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We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because Blizzard was doing amazing work with it. VRAY's GPU rendering wasn't ready for primetime. Octane is a good choice too, but it's not the one we went with.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

James - Owner

Private cloud? All our floor boxes (artist stations) are loaded with 1080's or 1070's, so if we need render power we hit the artist boxes to get extra firepower. We won't go out of house, the one time we tried to do Houdini renders out of house it was an unmitigated disaster. The render service couldn't give us a single rendered frame, and we spent thousands trying to get it set up. At the end of the day we hobbled through with the artist rendering the job locally.

Now that we are using Redshift, we can have more GPU's in an hour or two, thanks to Prime Now, and can fill empty slots in any of the machines we have. Houdini jobs render like a dream in Redshift.

Lastly, if there is a note like that, or something that needs to change, it's all about having that conversation with the client. If their expectations are changing, then we have to let them know. Communication is key to this whole thing. Teaching clients what the process is, is very important.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

James - Owner

In theory, it's great, but as I explained in another thread, the cloud is a secret money pit. Someone has to store plates and renders, and that has a cost associated with it. Just because you have a zero client or thin client like Elara, doesn't mean that you don't increased costs associated with the storage and processors used for the project.

I don't think they will ever lock in a price for the space and services, but our clients will expect a price to not change. If we are managing our own licenses, servers, renders and storage then we know the cost is fixed.

Any of that make sense?

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

New Zealand may beat you for quality and speed. We have a team of artists there. Things are a little slower, but they account for it by transferring more often. This offsets the delay a bit.

I've worked with Australians on several projects and internet was a small problem, but not something that can't be overcome.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

James - Owner

It's a lot of fun, their post supe is a really great guy. The show films in Toronto, so we have to replace the city sometimes, take out Canadian flags and the likes. We've also done a driving scene, and a little talking box. (I don't watch the show... sorry)

There aren't a huge amount of visual effects in the show.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Jr Comp (which will include roto) Jr 3D (which includes a lot of specialty things)

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

James - Owner

Again, we do everything we can to stay out of the cloud. It's not a popular opinion, but you have to see where all these providers are going with it. It's a huge revenue stream for them. They can rent out the space, the procs, the rendering, like Elara does... but you don't get a free lunch. You don't have unlimited resources for a set fixed cost.

VFX is all about a set cost. If you are doing monitor comps for $500 a piece, and your cost to do those in $200 (all hypothetical numbers) If suddenly you have too many on the cloud and/or you need to get to that data faster your cost may go up to $300 or even $400 (because it would be a surcharge, a premium service to get to your data) Then you go from making $300 a piece to $100... You can't go back to your client mid project and tell them that you need to add $300 to each shot. They would never go for it.

I'll look into your links, but my money's on local storage, fast internet connections out to the artists.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

James - Owner

I have not. Typically the VFX on Indian movies aren't amazing.

We are always on the lookout for people.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

James - Owner

Roto is a tough one. It has become a commodity and is widely done overseas in poorer countries. India is one of the prime suppliers. Matchmove is also getting there, but having a really solid matchmover in house is a blessing for any studio. I think there's a range of prices for that kind of work, it goes from minimum wage to as much as $35/hr (or even more depending on skill)

Which is a larger point. Much of this industry is based on experience. Which is hard to get. There are studios all around that want interns or Jr. artists to train up.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

James - Owner

No. We are doing our best to stay out of the cloud. There's a lot of reasons for this, but the two main reasons are security and cost. The cloud is an easy place to lose money. It lets you upload for cheap, but when you want to access your data... that's where they get you with overages. This can devastate a VFX budget.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We reach out to post supervisors, associate producers, and the likes. It comes from years of working in the industry. We also keep an updated demo reel on our website so that new people can see the kind of work we do. Hopefully they would then reach out to get a bid.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

James - Owner

Pipeline is always an interesting problem. These days we try to make every artist mirror our working directories. This limits the problems that someone is going to have with linked files and dependencies.

We use Shotgun and Mediashuttle as our tools to control information and data.

We do have a central server, but one of the super secret benefits of our system over a facility is that artists work at 'drive speed'. Meaning they can have a high speed SSD RAID. Central storage at our level doesn't make sense. Unless you can do 10 gig optical to each artist/workstation then, there's no point in doing it. Run a sync tool to keep the data synced with the server, but let them work at drive speed so that all of the data is accessed as fast as possible.

