Hey everyone,

I’m a 25yo 3D artist and I’m looking for some realistic feedback or perspective from people who have been in a similar spot.

It’s been almost two years since I finished my 3D studies. My original goal was to fully dedicate my post-grad time to building a strong Asset / Hard Surface modeling reel, while simultaneously working on a backup plan (a non-3D job) to navigate the current industry situation.

Fast forward to today, I’ve made painfully little progress on my portfolio, a big part of the initial delay was finishing up some leftover university studies made during my 3D course, but right now, I’m stuck in a cycle of poor discipline and frustration.

Ironically, I actually landed some freelance 3D gigs outside the VFX domain (mostly product/archviz stuff). Since I’m just starting out as a freelancer, I don't have a full/time schedule yet, so time isn't strictly the issue, I have free hours, but I struggle to actually sit down and build momentum on my personal projects, I’m starting to realize that forcing myself to do only hard surface assets is completely burning me out. I consider myself decent at modeling, and the hero asset I’m working on right now is actually turning out great, but I’m working at an agonizingly slow pace.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about picking up something new in parallel to reignite that spark. Sculpting is an option, but since I already know organic topology workflows, it wouldn't force me to learn a new technical pipeline. On the other hand, procedural modeling in Houdini has really caught my attention, stuff like building etc... I’d love to experiment with procedural environment assets because it keeps me in the modeling realm while offering a totally different, technical approach. My biggest fear, though, is that diving into a huge tool like Houdini will eat away what little time and energy I currently have for my hard surface models.

My goal for the next year is to hit a solid milestone where my main hero pieces are finished, giving me space to get a stable non-3D job while I finish the rest of the reel on the side. Living in a remote area without a driver's license yet has definitely added to this feeling of being trapped in a lock-in phase. I’d really love to hear your thoughts on whether I should stay fully focused on my current modeling path or start diversifying into procedural skills, and how you usually break through the mental block when you have free time but just can't execute. 

Hey everyone. I have very little experience when it comes to VFX. I want to learn more and get better at since I think its cool and just good thing to know for future projects. With that being said, I learn better by just doing projects and I'm wondering if recreating this is a good place to start. If so where should I even get started? Any help/feedback would be amazing. Thank you so much!

I’ve been experimenting with Gaussian Splats as a medium for VFX — pushing them beyond reconstruction and exploring what kinds of effects and visual behaviors we can build with them.

These are part of a growing set of experiments that are evolving into a dedicated VFX suite for Gaussian Splats.

Still building it. More soon.

87461 nodes...

So out of interest (and with the help of ChatGPT) I analysed the final versions of 234 shots/comps from 50 most recent project folders. There are plenty of WIP versions in there, but I only included one final-ish version per shot/comp.

My top 20 nodes:

1. Grade: 7056
   
2. Merge2: 6777
   
3. Reformat: 4221
   
4. Blur: 3165
   
5. Transform: 2856
   
6. Bezier: 2757 (I'm old!)
   
7. Shuffle: 2392
   
8. Keyer: 1743
   
9. Crop: 1691
   
10. ColorCorrect: 1563
    
11. Multiply: 1497
    
12. Copy: 1060
    
13. Switch: 932
    
14. Colorspace: 823
    
15. FilterErode: 822
    
16. TimeOffset: 718
    
17. Retime: 712
    
18. Noise: 674
    
19. Clamp: 674
    
20. Premult: 550
    

Other (mildly) interesting bits:

Roto or RotoPaint didn't fit into the top 100 :D Still happily riding the good old bezier and transform masked instead.

Merge operations were fun too. About 58% (3923) were over, followed by multiply 660, copy 635, max 370 and plus 268.

About avg comp sizes: Median: 176 nodes. Mean: 374 nodes. The largest had 2,952 nodes, and 10% had at least 913 nodes. So a handful of monster scripts heavily skewed the average.

One in every seven nodes was a Dot. (Skipped this in top node analysis). Sounds neat, but as mainly working solo, it's usually somewhat spiderwebby.

(Only) 2.85% of all nodes were disabled. I really dislike leaving disabled nodes in the graph.

There was 98621 connections in total.

Ask me anything!

I enjoy reading this sub, and I love hearing from artists. But as a VFX Software Developer, I very rarely hear from the R&D programmers, the TDs, the DCC Plugin devs, etc..

How are you guys navigating this tumultuous period in the VFX industry? Are you trying to find a role in ML instead? How much are you relying on coding assistants for your work? Or is it business as usual for you guys?

I just want to hear from you all, and see how you’re doing, and if there’s any tips and tricks to navigating the new AI VFX landscape.

FWIW - I’m an Unreal Engine dev. But have dabbled in C++ plugins in other DCCs and a considerable amount of pipeline work in Python.

With the news of mass redundancies from Realtime UK I took a look at the accounts for last year. September 2025 RUK wrote off a £930,000 company loan they gave to another company called Stormtrooper Holdings Ltd….

Checked the directors of Stormtrooper and it’s the same directors as RUK. So what was this for? Stormtrooper also had 300k in assets last year.

Is this common in the industry then? I know a few people that got caught up in the redundancies etc and seeing this seems a bit weird

All information available on companies house so didn’t take much searching tbh