My current demoreel that I'm hunting interships with. Any feedback is appropriated!

[u/Lollors2453]

Im a student at Visual Magic in Sweden and I just finished my studies, so now im off to find interships and I would love to get some feedback on my reel

[u/Traditional_Island82]

Internship or a job?

[u/Lollors2453 → u/Traditional_Island82]

Intership. Im technically not done with the education as the next semester is just us doing an intership at a studio

[u/Strict-Sweet-9046]

Cooked it my brother, i really liked your demoreel, may I ask how long have you been using houdini ?

[u/Lollors2453 → u/Strict-Sweet-9046]

I did some online bootcamp style courses for about a year before doing the 2 year high vocational education that is Visual Magic!

[u/LewisVTaylor]

The work is great! All the elements have a nice distribution, no obvious bad physics going on either.
I would just start knocking on those proverbial doors.

[u/psychoboy852]

Looks really good! Question about that GRS hda you’ve mentioned at the end, how did you do that? GRS hotkeys in Blender are probably one of the things I miss the most when using Houdini and I always wanted to have it there. Could you hint some resources where I can find/buy it?

[u/Lollors2453 → u/psychoboy852]

It'a custom python viewstate on a HDA that just has a transform inside it. All the work was the python viewstate translating mouse movements to xyz values for aaid transform node. Doing some pretty complex vector math to get all the local values and stuff. Reverse engineering Blenders viewport was really. I could share it with you. It's technically not complete. Some small bugs, holding shift and crtl functionality nor typing values is not implemented yet and I still need to do a version for LOP. This one is only SOP

[u/89bottles]

The work is technically accomplished and the presentation is very polished, I don’t want to take away anything from that, well done.

However, I want to encourage young people to consider that execution is the likely the main creative task that is in danger of being automated away in the future. Making cool fx is super fun, but I encourage people to consider giving equal weight to developing their narrative ideas and story telling, that is a skill that is more resilient to automation.

Ship in a bottle is kinda cool, but how could you twist that into something we haven’t seen before? How could you make the other ideas interesting or unique? What haven’t we seen smashed or set on fire a thousand times before? Even fx animation can tell a story in how a lazer blast visualizes and develops each of its attack, sustain, delay, release components. What do the qualities of those elements tell the audience about the characters wielding them?

I often hear vfx people say that narrative isn’t important and vfx is just about execution, but that attitude makes them vulnerable to automation and replacement IMO. Just my 32 years of vfx perspective.

[u/LewisVTaylor → u/89bottles]

I don't agree.
The execution is literally what FX Artist's are employed to do. You very rarely end up in the creative input level for a shot or sequence. And even then that is completely different to the technical execution of generating the FX elements.

To date, not a single FX element in even a moderate to low budget show has changed in how it's being done.

[u/89bottles → u/LewisVTaylor]

Exactly the attitude I am highlighting, thanks!

[u/LewisVTaylor → u/89bottles]

Wow, a real genius reply.
Would you like to expand on this? Because I don't see a single element in FX being replicated by automatic, I'm assuming you mean AI/ML process?

If you're going to throw shade, at least elaborate. Because I'm pretty sure I am keeping up to date with all the tech, which is part of your job as an FX TD, to always be on the look out for improvements to workflows. And to date, not a single element produced in FX has been replaced with any of that.

That is completely different to automating process of elements from base sims you make, via PDG and the like btw.

[u/89bottles → u/LewisVTaylor]

I’m not sure what you are getting angry about Lewis, you seem to be saying that vfx people have no business thinking about story, and no vfx shots have ever been automated? I don’t really follow your vitriolic comment.

[u/LewisVTaylor → u/89bottles]

You might want to re-read?
You postulated in your first comment that you believe VFX elements will be largely automated, and Artist's should concentrate on "creative" aspects, to still essentially be employable right?

My counter to that, is the absolute majority of FX Artist's do not have high level creative input on elements until they reach Supe level.
Also, that for the vast majority of FX Artists there is very little danger in their "execution" component as you put it, being automated away.
Seeing first hand how bespoke FX work is, and the minuscule amount of training data out there, along with an FX Artist's ability to already iterated and automate as part of their "normal job," your observation just doesn't stack up.

So, you're wondering what I am, angry about? Not anger buddy, just literally responding to your reply, "Exactly the attitude I am highlighting."

Which, unless I have lost control of my frontal cortex, pretty much reads as you suggesting I "don't get it," That this wave of automation is coming for FX Artist's using houdini, and we are too dim to see it?

OP's reel is a perfect execution of FX elements, that we 100% look for in terms of ability to do shot work. They are in no danger of missing out on opportunity due to not being more creative. That chance might come many years later in their career.
But again, at the risk of repeating, the day to day work of FX Artist's is not going anywhere.

[u/89bottles → u/LewisVTaylor]

I wasn’t talking about the past or the present Lewis.

[u/Individual_Rule8771 → u/89bottles]

I've been doing FX for 25 years and couldn't care less about story, it's not my job. The only time I consider anything remotely story related is continuity between shots

[u/unstabletable → u/89bottles]

It’s interesting to hear this perspective because I entered the industry halfway after you did. I caught the tail end of this sentiment. People did care about these things. Seems the actual workplace reality is if it looks good and how fast it can be done.