The Student Room Group

Visual Effects Advice

I love technology, and I am somewhat creative. I've got an interest in visual effects, I'd love to know what advice or tips there are to pursue this as a career. Also what paths are there to learn VFX without going to uni.
Hey - it depends on what your interests are in the industry. There’s a lot of roles within the pipeline you could go into, ranging from artistic to technical. Any ideas where you’re interested?
Reply 2
Original post by brian.insua
Hey - it depends on what your interests are in the industry. There’s a lot of roles within the pipeline you could go into, ranging from artistic to technical. Any ideas where you’re interested?

Hey, thanks for the reply, I'm more of a technical minded person since that's the best of my skillset. So I guess I'd want to go down more of that avenue, however if it's possible I would love to be amlble to implement my technical knowledge with being artistic.
Original post by Faz14
Hey, thanks for the reply, I'm more of a technical minded person since that's the best of my skillset. So I guess I'd want to go down more of that avenue, however if it's possible I would love to be amlble to implement my technical knowledge with being artistic.


Yeah no problem. That's good to hear and that's probably what you're going to end up doing. So I'll tell you a little bit about myself and where I'm at and then you can ask questions from there, seeing as VFX is a very broad topic XD

So I went to Bournemouth Uni to study Computer Visualisation and Animation, which is the half techie half artsy course that the uni offers. Covered a lot of the pipeline from pre-production to modelling to animating to rendering to coding. I'm aspiring to specialise in FX and I currently work at Industrial Light and Magic in London as a Technical Assistant.

From my experience, the degree was a good choice almost entirely because of the people I got to meet and learn from. Based on what I have seen, contacts are huge in this industry.

Also, SIGGRAPH is one of the best opportunities for talking to recruiters face to face and the talks are the best place to learn how people in industry think and how they do things and what they look for.

Do you know how the pipeline works and what each stage does?
Reply 4
Original post by brian.insua
Yeah no problem. That's good to hear and that's probably what you're going to end up doing. So I'll tell you a little bit about myself and where I'm at and then you can ask questions from there, seeing as VFX is a very broad topic XD

So I went to Bournemouth Uni to study Computer Visualisation and Animation, which is the half techie half artsy course that the uni offers. Covered a lot of the pipeline from pre-production to modelling to animating to rendering to coding. I'm aspiring to specialise in FX and I currently work at Industrial Light and Magic in London as a Technical Assistant.

From my experience, the degree was a good choice almost entirely because of the people I got to meet and learn from. Based on what I have seen, contacts are huge in this industry.

Also, SIGGRAPH is one of the best opportunities for talking to recruiters face to face and the talks are the best place to learn how people in industry think and how they do things and what they look for.

Do you know how the pipeline works and what each stage does?

Thank you for giving me quite a bit of insight about yourself, your the ideal person I was looking to talk to!

I have heard about the pipeline, but do not have any real intel on it, so it would be awesome if you could tell me more about that and about each stage?

Also I would love more insight into what you do daily as a Technical Assistant and what kind of work you partake in?

Just a little about me, I'm currently a student in my second year of college, I do BTEC IT, we've done a bit of animation and a lot of coding, I can pick up things really easily but I'm more prominent with coding than anything else but I do enjoy the visual front too.

After college, I'm hoping to possibly do a degree apprentiship in Software Engineering, if not that go full time to uni and do a more multimedia or visual effects oriented course.

Do you think if I was to do a degree specialising at software engineering, that I would still be able to have a place within the Visual Effects Industry if I chose to go towards that path in the future?

Thank you for responding, sorry for the late reply, been a little busy, but I hope you can give me some feedback on my questions, and it's just great to finally get to gather a response for someone who works firsthand in the industry. I'll be sure to check out SIGGRAPH too. :smile:
Original post by Faz14
Thank you for giving me quite a bit of insight about yourself, your the ideal person I was looking to talk to!

I have heard about the pipeline, but do not have any real intel on it, so it would be awesome if you could tell me more about that and about each stage?

Also I would love more insight into what you do daily as a Technical Assistant and what kind of work you partake in?

Just a little about me, I'm currently a student in my second year of college, I do BTEC IT, we've done a bit of animation and a lot of coding, I can pick up things really easily but I'm more prominent with coding than anything else but I do enjoy the visual front too.

After college, I'm hoping to possibly do a degree apprentiship in Software Engineering, if not that go full time to uni and do a more multimedia or visual effects oriented course.

Do you think if I was to do a degree specialising at software engineering, that I would still be able to have a place within the Visual Effects Industry if I chose to go towards that path in the future?

Thank you for responding, sorry for the late reply, been a little busy, but I hope you can give me some feedback on my questions, and it's just great to finally get to gather a response for someone who works firsthand in the industry. I'll be sure to check out SIGGRAPH too. :smile:

Hey! Sorry, been a bit busy these past few weeks. I'm glad you find my insight useful. I feel like when I was deciding what to do, there wasn't really much content or info out there - at least not as much as I expected so hopefully that changes XD

So for the pipeline, I would recommend a book called The VES Handbook of Visual Effects. Now this book has over a thousand pages and to be totally honest, I haven't read most of it XD But, there is a lot of really good information in this book, particularly the final third of the book - it goes into a lot of detail on pipeline and how everything works. If, like me, you consume media better visually, then Pixar in a Box is great: https://youtu.be/3Iu1Z0h1i1Y DreamWorks also has a cool video on their pipeline: https://youtu.be/ru0tQRJ4qKs but I highly recommend picking up the book. It'll be worth every penny.

