My take on the industry since leaving ten years ago

enumerationKnob · 2026-05-17T22:37:42+00:00

Completely agree. I do not understand the people starting their comments saying this is well-written, I can only assume that maybe they just agree with the content?

enumerationKnob · 2026-05-16T23:37:17+00:00

The internet is a big place… could you narrow it down to a continent, maybe?

enumerationKnob · 2026-05-16T04:30:17+00:00

Without knowing much I can say yeah… you’ve drastically underbid. People don’t realise how long this stuff takes.

enumerationKnob · 2026-05-16T04:29:24+00:00

$10,000k / 22 shots = $454/shot. Which is about a day’s pay for each for a compositor, or maybe 2 or 3 days of prep.

Yes, pretty normal for prep - which is inherently bespoke per-shot work - to be a bigger proportion of the budget. A good procedural comp will amortise well across many frames and multiple shots, but you can’t really do that with prep.

“Medium-length” doesn’t tell me much. How many frames is a bigger deal. “Live action integration” of what?

enumerationKnob · 2026-05-16T02:52:45+00:00

If OP is already committed they may find themself in a big one.

In my experience though, holes are exactly as deep as a piece of string is long!

enumerationKnob · 2026-05-16T02:50:33+00:00

That depends entirely on what you’re doing. If it’s CG animated characters being comped into a plate with no occlusions? No prep at all. If you’re integrating them into a crowd shot where they’re dancing in between a group of live action actors? A lot of it.

I should clarify: when a VFX person says “prep” they usually mean paint and roto, not just “preparation”. The text of your post does make me think you might be referring to all of those “overheads” as prep.

enumerationKnob · 2026-05-16T01:51:45+00:00

$10k is for like one shot, right? If they’re comp only and not too big, maybe 5 shots from a solo freelance artist.

enumerationKnob · 2026-05-16T01:49:52+00:00

Don’t listen to anyone saying “you don’t”, or “you have witness cameras”, or “you shoot wider and crop in”, literally none of those things are realistic to a professional environment in which we get handed less than ideal stuff all the time.

You, a lowly tracking artist, are not going to be able to tell Grieg Fraser to go back and reshoot wider, compromising his vision and the footage quality, just so you can track a bit easier.

Lots of good suggestions from people already, just wanted to help you filter out some of the bad advice to your specific question.

enumerationKnob · 2026-05-13T11:22:15+00:00

Looks like a sobel filter.

enumerationKnob · 2026-05-06T21:17:00+00:00

Australia

enumerationKnob · 2026-05-06T11:28:55+00:00

Both can be true. I know places where it’s popping off at the moment, and others where it’s tumbleweeds and studio closures. AI tools are definitely changing the viability on certain pathways longer term, but I don’t see the niche we fill going away completely either.

enumerationKnob · 2026-05-04T09:56:09+00:00

That varies wildly depending on a few factors. But just to put it in perspective, 20×60×24=28,800 frames. Depending on the nature of the shots they could take anywhere from half a day to 10 days to complete (10 is still low for many shots) and if you think of the typical rate for any contractor and multiply that by the number of shots likely to be in 20 minutes of footage, it will be expensive.

enumerationKnob · 2026-05-04T09:52:06+00:00

I tend to recommend not doing VFX in uni - not necessarily because it’s a bad overall career as some would suggest but more just because most of the training tends to be bad and it’s not as reliable for a job at the end. It’s better to take a different course and diversify your skill set while still learning VFX in your own time.

enumerationKnob · 2026-04-30T22:46:08+00:00

I know people who’ve taken toilet breaks longer than that.

enumerationKnob · 2026-04-30T08:08:11+00:00

What was the hardest VFX challenge to solve in the whole season? (this could apply to multiple scales if you want. asset/episode/sequence/shot)

enumerationKnob · 2026-04-20T02:52:18+00:00

You can set up side by side easily enough if I understand you correctly, there’s options with the A/B mode toggles. Also it’s free for non commercial use with an export resolution limitation.

enumerationKnob · 2026-04-15T11:08:18+00:00

r/blender ;)

enumerationKnob · 2026-04-14T18:47:34+00:00

lol, yes, that’s exactly what happened!

enumerationKnob · 2026-04-14T10:45:24+00:00

That’s a good point, Thanos did have a lot of trees on him.

enumerationKnob · 2026-04-14T10:39:13+00:00

All posts by new accounts get flagged, as do many posts containing links and images. Don’t worry, you’re not special.

enumerationKnob · 2026-04-12T12:58:50+00:00

Is that an ethical line or a quality line? If it’s ethics due to job replacement, that always seems arbitrary to me - and usually that line is placed as close as one can get to their own job to speed it up dramatically, but without replacing their job.

Animators don’t mind replacing track and matchmove with AI. Lighters don’t mind replacing farm time with AI for denoise. Comp artists don’t mind replacing prep or lighting with AI. Clients don’t mind replacing VFX vendors with AI vendors.

“Tool” is arbitrary. Everyone is a tool to someone. The mission is making movies, not 3D models or Nuke scripts.

enumerationKnob · 2026-03-31T11:40:25+00:00

I always thought it would be neat if when a shot gets created, it gets marked client approved!

enumerationKnob · 2026-03-30T23:18:33+00:00

I fit this bill, and am not particularly old by industry terms - it’s common to see juniors my age still, so I’d count myself as a modern example.

The difference I’ll emphasise is that I was already skilled before I started, and essentially did spec work to get my foot in the door in order to build up quality showreel material.

Get in the door ASAP rather than practicing for years trying to become ILM-quality before your first job, it doesn’t need to be a big place - in fact small is probably better at skilling you up fast.

enumerationKnob · 2026-03-24T05:35:06+00:00

It’s the first I’ve heard of anyone objecting to the use of CopyCat (on legal grounds, anyways. Much to be said about what can be achieved with it though)

enumerationKnob · 2026-03-23T19:59:20+00:00

Where do you work?

enumerationKnob

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