Why is VFX so Expensive? #vfx #digital #digitaleffect

This is a $1 effect. This is a $10 effect. And this is a $100 effect. And in this video, I'm gonna hire three different VFX artists at different price points to create the exact same effect. And let me tell you, I was not expecting these results. No way! $10? That's actually insane for this! Now the question is, what type of effect do we want them to make? Should it be an epic shot inspired by Star Wars or a Marvel movie? Or maybe something more simple, like some muscle flashes and dust impacts? While a simpler effect is probably more realistic for only $10, it's not as fun. So I'm gonna be fighting one of the biggest creatures known to cinema. Godzilla. I packed my gear and headed out to find a filming location. I know Godzilla is usually shown in cities, creating a big mess, but I've decided to shoot in nature to show Godzilla in a different environment. And it's definitely not because I'm just too embarrassed to film this in public. My wife Maria is per usual helping me film, and we made good progress on the eight shots that I need for this video. So I bought this, like, toy grenade because everything just feels a little bit more real when I can actually interact with it and throw it. It also has a cool pin that I can pull. After throwing a fake grenade too many times, it was time to get the drone ready. So I'm just googling how tall Godzilla is, so we can fly the drone to the exact same height for the shot where the grenade goes into his mouth. We then filmed the final shots we needed, and I started to feel bad for the VFX artist that I'm gonna hire, because this is gonna require some complex VFX. We have a problem. I can't afford to spend $10,000 on VFX, but I also don't wanna lie in the title. So I came up with a great idea. I'm gonna make the $10,000 VFX shot myself. I start by 3D tracking the plate, which gives me a virtual camera matching the one we shot the footage with. And after importing this camera to Houdini, I can place objects into my scene, and they will stick to the ground. My thinking is, if I spend 200 hours on this video, and value my time at $50 an hour, my VFX will be worth $10,000. The next step is creating a Godzilla model. But I'm not an expert at 3D modeling, so I like to find models online when I can. But I just could not find a high enough detailed model of Godzilla, until I found this post on Instagram. I messaged the creator, whose name was KingKong, which is kind of ironic, but KingKong kindly sent over the files. I import Godzilla and applied his textures, but notice the model didn't quite hold up when I zoomed in, so I used this displacement texture map to add even more details. And now, he looks great both from up close and far away. Time to figure out who I'm gonna pay to make the other versions. I'm gonna use Fiverr for this, but it was really hard to find a $10 option, cause most people will charge that for something as simple as a muscle flash. But then, I found Mr. Rivish. He had very budget-friendly prices, so I sent him the footage and a brief, and I'm just so curious to see how this video will turn out. $10? That's actually insane for this. I know, right? For the $100 option, I found this person, who seems to be quite good at simulations, so hopefully he can handle an explosion. I kind of forgot to mention that, but this video includes a fair bit of explosions. Lastly, for the $1,000 video, I found this guy who makes amazing VFX. I really didn't want to spend $1,000 on this, but in the name of science, it has to be done. While waiting for these guys to cook up some incredible VFX, I'm gonna keep working on mine. Using the camera track that I made earlier, I'm able to import Godzilla into the first shot. But we're missing a key thing. Animation. For this, we first need to rig Godzilla, which is done by adding a skeleton to the mesh and painting a weight map to tell the software how much deformation should occur as we move or rotate a joint. And sadly, I didn't learn animation since my last video, so I commissioned my friend RJ, who's an incredible animator for the rigging and animation of Godzilla. When the rig was done, I sent him some reference of what I need for the shot. He starts with animating the overall motion and then adds details like shaking and muscle jiggle to make Godzilla truly come to life, and he absolutely nailed this animation. Back in Houdini, I import the walk cycle that he also made and render out the test to see how it's looking. Not bad, but it's missing a lot. Let's add a shadow, blend in his feet with the grass, add some smoke puffs from his stomping, and lastly, maybe add some rain to make the shot feel even more epic. I start by creating some grass and add this to my render along with a shadow pass. I then isolate his feet, scatter a bunch of points onto them that I stick to the ground and shoot outwards every time he steps. I use the points as a source for a smoke simulation, which gives us exactly what I'm looking for. I found some rain assets online, add these to the shot, and make sure to place the far rain behind Godzilla and the close rain in front of Godzilla to create some depth. I color grade the shot darker, and it's done. Next, I called Maria over to come take a look. I need some feedback. What do you think? I mean, it's not done, right? She's right. This definitely needs some