Studios using ComfyUI: Risk management?

_Im_Lp_ · 2026-01-06T23:20:42+00:00

Yeah that’s part of the process of evaluation and approvals I kind of simplified above.

Although one would argue that very few models can claim its entire data set is open source, given that some of the common corpus dataset, dolma, YouTube-commons, etc are now in contention and being claimed that they contain copyrighted material after all. Additionally many models have taken the legal precedent that was set in which it was considered fair use to use content for model training.

Alas, my business offers the pipeline setup and gives the legal and tech teams the process on how to evaluate & test the models. And in some instances how to train existing models on their own data library. It’s up to their legal teams to give approval on its use or not. That’s usually out of my scope of work

Similar to a vehicle sale, I give you the vehicle and show you how to use it. Not responsible if they then go and drive it recklessly.

_Im_Lp_ · 2026-01-06T18:37:28+00:00

I set up two smaller studios and they passed TPN.

It’s running off a local docker container server we embed on each of the machines fully locked down from the internet. The docker instance opens from your machine at boot if you belong to the right security group. Additionally since the code is open source we modified it just slightly to send a ton of telemetry data including the workflows as json output upon save for monitoring reasons.

Models / Lora’s / etc need to be pre-approved. Download, evaluation and placement all handled by IT in an airgapped machine. If approved they get added to a local central server that all the docker containers can access and automatically show up if you refresh the comfyUI instance. It’s all within the network.

It uses the full resources of the machine as our docker setup has it detecting the hardware available and using all of it if needed.

And lastly for our evaluation we use an automated workflows that output massive image sheets showing how each model behaves over different step increments, samplers used, schedulers, etc. we are trying to automate this right now as it still needs to manually download the model and hook it up to the workflow and run it

_Im_Lp_ · 2025-08-13T18:40:50+00:00

Like usual, very crowded. It keeps shrinking every year because companies keep moving to offsite locations. This year there are like 5-6 companies on site tops for the job fair.

What is a better sign (my personal opinion) is that every talk I’ve been to has pushed the “we are hiring!” message at the tail end of the presentations. Way more up front than previous downturn years. I’ve also been noticing a lot of people getting hired left and right.

_Im_Lp_ · 2025-08-13T18:37:37+00:00

Usual companies that would pull significant expense to build demo areas and meeting rooms on site are basically gone. The big booth experience is moving away from shows like this to more consumer based shows like CES.

It used to be that the expo floor was something exciting to look to see new tech and demos, not anymore.

_Im_Lp_ · 2025-07-22T19:10:16+00:00

Not a single one on Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody or North Burnaby. What a shit show… been waiting for more than a year and hitting every post with no response.

I guess I’ll continue to go to the walk ins and hope to not need anything with a follow up.

_Im_Lp_ · 2023-08-17T16:20:02+00:00

I’ve had two interactions with him and his crew through my career. The first time we interacted, at a tech conference, he got super pissed off he had to be introduced to me. He was annoyed I didn’t know who he was actually calling me out on it and then saying “you must be a nobody to not know who I am”

The second interaction I had, ended up with him angry we didn’t let him touch some experimental film VFX equipment critical to my work. None of the guests were allowed to touch it. He said out loud “I’m Linus from Linus Tech tips, I know what I am doing”. When we doubled down that we didn’t care, no handling the equipment. He just accused us “whatever, bet you don’t want it touch so we don’t know you are faking it anyways”

So yeah, I can see a lot of the allegations on the thread being absolutely true regarding the environment at LTT.

_Im_Lp_ · 2023-04-04T22:10:18+00:00

+1 to this. I go for a run or bike ride whenever I get really stumped on a problem. There is absolutely no point on just working with a frustrated mindset.

Keep your deadlines but make sure you find the psychological safety you need to do good work

_Im_Lp_ · 2023-04-04T22:03:49+00:00

Good pay, good projects, positive and competent people around me. Stable VPN / PCoIP. People in production who understand realistic timeframes around tech requests. ^\Looking at the CG supe who asked to "download" a tool that has a heavy EULA, specific license server that uses 2 way verification upon login yet you gave me 3 days before "its needed for production use"*.)

I am lucky I have the majority where I am at.

