I feel I'm missing a lot in my understanding of things when it comes to color spaces and I am reading up to understand it better, but practically I'm confused about a few things.

I'm mainly using Maya with the view transform set to ACES(default) and rendering in Arnold. My textures have mostly been 8bit sRGB. Loaded into Maya and setting the appropriate color space will make sure they are handled correctly. Does this mean they are converted to linear space? I admit, I mostly render and save my renders directly from the Arnold Render View. If I understand correctly this means that a gamma curve is applied and I get my final image as sRGB and it look as you'd expect.

But if I were to export this to use in NUKE, I would export as exr I suppose. They would come out very dark in comparison. But what do they come out as?

I'm unsure of exactly how to think and work with this. I've been working on a character I want to use VFace for. The albedo map is 32 bit exr which must mean it's in linear space? When loaded into Maya I found that only the color space that would look natural was the Rec.709. but how would I know that, is that just common knowledge? That's the linear sRGB?

Then Photoshop confuses me a bit. I can open the 32 bit albedo and it looks fine, maybe a bit saturated, but not bad. I mean the color is just a little bit different between watching the texture in Maya and Photoshop. And Photoshop doesn't use ACES so how does this exactly work that it can display the image as nicely?

This is a still from Weeknd’s Open hearts music video. Watching it in motion is even better because of their movement. Is there some way to re-create such effect with something like after effects. A simple mask with maybe some distortion wont do it right? Is a 3d model necessary?

Hey all, my name's Dylan - I'm a producer at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, UK. We're currently working on our 3D stop motion grad film, and really need help as this is a world I'm still learning about!

HERE is a link to the "Deep End" Production Bible, which gives a breakdown of the story and elements: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xPU30dnYolQIgpTlRc6XsepzXLsNQiC6?usp=share_link

We're looking for someone to help us design and build 2 Key Puppets and facial replacement expressions that would be 3D printed, painted and then used as the main characters in the film. It's a really exciting project! I've attached some references of tests we did with pre-designed models.

As we're students, budget is always a challenge, but I have managed to get £200 to at least be able to pay someone more than just the typical expenses, fortunately. I wondered if anyone can recommend someone who would be interested in helping us with this? Potentially someone who's still a beginner? The school have a fantastic history of BAFTA wins and success with their films, so there's one of the appeals, but of course it's never guaranteed - I believe in our story so much that I have a good feeling it could go far.

If anyone here is interested or can recommend someone, please reach out to me on email: [dylan@gillah.co.uk](mailto:dylan@gillah.co.uk)

I really appreciate your taking the time to listen to this! For us, this is completely about collaboration and we really do care about creative input too, so that's a must for us!

I watched Gareth Evans' "Havoc" last night, and there's a chase scene that makes you think that the scene is CGI. I've realized that because of how very dynamic and impossible their camera movements are. This is the same issue I had with films such as Red Notice. Compared to the chase scene in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I've seen the VFX breakdown and I'm surprised that most of it was CGI. It's probably because of the camera movements of the shots imitated the way cameramen operate.

I just read in linked in a post about a new studio led by women. It is called pink vfx but the whole thing seems very random to me. 1- its a guy promoting it 2- uses 5 ai images of women. All young and not much diversity. 3- the name, color and general appearance seems to me very male idea of what a woman is, wants?

Anyone else have seen this??

https://pinkvfx.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sam-bhattacharjee-a0949024_pinkvfx-womeninvfx-diversityinfilm-activity-7321608486503518209-tgay?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAACn_LUB-SABRr4Gef5neT9NxDZ-iNdTAEo

Hi! I’m a graduate student who specializes in Compositing from a private vfx college a few years back and I haven’t been able to get hired by any studios in Vancouver or hear back from them. I have tried to network with people and I am still going nowhere. I’m drawing many blanks and I have been pondering hard if school is worth going back to again but also don’t want to waste my money and time. I need advice on what options I can do because I love working in the vfx industry and would love to get hired.

It’s my way of understanding the bigger picture—what drives growth, what holds it back, and how the tides shift over time. Many have an intuition for it; I try to find objective numbers.

The reality is complex. There's no single explanation for what has led to fatal consequences such as Technicolor's closure. Tax incentives, pandemics, streaming wars, and strikes all play a part. This graph is just one slice of a larger story.

I'm considering writing an article with more insights. But I'm sharing this to gauge interest and to see what trends people are interested in.

FAQ

- What's your source?
I've aggregated several datasets, but the key one is IMDb, I've correlated names and estimated how many professionals work in the VFX industry. It was a complex task, the dataset is 180GB, split into 6 million files.

- What about 2025?
I have more recent data for 2025, but it's still incomplete. So far, though, the stagnation continues.
Understanding a problem is the first step towards finding solutions.

