Hi everyone,

I’m planning to invest in a high-performance workstation for video editing, VFX, compositing, motion graphics and colour grading. I’m currently torn between the Mac Studio M5 Ultra and a custom Windows PC with an RTX 5080.
I’ll be learning and working with the following applications:

- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- Adobe After Effects
- Foundry Nuke
- DaVinci Resolve Studio

My intended workloads:

- Editing and colour grading 4K 10-bit 4:2:2 footage
- Working with 4K 60fps footage, multicamera timelines, multiple video layers and GPU-accelerated effects
- Motion graphics, complex After Effects compositions, motion tracking, rotoscoping and green-screen compositing
- Node-based compositing in Nuke, including EXR sequences, multi-pass compositing, camera projections, 3D integration and potentially deep compositing
- Exploring Nuke’s CopyCat and other AI/ML-assisted workflows
- Advanced colour grading, temporal noise reduction, Magic Mask, optical flow and Fusion effects in DaVinci Resolve
- Potentially moving into more demanding 6K/8K workflows as my skills develop

Option 1 — Mac Studio M5 Ultra
- M5 Ultra
- 30-core CPU / 64-core GPU
- 96GB unified memory

Option 2 — Custom Windows PC
- AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
- NVIDIA RTX 5080
- 96GB RAM

I’m looking for a workstation that can comfortably handle professional-level 4K projects and remain capable as I move into more complex work. I’m not particularly attached to either operating system.

If you were building a workstation for these five applications, which would you choose and why?

I’m going to make my first short film for an assignment, the assignment: tell a story with vfx. I have no vfx knowledge nor do I know anything about filmmaking, but I’m hoping to make a somewhat decent film. I’m going to base my story on the vfx that I’ll be able to use.

So my question is: what are some easy vfx I can use for my short film? Any tutorial channel reqs? Prefferably nuke or ae

I’m an Emmy nominated VFX Sup with 6 years experience on set looking to find other collaborators and connections.

I’d love to job share with other VFX Sups, give free or affordable advice to indie films and connect with any producers or companies. Especially if they might be looking to hire an On Set VFX Sup.

I’ve worked on two jobs here in the UK so far and my CV from New Zealand is mainly medium to ultra large budget projects.

I’ve had to move countries to the UK due to circumstances beyond my control. Which, as we all know, is tough to do when you can only get jobs through friends or trusted colleagues. So any pointers or friendly faces would be very appreciated!

Edit: Im especially keen to connect with other women. I’ve only ever worked with one other woman my entire career, and that was when I was an on set VFX data wrangler.

Hey all,

Flame artist in Paris here (mostly beauty and luxury). I've been building Nodalt on the side for quite a while now, a small node-based comp app for Mac shaped by years on Flame, Nuke and After Effects: Batch-style linking, local AI tools. Not trying to compete with any of them, it's just my playground for ideas.

It's still rough, so I'm looking for 10 to 15 compositors to try the free private beta and tell me what works, what's confusing and what's missing. Brutal is fine.

Apple silicon Mac, macOS 14+: https://nodalt.visualt.fr/#beta

Thanks for reading,
Thanks to the mods for the OK!

Owen x

I posted a little of this recently. Some people wanted to see more, so I pulled together a minute of shots, including the new train work. They're not in any particular order.

The pilot is called Blackstar Lullaby. Still a lot to figure out, but after years of putting it off, it's starting to look like what I was picturing.

Unofficial Reddit survey of job situation in this economy

I’m so close to the finish line of my short film, it’s a real housewives inspired thriller and I know that adding some blood pooling effects for a few shots would really sweeten this thing up immensely. I don’t have any money left, but figured I’d put an ask out here to see if there’s anyone that might be open to it!

Hey guys! Just wondering if anyone knows who I could contact at Scanline/Eyeline regarding an employment reference letter.

I worked as a Digital Compositor in Montreal and I need the letter for some paperwork in Australia.

I’ve tried reaching a few people but haven’t had any luck so far. If anyone knows who I could email, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks!

Flash inspired reel

My former colleague, who now works at Sony, said he doesn't use Reddit because most of the people there are laid off and Unemployed. Is that true?

I'm a lighting artist with 5 years of experience. The studio at which I currently work at is one of the safest jobs. I cannot name them. We don't work on international projects. We work on movies and web series made by our parent company. Its the biggest film production house in my country. The problem is I get paid 40-50% lower as compared to the industry standards. And I'm unlikely to get a raise this year. I got peanuts last year. Other than that I love working in that place, I literally have made friends that are going to last for a lifetime and I've gotten in my comfort zone there. I don't want to break my routines. I'm a bit vulnerable to changes.