work. But why? Looking at Godzilla movies, I was able to quickly figure out why my shot looked so trash in comparison. I lacked contrast. The shots where Godzilla looks the best always have strong light contrast. It's why this shot from the Godzilla X-Kong movie doesn't really look that good. The lighting is just completely flat, which makes him look fake. Godzilla also looks best in the nighttime, where his glowing body gets to truly shine. So I'm gonna achieve both by turning my shot from day to night. But first, I think our $10 version is ready. Ravish messaged me that the video was done, and while I kinda wanted to wait and see all the videos back to back, I just have to see how this one looks. Wow. Honestly, I'm just super impressed someone did all of this animation, tracking, rendering, and compositing for such a low price. I have to admit, the final price was $35, as I chose his premium option, but still. The stomping he does, like he's a child that was told no to ice cream, is pure gold. And I like how massive the grenade is. It's obviously a little rough around the edges, but this is a great starting point, and it makes me super excited to see the $100 and $1,000 versions. Although, we'll save those until I'm done editing my video, so let's get back to turning our shot from day to night. The question is, how do we go from this to this? The movie Nope's nighttime scenes were entirely shot in the day and converted to night by replacing the sky and grading the footage. We can do the same for our shot by isolating the sky and replacing it with this nighttime sky. Let's darken the environment, but the top of the mountains still feel too bright, so let's darken them even more. And there we go. I add a light behind Godzilla to create some contrast, and do some color grading to make him blend in. To take this to the next level, we need some atmosphere and depth, because I still feel like we're closer to this shot than this one. So using these smoke assets, I create three layers. One for the background, one that I blend with Godzilla, and one in front of Godzilla. I also use this depth map to blend the fog into the mountain. My background sky video actually has lightning in it, and I use an awesome node that allows me to measure the brightness per frame, which means I can automatically brighten the ground, Godzilla, and fog as the lightning strikes. Lastly, I add back the rain, but I add even more layers, including this really windy one, and I make sure that the rain is lit up by the lightning as well. That's a bit better. To truly bring the shot to life, I'm gonna add some sounds of rain, lightning, and stomping that I find on Artlist. I time each footstep to the stomps, add thunder and rain sounds, and a bunch of stormy ambient sounds to make it feel real. Sounds are just way too underrated when it comes to making the effects feel real. You can't tell me that this is as epic as this. And my go-to spot to find these sound effects is Artlist. And what I love the most about Artlist is that their search bar works like magic. It's really hard to describe certain sounds, but somehow, Artlist always knows what I mean. And now, you can even search for music using Spotify or YouTube links, which is just the coolest feature ever. I've been waiting for this feature for so long, since nothing is better at describing music than music itself. And with everything covered under the Artlist license, you never have to worry about copyright claims. You might have heard of Google's new Nano Banana AI model, which is incredible at character consistency. Well, it's actually available on Artlist now. And it's super handy for doing touch-up on photos, creating clean plates for VFX, or fixing the shirt I forgot to iron. I wish I had this tool for my last video. As usual, you can use my link to get two months for free, and thank you to Artlist for supporting the channel. Okay, so we've completed one out of eight shots, and that was the easy shot. So let's do one of the hardest shots next. Let's blow some stuff up. More specifically, Godzilla himself. We can do this by importing our animation, and then use Houdini to create four particle explosions on the surface of Godzilla. We can then turn these particles into a volume, and use this as a source inside of an explosion simulation network. After a few hours of tweaking, we get this. We're missing one key thing, though. Interaction between Godzilla and the explosions. I want the explosion to wrap around Godzilla as he roars, and we can do that by adding his movement as velocity into the simulation, along with adding him as a collider. With some fine-tuning, we get this. Perfect. I create some trails for the explosions as well, because more layers and complexity always looks more realistic. In the shot prior to this one, I fire the missiles that create these explosions, so I add these missiles to this shot too, and simulate a smoke trail for them. Lastly, I hit render, which takes 24 hours, making this the slowest explosion in the world. Using Nuke, I start compositing, and luckily I can copy a lot from our first shot, which gives us a good start. I then bring in the explosion, color grade it, add glow, and finally make it light up Godzilla. The next step is to try replicating the epic charge-up that we see here. I have this glowing layer from the render, and I animate a mask to turn it on. I