samples
These aren't laboratory-grade benchmarks, but they reflect the kind of scenes I actually work with.
I'm relatively new to hardware benchmarking, so I'd particularly appreciate experienced perspectives rather than another Mac vs PC debate.
I'm also open to sharing a reproducible .blend test scene if the asset licenses allow it.
Thanks!
r/vfx • u/AbdulKarim04 • 1d ago
r/vfx • u/R3animatr • 2d ago
Hi everyone! I’d like to share a short preview of my showreel. You can watch the full reel on YouTube here.
r/vfx • u/Unable-Funny-7004 • 1d ago
Hello, Im writing this message because I would be in the need of a bit of help. I left the industry a couple of months ago due to personal reasons, but now I feel like I want to come back. I wanted to ask for feedback for my compositing reel, its all the I can offer to be very honest. Let me know what you guys think and if Im able to get real opportunities in compositing.
Thank you.
r/vfx • u/Foreign_Banana_9252 • 1d ago
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r/vfx • u/jakefolkoff • 1d ago
We’re an indie studio currently developing a modern reimagining of a previously successful MMORPG **IP** in Unreal Engine 5.
We’re currently building our **vertical slice and announcement trailer** and are looking for a talented **VFX Artist** to help establish the visual language of our combat and abilities.
**What we’re looking for:**
Experience creating VFX in **Unreal Engine 5**, preferably using Niagara
Strong experience with **fantasy combat VFX**
Spell casting, projectiles, impacts, persistent effects and environmental VFX
Good understanding of **combat timing, readability and impact**
Ability to work collaboratively with our development and art team
A portfolio or reel demonstrating relevant work
Our world has a darker, grounded visual direction, so effects need to stand out clearly against the environment while remaining controlled and believable rather than overly flashy.
This is a **paid opportunity** focused initially on our trailer and vertical slice, with potential for longer-term involvement as the project progresses.
If interested, please send over your **portfolio/reel, availability and rates**.
Feel free to DM me directly.
r/vfx • u/jaanshen • 2d ago
I do a lot of greenscreen work for microbudget narrative feature work. The majority of the greenscreen shots are locked off (for economy) and don't show the floor. I'm trying to figure out a way to record the sensor/camera height that's faster than a laser/tape measure for each setup (every minute saved on set matters).
Is there some kind of two device system, where one is on the floor somewhere nearby, and one mounted on the camera rig, that will record the height distance at intervals like every two minutes? Matching up the height reading via time and TOD timecode later is no big deal for me.
I know there's the option of wide angle witness camera off to the side, but I'm hoping there's something simpler.
Hoping someone else has already implemented a system like this or knows of such a device.
TIA
r/vfx • u/Empty_Mango_4317 • 2d ago
Hi everyone, I downloaded Blender exactly a year ago (late August 2025) and posted my first animation 3 months later. Since then, I’ve been practicing every single day, researching the industry for hours, and I recently expanded into Unreal Engine 4.27.2. I am fully committed to becoming a 3D Designer, Animator, or VFX artist when I grow up. Here is my dilemma: My parents are heavily against this path. They literally think it is just "sitting on a computer, making a quick animation, and getting paid $2." They don't believe it's a sustainable career. They are completely fixated on me getting a traditional university diploma—even though it isn't legally mandatory where we live and won't teach me these digital skills. I have tried explaining the industry to them for a year, but they won't listen to a teenager. I am writing this post specifically to show them your replies. Could working industry professionals please answer these three questions for my parents? 1. The Financial Reality: Is VFX/3D animation a real, viable, high-paying career? What does a typical starting or mid-level salary actually look like in this industry? 2. The Portfolio vs. Diploma Truth: If you are hiring an animator or artist, do you care about a university degree, or do you strictly look at their portfolio/showreel? 3. Your Advice: What would you say to parents who are terrified that their kid is wasting time on software like Blender and Unreal Engine? Thank you so much. Your comments are going to directly shape a major conversation with my family.
r/vfx • u/Choppedman6969 • 2d ago
r/vfx • u/Official_PopcornFX • 2d ago
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r/vfx • u/IndianVFXSchool • 3d ago
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I still remember watching those amazing Tornado Simulations by Martin Mirola which inspired me to do FX simulations.
Here's my Tornado Sim which is a part of Houdini Hollywood and this Module is completely FREE for everyone. Love giving back to community especially which inspired me so much!
The tornado Sim in this module can be setup in very easy ways and re-creating it barely takes 15-20 mins, everyone can feel free to watch the module and find out for themseves and can also fill their curosity if our methods are original or copied from tutorials ;)
The whole setup was built simply and the issues were tackled mostly with creative problem solving rather than going too techinical.
I used simple shape made from curve to emit smoke and then added some rotational velocities made from same shape to rotate the smoke.
The whole sim was split into 4 different pyro setups to make it feasible withut crashing the sim.
The top cloud lightning part was just sphere with noise.
The house was slowly activated from sleeping and added forces with threshold to break at certain impacts.
The trees were simulated in Vellum and instanced as USD in solaris.
The grass was faked with simple movement and scatter in solaris using instancer.
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Rendered in XPU - (2-3 mins) each frame
Max Ram Utilisation - Under 64GB
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Register here for FREE module releasing on 18th November 2026.
www.HoudiniHollywood.com
r/vfx • u/ThatDevilCrowley • 3d ago
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The pilot is called Blackstar Lullaby. Still figuring plenty of it out, but I'm finally getting closer to how I pictured it.
Heres one shot broken down a little. Thought it might be interesting to show the screens and the layers that go into them.
r/vfx • u/Clean-Try-3067 • 2d ago
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So tried getting automated splines out, not just a matte.
The goal was simple: get clean, editable splines out of AI roto instead of just a matte.
The splines are fully automated and generated by AI. You type a prompt (man) and set a frame range, and AI builds the roto as closed cubic B-splines. Nobody draws or places a single point by hand.
It splits the subject into parts (face, nose, head, torso, arms), each on its own layer.
For this 117-frame shot, generation took about 2 minutes.
Tried hard to keep the keyframes sparse. Each shape has only two to four keys, and everything in between is interpolated. That means no per-frame keys and very little chatter.
Also wanted the points to stay put. Every key has the same number of control points in the same order, and each point follows the same feature through the shot, so the shape doesn't boil or swim.
It's not perfect, and there's still plenty to improve.
If you have roto experience, We'd really value your thoughts on what works, what doesn't, and what you'd want next.
r/vfx • u/Imaginary-Sun1350 • 3d ago