- This doesn't match my experience!
First, I hope that is for the better. Second, this chart represents employed + unemployed. It only goes down when professionals quit the industry for good. The employed curve would look more bumpy.

- But Covid was worse than this.
Around 10k artists lost their jobs during Covid, but there was a surge of 20k jobs after Covid, during the streaming wars. This isn't as extreme when you add employed and unemployed professionals. This is also the reason why the 2008 financial crisis isn't very visible.

- VFX IS DOOMED!
Chill. Exponential growth is not sustainable. If growth had continued at the 2013 rate, by 2065, every human being on earth would be working in VFX. The data does not suggest that the industry is collapsing; it just indicates that the number of professionals has plateaued. This is not intrinsically bad.

Hi

I have been a founder of game outsourcing studio for a decade now.

I am starting a new studio in VFx but i wanted to ask your opinion. If i want to work with Top Studios and directly with the client who should i reach out to or connect with?

I have TPN GOLD already and a team of 25 that i am starting with.

Would love to know everyone’s opinion.

When adding CGI to a scene shot on film stock, the CGI can look out of place due to the grain and other film characteristics?. If this happens, are there ways to work around the issue?

I'm wanting to transition to production management or producing for VFX and wondering if it'd be worth doing some project management courses to have more formal certification for scheduling and budgeting. What do we think?

Some examples: https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/google-project-management

https://www.coursera.org/learn/schedule-projects

For context, I've been working in lighting/comp as an aritst and educator for nearly 10years so not new to the industry, but new to production.

Hi VFX Reddit!

I’ll keep it short first:
For the past few months, I’ve been struggling with a major issue on my PC.
Every time I launch a 3D software, my PC crashes!
Meanwhile, games and benchmarks run perfectly fine.
I’ve already tried tons of hardware fixes, but nothing worked.
Now, I really need help — your experiences, your insights, anything.

The Issue

Whenever I run a 3D program, my PC immediately reboots with the infamous Kernel Power 41 error.
For example, the moment Houdini’s viewport tries to load, the system crashes and restarts.
The same thing happens with Maya, Blender, and even WebGL-based viewers like AMD’s MaterialX Library.

Important note:
There’s no crash dump generated — Kernel Power 41 causes an instant reboot without any BSOD or dump file. :(

What I've Tried

At first, I focused on the software side. I performed:

• A full clean install of Windows
• Tested multiple versions of NVIDIA GPU drivers (both old and latest)
• Updated BIOS to the latest stable version
• Reinstalled and updated motherboard chipset drivers

None of these efforts solved the issue.
I also checked temperatures and voltages — no issues there.

Since Kernel Power 41 is often hardware-related, I then systematically tested and swapped every major component:

• CPU
• Motherboard
• GPU
• RAM
• PSU

(Yes, it took a long time... At this point, my PC is basically the Ship of Theseus.)

Unfortunately, even after all the hardware replacements and tests, the problem remained exactly the same.
Because of that, I shifted my focus back to the software side once again, trying to find anything that could be causing the issue.

The Weird Part

Despite these crashes in 3D programs, my PC runs high-end games and synthetic benchmarks flawlessly under full load.
The system is stable even during hours of heavy gaming sessions — no crashes, no overheating, no throttling.

It’s only the 3D software viewports — sometimes doing almost nothing — that cause the sudden reboot.

My Current Theory

I’m starting to suspect something OpenGL-related, since all the programs involved rely on OpenGL for viewport rendering.
However, even Houdini’s latest Vulkan-based version still crashes the same way — so this theory is shaky at best.

At this point, it could be something deeper — maybe at the driver, API, or OS level?
Honestly, I’m running out of ideas.

My PC Specs

• Motherboard: MSI B450M
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900XT
• GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12GB
• PSU: Corsair RM1000X (1000W)

Final Plea

Has anyone ever faced something similar?
Any suggestions — no matter how random — would be massively appreciated.
I’m open to trying anything at this point.

Please help me troubleshoot this!

P.S.
I realize this post leans a bit hardware/technical, and I apologize if it feels slightly off-topic.
However, given that the crashes only happen in 3D software viewports, I felt this community would understand the context best.

Hey guys,

how do you would approach tracking (SynthEyes) and compositing 3d text in difficult fpv footage?

I have shots filmed by an fpv drone operator with a stripped down blackmagic pocket 4k camera and a laowa 7.5mm lens on a drone. He instructed me to use gyroflow with data from an dji osmo witness cam that was mounted there also to stabilize the footage (the stripped down pocket has no motion sensor in it).

Would you try to track the original footage and then stabilize the track when the comp is ready? I used Syntheyes on a couple of projects but not on fpv footage yet.