The two career path options you mentioned are both viable - there are jobs that you can get in VFX from both those avenues. I guess it depends more on the skills you can bring to the table, how teachable you are and what its like to work with you. So whichever you choose, as long as you can provide a portfolio of work that a.) is catered towards what you enjoy and what you would like to do (i.e. you mentioned you like programming - so try writing your own basic renderer or particle simulation) b.) demonstrates your ability to work in a team (tldr, you can collaborate or lead and that you are not an a***hole). Additionally, you can look at VFX and Animation studios and look for runner positions (I know ILM give their runners training on roles they want to move into) or apprenticeship/internship schemes. As long as you have (or are working towards) a body of work that demonstrates what you can do in the area you want to go into, you'll have a chance!

The 3 programs I would check out are Autodesk Maya, SideFX Houdini and Foundry's Nuke. All offer free non-commercial/student versions of their softwares. If programming is your thing, you could write tools for those with Python (industry heavily uses Python and also C/C++) but I would look up tutorials and just try taking something through the pipeline and seeing what you like best (i.e. model something then shade it then animate it then blow it up then light it then comp it all together - or something along those lines).

It also helps knowing people, which is why I highly suggest volunteering at SIGGRAPH. It's costly but you won't get any better exposure anywhere else as a student. You'll have to volunteer for about 25 hours throughout the conference but they organise special SV sessions and the talks are top notch and you'll bump into people responsible for the biggest films in the world. I've volunteered twice already and I would do it another time if I could!

As for what I do on a day to day basis, we basically sit in between production, tech and the artists. We look after the renderfarm, help the artists and production with any issues they have - esentially handling the data that goes in and out of ILM.

Hope that helps :smile:
Reply 6
Original post by brian.insua
Hey! Sorry, been a bit busy these past few weeks. I'm glad you find my insight useful. I feel like when I was deciding what to do, there wasn't really much content or info out there - at least not as much as I expected so hopefully that changes XD

So for the pipeline, I would recommend a book called The VES Handbook of Visual Effects. Now this book has over a thousand pages and to be totally honest, I haven't read most of it XD But, there is a lot of really good information in this book, particularly the final third of the book - it goes into a lot of detail on pipeline and how everything works. If, like me, you consume media better visually, then Pixar in a Box is great: https://youtu.be/3Iu1Z0h1i1Y DreamWorks also has a cool video on their pipeline: https://youtu.be/ru0tQRJ4qKs but I highly recommend picking up the book. It'll be worth every penny.

The two career path options you mentioned are both viable - there are jobs that you can get in VFX from both those avenues. I guess it depends more on the skills you can bring to the table, how teachable you are and what its like to work with you. So whichever you choose, as long as you can provide a portfolio of work that a.) is catered towards what you enjoy and what you would like to do (i.e. you mentioned you like programming - so try writing your own basic renderer or particle simulation) b.) demonstrates your ability to work in a team (tldr, you can collaborate or lead and that you are not an a***hole). Additionally, you can look at VFX and Animation studios and look for runner positions (I know ILM give their runners training on roles they want to move into) or apprenticeship/internship schemes. As long as you have (or are working towards) a body of work that demonstrates what you can do in the area you want to go into, you'll have a chance!

The 3 programs I would check out are Autodesk Maya, SideFX Houdini and Foundry's Nuke. All offer free non-commercial/student versions of their softwares. If programming is your thing, you could write tools for those with Python (industry heavily uses Python and also C/C++) but I would look up tutorials and just try taking something through the pipeline and seeing what you like best (i.e. model something then shade it then animate it then blow it up then light it then comp it all together - or something along those lines).

It also helps knowing people, which is why I highly suggest volunteering at SIGGRAPH. It's costly but you won't get any better exposure anywhere else as a student. You'll have to volunteer for about 25 hours throughout the conference but they organise special SV sessions and the talks are top notch and you'll bump into people responsible for the biggest films in the world. I've volunteered twice already and I would do it another time if I could!

As for what I do on a day to day basis, we basically sit in between production, tech and the artists. We look after the renderfarm, help the artists and production with any issues they have - esentially handling the data that goes in and out of ILM.

Hope that helps :smile:

Thank you so much for replying, you seemed to have answered all my questions and given me a lot more insight than I had before.

All the information is super useful, I seriously couldn't ask for more, so I'll be sure to look for that book, SIGGRAPH, dive into those software's and try to use by strengths to see if VFX is the industry for me to go into and create that portfolio.

Thank you for giving me such in depth knowledge it's helped a lot and I don't there's anything else I need to ask about!! Thanks for the help. :smile:
Original post by Faz14
Thank you so much for replying, you seemed to have answered all my questions and given me a lot more insight than I had before.

All the information is super useful, I seriously couldn't ask for more, so I'll be sure to look for that book, SIGGRAPH, dive into those software's and try to use by strengths to see if VFX is the industry for me to go into and create that portfolio.

Thank you for giving me such in depth knowledge it's helped a lot and I don't there's anything else I need to ask about!! Thanks for the help. :smile:

No worries :smile: Good luck!
Go at it alone. Learn the programs. Showcase your portfolio. AI and sensors are the future.

Best of luck!
Just to add to this, BlueZoo have an apprenticeship that might be worth looking at:

https://www.blue-zoo.co.uk/feed/Animation-Assistant-TD-Apprenticeship/
Go learn it now, pirate the software and get a head up on everyone else :biggrin:

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