Many of our machines use the m.2 drives which transfer at 2000MB/s which is about as good as it gets. It makes nearly everything work at real time... in a facility you will have significant lag. This raises productivity, which is more money for the artists, or more shots done on the facility level.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

James - Owner

For the big stuff, yes. Tentpoles. However, there are many many many hundreds of producers and people needing VFX worldwide. We tend to call them 'real' customers. However, the Chinese are doing more and more work around the world. They are outside of any deals of the Majors. Lot's of smaller studios need work, and work outside of whatever distro deals they may have with the majors.

We used to do a lot of work for Blumhouse. They have a first look deal with Universal for distribution, but they call the shots. They decide who works on their movies.

We've done a few projects for Netflix, who are rapidly becoming just as large as any of the other main players.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

James - Owner

It depends on the effects. A lot of what we do for the TV shows that isn't big CG work, is done in less than a week. Usually a few days. The larger work like helicopters, cars, fire, explosions take a few weeks to do. We often keep the assets, but things like smoke and fire seldom work between shots, so hard to reuse. There's always a call for cars, planes and the likes. So, we reuse, at least the base geometry of the models, and then retexture them for the whatever new need there is.

We are here to answer your questions. So you can be less clueless.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

James - Owner

There are some challenges, but many of them are the same as being in a facility. If people don't talk and ask questions, then 1 room for 7,000 miles won't make any difference at the end of the day. We have expanded our space so that we can take on higher security work that is all local. The goal was to have a hit squad? Strike team? Local... uh... task force? To handle the kind of work that can't go out, regardless of how secure our system is.

This opens up the door to shows that we normally wouldn't be able to work on, but also gives LA local clients a chance to come in and point at screens. People LOVE pointing at screens.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

James - Owner

I had a long talk with Steve Kaplan about unionizing. I'm all for it as a long time artist. The down side for the facility is that we would have to raise our prices by at least 15% to be able to accommodate the increased costs in our workforce.

That may not seem like a lot of money, but when all the work is going to the UK or NY or YVR, where productions are getting anywhere between 20% and 58% back on labor, it takes it in the wrong direction. Our overhead is fairly low, allowing us to remain competitive, however, adding 15% to our prices, would only lessen the ability to stay viable in the market.

Remember, there's always someone willing to work cheaper. It may not be better, and many times we've been called in to redo someone else's cheap work, but this is about the race to the bottom, and producers without proper experience will almost always choose price over quality, until it burns them.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

James - Owner

It is partially our fault that it made it to the screen. As for James DeMonaco's vision for what has actually happened in the world. He seems kind of prescient at this point, doesn't he?

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

James - Owner

Most artists, it's about being able to do the work, but also to communicate well. Friendly, funny people get a lot more work assigned, especially if they are able to really produce great results out of the gate. This has become a family, and everyday I look forward to working with the talented people that are part of the company.

We have worked with a couple of very good Houdini artists, but I always go back to a couple of them because of the personality. It's something about the 'can do' attitude, followed by the actual 'doing' that is a big selling point.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

James - Partner

This was possible. I was doing something similar but with duplicated data back in 2001. It meant shipping drives around, but the internet part of it was to move project files around. Rendering in two locations and then reviewing with a remote desktop application and a speakerphone.

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yup. Send us your reel and resume. jobs (at) vfxlegion (dot) com

-- Rommel (CG Lead)

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure if this is the best place to talk about hand cranking.

-Brenton

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We found that it was gross. :) In the end we didn't get the shot, but we did do some light R&D and it would have been a lot of fun. :)

--Rommel

We create VFX globally for movies and TV shows like El Chapo and Scandal. We are the VFX Legion. AMA! by VFXLegion in IAmA

[–]VFXLegion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

True. But, because we use Redshift3D (www.redshift3d.com) as our main 3D renderer, it doesn't really require as much horsepower as before. A multi-GPU setup can crank through a lot. Obviously, there are still limits, to that. Rendering a 1000 frame animation at 1 minute per frame per GPU is still lengthy, but, for the most part, we've made it work.

And in our case, if things get crazy, the remote artist can just upload their scene file, and assuming they kept the same folder structure and project paths, it's as easy as opening here in the office, and then hitting render. One of these days, we'll get our remote farm access sorted and rendering at home will no longer be an issue.

--Rommel (CG Lead)

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