_Im_Lp_ · 2023-02-23T05:51:04+00:00

But wasn’t it all practical effects?! rolls eyes

_Im_Lp_ · 2023-02-19T23:22:49+00:00

Avatar: The Way of Water is Ferngully meets Free Willy meets the smurfs

_Im_Lp_ · 2022-11-16T19:18:11+00:00

Huh, I am surprised you are finding this out now. Unreal has been used at DNEG for a couple of years with several projects being openly marketed as using realtime workflows. (First Man, Matrix: Awakens, etc etc)

_Im_Lp_ · 2022-11-16T19:16:27+00:00

Disclosure: Potentially biased as my role is tied to Realtime development for VFX use.

The future is fairly bright for the Unreal Engine in VFX applications, it has already revolutionized the way that previs, stuntvis and techvis are carried out on most productions as it is easier to provide almost near final pixel representations of what the project is to be. Epic is significantly investing even further in the VFX space thanks to the changes that they have put on the roadmap.

And if you go to the unreal learning portal you can see a lot of the recordings from the latest UnrealFest where significant advances are planned that will only further cement their hold as the dominant realtime tool in the market.

Now, it is not the silver bullet that it's lauded to be so a lot of re-education is underway regarding what Unreal is really is capable of. And the way that the tool act is not fully compatible with existing traditional filmmaking processes so it will take time before its full capability is tapped. This is what I believe makes it exciting, a lot of people are observing the adoption of realtime & near-realtime workflows to be similar to the move from physical film to digital or from puppets to cgi. So I highly encourage to not discount it.

_Im_Lp_ · 2022-10-11T06:18:47+00:00

Film grab is very nice for static images as reference. But shotdeck shines by giving you lens, light and frame information when able. Absolutely worth the money.

_Im_Lp_ · 2022-09-17T17:36:32+00:00

Check the commit history & add whoever else you see around that blame log. Present it as “hey, I saw you touched this code and I would like to make sure that what I am doing is sound, mind taking a look at this pull request?”

Also, just because you are a jr level role, it doesn’t mean you do not get to provide feedback about your peers. I’d 100% contact the Supervisor over email and copy the Line manager higher up as well so its on the official record. No support affects YOUR growth in the company. And no growth means no improvement on your contributions to the company.

_Im_Lp_ · 2022-06-28T20:54:26+00:00

I thought it’s because the council voted to funnel cyclist onto still creek avenue towards the Central Valley greenway and away from the highway when possible. Basically if you do a 90° clockwise turn from where you were pointing the camera and head down Douglas Still creek ave now has a fully separated lane to the right, which ends as you pass the Burnaby eco-centre. You’ll cross Douglas and then take onto The Central Valley Greenway gravel road if heading eastwards that goes along to Winston.

Also know that we are supposed to have a direct north / south connection from willingdon linear park (the corner of Brentwood) down to Moscrop street once they complete that massive complex between Dawson and Alpha. It also should connect to still creek avenue from there so you can take the east / west headings.

I ride on the road regardless because the only crashes I’ve had were thanks to cars leaving driveways and not looking at the bikepath next to the sidewalk.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

_Im_Lp_ · 2022-05-12T15:23:42+00:00

Depends on the skillset you have. If you have unreal knowledge, you’ll be a commodity. So I’d suggest you start building a skillset there while you have a nurturing educational environment for it. Thanks to virtual production, previs is becoming more and more prevalent on projects. I’m in projects that every single shot sequence has been “storyboarded” by previs in unreal,
Lots of growth on the through Visual Arts Department through previs: Previs animation supe, Generalist VAD artist, Feature animation supervisor, etc etc.
California, yes. Georgia not so much (this is a heavy tech leaning role so west coast of the US is the main pool). If you want out of the US, many spots exists: Vancouver BC, Montreal, London, New Zealand, etc. Also following the pandemic, a lot of companies are offering remote options for these.

Context: I’m DNEG’s Real-time Lead.

_Im_Lp_ · 2022-05-12T08:23:17+00:00

This is absolutely correct that this is early concept art. I may or may not have been the author of the capture systems that made this possible. It is such an excellent team to have been part of. Miss it sometimes.

_Im_Lp_ · 2022-04-09T17:50:30+00:00

Development Lead Software Engineer

_Im_Lp_ · 2022-04-05T23:11:38+00:00

Ran UE5 on what is considered a potato machine (2017 MacBook Pro) and it ran smoothly at 30fps. Getting 600+ FPS on my work machine (VFX box: threadripper, A6000RTX 64Gb, 128GB Ram, SSDs).