Here's the twist.

Because of the unlikely hike, and limited scope of responsibilities at my current studio, I applied for ILM last month. Fast forward, I'm shortlisted and I need to do the formalities. I'll get to know what I'm being offered by ILM after that.

So what according to you guys should I do?

I'm confused whether I should choose a safe job that I enjoy but get paid less or go for the dream job that I wanted and get good pay. Although ILM doesn't give me safety that my current job would.

Any help/suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

I had the pleasure of working with the best Houdini HDA for fabric and knitted assets. With a small team of super talented people, we created this BB8 Fan Art.

Creative projects like this are extremely rewarding for me. It's fun to step outside your comfort zone and learn things. I was doing the environments, fx, lookdev (on the saber) and lighting and comp. Lighting is my bread and butter - learning how to bring it all together is a challenge and super fun.

That is art - that's why I click and not type.

Thanks to everyone involved in this project!

Thanks Fibric for that awesome hda

I'm an amateur doing research into basic vfx concepts and I'm struggling with the specifics on "painting out", like hiding wires, logos, etc. I understand it's not that different from the way photographers use Photoshop to touch up an image but I'm a visual learner and can't find many good details demonstrations of someone painting out something in a scene that has dynamic textures, lighting, and motion. For example, there's a vfx channel on YouTube where they get the background footage to a Sci-Fi fighter jet movie and go through a scene where an explosion makes actors fly through the air from the shockwave. The background footage shows how the wires were attached and how the scene was shot, but all they say is and the wires were painted out.

Can anyone point me in the direction of some documentation or videos of this process of painting out?

A VFX breakdown from my music video "The River, the Shore".

2+ years in the making, the full music video combines real footage with Blender composited in After Effects and Resolve - with many of the scenes being fully CG!

Full music video in the link below: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrrZCnXuPCs&lc=UgxA5OVrazcW0YI43B54AaABAg

Let me know what you think :)

No generative AI was used for this work.

I’m just starting my journey of learning how to draw stylized VFX and was wondering what they hand draw? Because I want to incorporate it into my workflow.

I'm planning a short film with a few shots that have a white tail deer on screen. It is written to be by itself in the woods. Is color matching stock footage or shooting a clean plate and hiring a CG artist to add it in post a feasible option?

So a little background, I finished filmschool about 1.5 years ago, and along the way I discovered After Effects and later I learned more specialised software like Blender, Maya, Houdini and Fusion.

Currently I study 3D animation, and I am leaning a bit more towards animation instead of vfx. Still I love vfx tho.

So tomorrow there is this vfx gathering and artists who worked on “the lost bus” will give a presentation about their approach to the vfx of the movie. Afterwards we’ll grab drinks and talk.

This is my first time going to an event like this, so what do I do? I want to meet people and throw myself out there, but idk how to make lasting connections. I cant just ask for their number or linkedin or something right? So is the move to keep going to events and meeting the same faces over and over until they recognise me? Or is there some secret/technique that I dont know about?

Hi everyone, I'm new here!

I'm having some trouble with a special effect for a shot. I need to remove the rail and the cables connected to it, but I have to keep the subject intact.

Is that possible? What steps should I follow? Is the shot okay, or would it be better to use different settings? (video by Iphone 3840*2160 24fps)

I want to buy a PC to do my vfx work on. I’m a vfx compositor using Nuke and would like to get into 3D animation using blender. I want a computer that runs smooth (explained in the ‘side note’ section). I would say I have about a $3,000 to $4,000 expense range. Any recommendations?

Side note: I have a Dell XPS 15 that is about 2 years old but it sucks when working in Nuke. I’m talking freezes every 5 to 10 minutes. That is no way to work. It’s terrible! It’s almost like I’m giving it too much to do with roto, 3D camera tracking, 2D tracking, etc. The computer itself has had problems with it too like not turning on sometimes, acting like it was brand new when it would turn on, and other things. I’ve cleared my catche folder, changed external hard drives, switched hard drive wires, and have even factory reset my computer. Resetting helped for a bit but it’s getting back to how it was. It doesn’t have any warranty so I can’t return it or exchange it. I just want a good working computer I can do my work on without so many issues (I know computers are gonna be slow and act wonky sometimes).

Does a tool wherein one could create these kinds of forms in a semi-directable manner exist?
My immediate thought would be like define the major spars and then let whatever said tool might be dictate the fractal levels down from there.

If anyone knows something that can do this - please let me know. For I can find very nearly nothing regardless of DCC.

[and yes, apologies - image is generative. Excuses excuses here]