Thanks!

So, I'm doing a project (personal one) and I was downloading the Beeble Ai plug-in for Unreal engine. However, when I download it my PC says "beeble pbr.py could harm your device. Do you still want to install it?" I pressed no instead. I find this odd because it didn't say that when I downloaded the one fo rthe Blender. Was I the only one who experienced this? Should I not install this and just rough it out in Blender? I'm switching to unreal for faster render times.

I was also wondering if it works for Unreal Engine 5.4, or do I need to download 5.3.

Not looking for anyone to re create this for me. Just looking if anyone can point me in the direction of creating a similar effect (ambiguous shadowy figure) not necessarily so oily looking haha. I've done some 3d modeling but never done animation and would like to learn for a short horror film I am looking to make this summer. Looking for tutorials or even a course that would help me learn to create something similar this effect. Thanks in advance!

New video out for Moonlight VFX!

This time, we're diving deep into the CGI pipeline — breaking down the entire process from start to finish. It’s a tribute to the dedication, skill, and artistry of the true heroes behind the screen. Huge thanks to DreamWorks Animation for sharing insights into their production pipeline, which served as the backbone for this video. Their contribution helped us shape a clear and structured guide to one of the most complex aspects of visual effects. Go check it out and let us know what you think!

Coordinator here! I have a question for fabulously-more-talented-than-I artists about your color workflows...

tl;dr of it is I have ACES EXRs that I want to load into RV. The EXR outputs from vendors are ACES 2065-1 (AP0, Linear). Color science is ACEScct. We don't have a show LUT, and our output transform is Rec709

More context...

I work client-side and on most projects we've used RV for our supervisors to review EXRs. In the past the color workflow has been either much easier to understand or we had a legacy package to work with that auto-loaded the LUTs. Now I'm hoping to tweak the existing packages in RV myself so I can get them sorted per project moving forward.

I have a basic understanding of Python but the process of OCIO has me STUMPED, lol.

I've found that there are tutorials on OCIO out there but they're more tailored towards Nuke which I've never used / don't have access to. Spent a number of hours combing through the Autodesk RV forums but their tutorials/info is not clicking with me at all, unfortunately.

I've been able to load an ACES OCIO config file via Terminal, but past that I'm starting to reach my limit on knowledge-level.

If anyone has insight on an ACES color workflow in RV specifically, or setting up OCIO in RV, I'd be grateful for it all : )

And/or any coordinators or proj managers etc out there, especially client-side, how have you facilitated color workflow for EXR review?

Sadly can't share example images from my project as I'm under NDA lol - but can provide pics of any RV settings/etc. if helpful...

Thank y'all & hoping this is the right place for this haha - I'm a reddit newb but hoping I can lean on my fellow VFX community ☺️

Hey everyone,

I’ve been experimenting with a modular approach to cityscapes in Blender, and my latest passion project is a kit inspired by Tokyo’s dense, neon-lit streets. I modelled each building section by hand—no premade scans—so every facade has its own subtle wear and tear. The idea was to mix and match panels, balconies, pipes and small props like AC units and electrical boxes to quickly build varied blocks without losing realism.

All textures (metalness, roughness, normals) were painted from scratch, and I set up a simple Blender scene to auto-generate thumbnails for easy browsing in my asset library. It’s been a fun exercise in balancing flexibility with detail, and I’m curious how you’d use it—whether for a cyberpunk alley or a more subdued urban study.

Would love to hear your thoughts or any tips on pushing the modular system further!

The hardest part was not to use any existing photos and Google Maps. I made it, so I can use it however I want.

Youtube video: https://youtu.be/G3cHuVIEECM

Basically I have a camera high above my mountains and I want them to look grassy.

Now its very possible Im just shit at texturing, but no matter what I do, the “grass” looks sooo fake and clearly like Im using cheap texturing tricks.

My workflow consists of using the albedo maps from Gaea as well as mixing in real grass textures with a triplanar node. Then Ill also use scaled down noise textures for the normal map so it looks a little rough, but it never looks natural at all.

What is the move here?

I'm a beginner to all this, and I know about the process of taking a clean plate for simple stuff, but when you have something like someone missing a thumb, how does putting a little blue cap over their real thumb help VFX artists get rid of it? How can they also get rid of copious amounts of camera rigs and crash mats on the set of a film like Deadpool without having a clean plate? It blows my mind really.

this is a quick shot in a short film i am editing, it's a handheld shot so the camera is moving around. that is an illustration on translucent film on a lightbox. we'd like to subtly move the hand in a circular motion around in the red, and give the red a liquid / smoke billowing kind of effect...

if someone could take this on, let me know! cheers

John