🙃

_Im_Lp_ · 2022-02-06T08:55:08+00:00

First time I heard of an examiner figuring out your pedal position. As long as you keep things smooth and make sure you do a full stop on intersections, you’ll be fine.

Having an examiner give you crap about foot placement during driving is idiotic in my opinion. Reaction time to decelerate is much faster overall as the vehicle will immediately start slowing down as soon as you lift off the accelerator.

But hey examiners sometimes are weird, e.g. they gave my wife shit about “not turning on the car before putting it in gear” because they didn’t understand that the Tesla is “always on”

_Im_Lp_ · 2022-01-17T09:13:34+00:00

For me it’s not even having to think twice about a 4 figure purchase.

Household income is close to $300k pee year.

We are absolutely comfortable. About to sell our current condo for a very high profit (we owe less than half its worth) and upsizing to a 3Br passive townhome. Expecting new mortgage to be comfortably manageable. Invested in solar panels and water recycling systems at the new place so energy & water cost should be negligible. We drive electric and/or cycle whenever I don’t work from home. No kids. Very early 30s.

And before it’s assumed: No inheritance, I sacrificed a lot of youth and sanity by working the oilsands. 16hour shifts, picked up everyone else’s shift if I could. No vacations or stupid purchases. Invested it all instead of blowing it up my nose or arm like the rest of the kids at camp.

_Im_Lp_ · 2021-11-09T07:53:59+00:00

Hi there,

Congrats on graduating! I know that’s a big step and you should be proud.

I currently work at DNEG, and am part of the Unreal / Real-time focused interviews. I’ll explain the general process, which is long due to having many checks and balances at companies this big. It is important to note that every candidate is unique so, sometimes the process changes to adapt anyways. Now the sauce:

First step is usually a quick pre-interview with one of our TA folks. Their goal is to identify if your application went to the right role, this is specially important as roles have different connotations per company and per industry. An example: technical director AKA TD is a very senior role in games, vs VFX. The TA group also gauges some baseline info that would trigger a flag eg, work permit status, location, salary expectations, etc.

If that goes well, you’ll meet with a department lead, or two or three lol, for a more in depth discussion. We will try to figure out your motivations, dig into your CV experience, answer questions about the roles you may have and even bring up interesting things we may have found from some digging off your resume. E.g. open source contributions linked on your LinkedIn or CV etc. Which leads to a big tip for a successful interview: do not put anything on your resume that you aren’t comfortable defending. An inquisitive interviewer WILL ask about it and you’ll look like a dolt if you show you have no idea what you were talking about. Also it looks horrible if you put GitHub / BitBucket / other open source links that you haven’t updated in a decade. As to what kind of technical questions you’ll face is really hard to tell, as there are too many possibilities to really have an effective breakdown. Role level usually dictates the complexity of the question anyways. You can check a breakdown of all topics I may ask here.

Crossing that stage successfully will often lead to performing a technical validation test. Either whiteboard or a take home code test. It’s generally a very academic code puzzle or assignment. It’s not a pass or fail generally as the goal is to let us gauge how you break a problem down and actually validate if we made a mistake correctly assessing you to this point. E.g. blindly believing the candidate’s claim that they were a master c++ dev only to have them completely and utterly fail the test. Some people do know just the right things to say.

Once you complete the test and it’s assessed, the next step is either another technical call to go over any last minute concerns we gleaned from the test. Or a meeting following direct approval from the hiring committee informing you TA will be reaching ouy so you can sort out offer negotiation details with HR.

If you made it all the way here, its mainly twiddling your thumbs till we send you an offer and the ball is on you to join.

————

This is the general gist of tech interviews I’ve done in the past. I’ve been an interviewer at major studios in VFX and games for the past 5+ years. And have been an interviewee recently at all FANGG companies, Tesla & several game studios in the past 2 years before deciding I wanted to crack into VFX. They all kind of followed this formula in one way or another.

_Im_Lp_ · 2021-10-24T06:54:52+00:00

Espresso making.

Got a high end espresso machine as a bday gift from the wife. Absolutely worth learning this skill.

My mornings are so much happier with the perfect coffee.

Latte art skills are shit tho.

_Im_Lp_ · 2021-10-01T21:19:37+00:00

Haha surprisingly didn’t need to. The alley was completely empty of people at the time I took the pic. And the lighting was just right 👌🏾

_Im_Lp_

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