
🎨 3D Rendering & VFX · Data Flow
How assets move through a 3D animation or VFX pipeline: modelling, texturing, rigging, animation, lighting, rendering and compositing, with review in between.
Drawing diagram…
Data flow for a 3D production pipeline: concept art goes to modelling, models go to texturing and rigging, rigged characters go to animation, animated scenes go to lighting, lit scenes are rendered into passes (beauty, shadows, reflections), passes are composited into the final shot. Every department publishes versions to an asset management system (ShotGrid) and supervisors review them in dailies; notes flow back to the department.
flowchart LR CA[Concept Art] -->|Designs| MOD[Modelling] MOD -->|Meshes| TEX[Texturing] MOD -->|Meshes| RIG[Rigging] RIG -->|Rigged characters| ANI[Animation] TEX -->|Materials| LGT[Lighting] ANI -->|Animated scenes| LGT LGT -->|Lit scenes| RND[Rendering] RND -->|Render passes| CMP[Compositing] CMP -->|Final frames| OUT[Final Shot] MOD -->|Published versions| AM[(Asset Manager - ShotGrid)] ANI -->|Published versions| AM CMP -->|Published versions| AM AM -->|Versions for review| REV[Dailies Review] REV -->|Notes| ANI REV -->|Notes| LGT
Where each part of a cloud render farm runs: artists' workstations, the render queue manager, autoscaling GPU render nodes and shared storage.
A schema for managing 3D assets in a studio: projects, assets, versions, dependencies (textures, rigs), shots and reviews.
The states of a render job on a render farm: submitted, queued, rendering frame by frame, failures and retries, and completion.
How a VFX shot is reviewed: the artist submits a version, the supervisor reviews in dailies, the client approves, and notes flow back.
The studio systems that tie a VFX pipeline together: production tracking, asset management, render farm, storage and client review.
The steps a VFX shot goes through from plates to final delivery: matchmove, modelling, animation, FX, lighting and comp.