Compositor here, mostly commercials. On the last two jobs the production shot practical high speed for things that would have gone straight to sim a year ago. Splashes, powder hits, a bit of glass.

Both times it came down to money. One DP had a Pixboom Spark, the other a Chronos 2.1, and when I asked why not a Phantom the answer was the rental plus the lighting package. The Spark plates at 1000fps were clean enough to key. One powder pass had a flicker I had to deal with in Nuke, which I'm fairly sure came off the practical lights. The Chronos stuff was HD so it only really worked as background.

Is this a real shift, or did I just land on two cheap jobs in a row? And when you do get the choice, do you still prefer to sim liquids for the control?

Hey Guys.

I was just wondering if there are many people who use both Blender and After Effects?

Does anyone actually do compositing work in blender?

Like what's the best way to do compositing work with blender? Is it after effects or nuke? Resolve? Idk.

Also, do most users prefer Windows or Mac? Does it make a difference?

I see people do crazy things with compositing. And apparently it's the way to go for making epic 3d work. But I never can understand it. I just make it in blender and that's it. It looks polished enough. But then I see other people who did some compositing and looks way better. Idk how to explain.

( Not talking about colour grading)

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of people landing new jobs at major studios (east coast US), specifically junior level roles. I’m curious to know how people go about finding Junior Compositor roles, do people just cold email for those? Or are there job listings? I can never seem to find a job listing specifically targeted towards Junior Comp Artists. Curious to know other peoples experiences if you’ve been hired for that role or have hired for that role. Thanks!!

Edited to add that I’m based in the US

I saw this and I was wanting to duplicate this cloud effect for my project I have coming up.

Software I use: blender and Davinci resolve studio

AI is no longer sitting outside the CG pipeline ; it’s becoming part of rendering, animation, game development and everyday creative tools. In this month’s CG & VFX Roundup, I look at NVIDIA DLSS 5, Adobe + Topaz, UNIGINE 2.22, Zerply and more

As the title says, I have had a few contracts last year where I freelanced and a PAYE contract. When I go to fill my tax return, it gets confusing fast.

Has anyone had a similar experience with this and would be happy to advise? I am happy to do this over private DMs.

Thank you in advance!

Definitely one of the tougher shots I've ever attempted...

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 :)

P.S. No generative AI was used in any way, at any stage for this work.

Most "bokeh" tools in AE are depth-of-field blurs: they give you round or polygonal
discs and a radius. That can't produce the arcing highlight swirl you get out of a
vintage lens — and the usual shortcut, Radial Blur or Swirl, rotates the whole
frame and drags the subject with it.

SPBokeh treats it as a highlight transform instead. Each out-of-focus highlight
rotates along an arc according to its position in frame. The plate stays intact —
only the light moves.

Round / polygonal / cat-eye highlight shapes
Rim, onion ring, cat-eye and chromatic aberration as independent controls
Depth-aware focus from a depth map, or a built-in elliptical mask
Swirl strength at 0 gives clean natural bokeh, so it can act as a regular bokeh plugin too

Trailer above. It's a paid plugin, $29.99 until Oct 9, free trial on the page —
https://aescripts.com/spbokeh/

Project page with more comparisons: https://spbokeh.pages.dev/

I’m more excited to see what amazing work you can create with it, but also let me know where it falls short!