also isolate the edge of the mask, and make the glow extra strong at this point, so we get a leading edge for the glow. I integrate this with the rest of the footage, explosion, smoke layers, and rain, and finally add some glowing eyes, which gives us an effect that I'm super happy with. But you'll have to wait a little bit longer to see the final results, as it's time to tackle the hardest shot. I watched Superman the other day, and this kaiju fight is actually what inspired me to create this Godzilla video. The fight ends with the kaiju's insides being blown up, but it's a lame and unsatisfyingly small explosion. So I'm gonna fix that by also blowing up Godzilla from the inside, but have the explosion be like a hundred times stronger, so he explodes all over the place. To do this, I'm gonna use a new simulation method Houdini just launched called MPM, but since I've never used it before, it's tutorial time. Okay, let's give it a go. Nope. Definitely not. That's better. Let's convert this back to a mesh, and we have a great start. Next I create some blood, but as I'm not too familiar with the YouTube guidelines yet, I'm gonna color it green, and let's call it goop instead. I then grab a bunch of random guts and stuff them inside of Godzilla. As you might be able to tell, I failed biology. Anyways, let's blow these guts to pieces too. I of course also create an explosion and some more smoke sims to tie it all together. In Nuke, I import all of our renders, but then notice something horrible. This poor sheep gets completely crushed by Godzilla, and soon after his friends do too. But it's a sacrifice I am willing to make. At this point, the Nuke script is so big it takes me an hour to export, and after every export, I keep seeing small things I want to fix. But after a few days of struggling, it's finally ready. And you know what else is ready? The VFX we ordered. Okay, our $10, $100, and $1,000 shots are finally ready, and I need a break so I gathered Maria for an episode of Maria and Eriktas VFX Artist React. Okay, are you ready? Yeah, I'm so curious to see how these turn out. Oh, that's bad actually. I feel like it's really good for $10. Yeah, it's actually not that bad. We have a long slow ending, but it's not over yet. Look at the ending. And he comes falling down without a single scratch. Explosion just suddenly disappears. Yeah, yeah. So what do you think? $10? That's actually insane for this. I know, right? Some people would have taken at least $100. This must have taken at least a few days to put together for only $10. It was actually $35, but still, I think it's an incredible value, and he did a really amazing job. Yeah, definitely. What do you think so far? He's looking at you at least, this time. Oh, you got a new watch. Oh, it's glowing now. That's true. Yeah. It's a giant grenade. I actually like the explosion better in $10. Yeah. The head is calm. What's coming out of his head? I don't want to know. It looks like a sweater. He's using his own explosions. He's simulating this himself, which makes it kind of interact a little bit better. The explosion just stops. Oh, true. No, did it? It just freezes. Oh, yeah. It's completely frozen in the end there. It's not even moving. Overall, everything's looking a little bit more polished, and you can see there's more effort, so it definitely feels like a better video. The $1,000 versions, what are your expectations? I got high expectations, but it's a difficult shot to pull off, so I don't know what you're going to get for $1,000. $1,000 is a lot of money. I was very scared about spending this much money, so I was hoping for some good results. Let's have a look at what $1,000 gives us. Oh, that's an interesting model. Yeah. Oh, okay. That's cool. Oh, I like that. Oh. It doesn't match the background very well. He looks a bit flat. Yeah, I think so too. Oh. Okay, that's epic. It's quite cool. It looks quite brutal and realistic. You see the impact much better than the previous one. You actually see it exploding. But what do you think overall? I didn't like the model. It looked very fake. All the other ones looked fake too, but this one just looked more wide. Like a toy in a way. Yeah. The proportions are a little strange. It does look a little... Very thick ties. Right, and his face is a little like squished. I feel like you feel the impact a lot more here, like when the grenade hits, like the subtle, the small camera shake as they hit. Yes. And the white flashes. It's actually really cool. This is probably, yeah, like five days of work for $1,000, I'd say. That's impressive. That's a normal day rate. Which shot would you say has the most value, like most bang for the buck? Oh, definitely the first one. The $10 one. It's my favorite, actually. That's so funny. Yeah, no, me too. This was the first thing that came in and I was so excited because there's so much energy in the animation. I'm just excited to see the $10,000 result. No pressure. We'll see how it turns out, but yeah, give me a few more days and then we'll have a look at that. Or weeks. You're gonna nail it, definitely. I hope so. I still have more than half of my video left, so why don't we do a cool montage as I finish the rest of the shots. Okay, finally done. It ended up taking me forever to complete this video, but it's time for you to let me know if it's worthy of the $10,000 price tag. It's okay. Yeah.