Blender has done a lot to open up access to 3D modelling, animation and VFX. The free open-source software has enabled a generation of young talent to hone their skills in a way that might never have been possible otherwise (see our guide to the best 3D modelling software).
One result of this has been the rise of Blender VFX breakdowns on social media, where users recreate effects from big budget productions, sometimes making it look almost easy. But a meme doing the rounds on Reddit has sparked a big debate about these.
If Blender's free, and a bedroom YouTuber can build the effect in a few hours, why did it cost so much to produce?
Maybe they should use Blender next time from r/vfx
The Reddit post above has already picked up 1.6K likes and over 200 comments. There are opinions coming from all sides. Some people suggest the reason Hollywood VFX is so expensive is due to procrastination and perfectionism from the client, leading to hours of re-dos on details many people may not see.
"The real reason these shots cost so much is because the director is pixel fucking the motion blur of a distant shadow on version 875 four months after the due date," one person suggests.
One pro suggests that people sometimes forget VFX artists work for someone else. "YouTubers and their audiences think that VFX artists 'fucked all kinds of shit up and made it stupid and wrong'. The reality is that we made exactly what the client wanted, because that's how we get paid. I'm making an M-4 fire rainbow unicorn fart muzzle flashes if that's what the client asks for, because that's how I get a pay cheque," they say.
But there may be something more fundamental at play. Recreations can give the impression that something is quick to achieve, and perhaps it is when you're reverse engineering it. But you need to have the idea in the first place.
In that sense, it's like modern art, one person suggests: you could have done that... but you didn't.
"Anytime I see 'we recreated X in one day', I always think. Yeah: IF you have an exact reference for exactly the end result requested AND there are no notes on the small differences between your result and the reference…then yes, you could pull some things off in a single day. It never works like that," one artist writes.
"Recreation is always faster," another comment agrees. "Think about that one time your software crashed and you had to rebuild the comp from scratch, and it took 10 minutes instead of 6 hours. The hard part was figuring out the process."
Others are pointing out that creating something for social media isn't the same as doing it for a cinema screen. "People seem to forget that shots made for large displays like IMAX need way more attention to detail," one person notes. "Let alone working with film scans, set scans, multiple cameras, humans treated like chatGPT for revisions and etc."
I'm hoping nobody really thinks VFX artists have an easy job or charge too much. That's very much not the case. Breaking down others' work and recreating effects can be a great way of learning and finding your way around software, but it can't be compared to creating the magic from scratch with a director breathing down your neck.
Meanwhile, Blender's increasingly being considered for professional productions – it was used to make the Oscar-winning animation Flow, for example. If you're getting started in the software yourself, you might want to check out our roundup of Blender tutorials.
