VFX Gear - what's in my visual effects kit
Thirteen years ago I stumbled upon Eric Alba’s VFX kit list. I obsessed over his Flickr page, wondering what purpose each item played, and one day vowed to have a kit of my own. As a young compositor, I collected gear and spent nights and weekends learning how the different CG disciplines relied on data capture from set to keep their promises. Match-movers, hard surface modelers, texture artists, animators, lighters, and compositors; all greatly benefit from visual effects supervisors being knowledgeable in each of the studio departments they represent. You cannot be an effective visual effects supervisor if you haven’t tried to track a featureless shiny concrete floor, or tried to get the bevel right of a street curb, or how time-consuming it is for compositors to build light and shadow plates when mixing practical and digital shadows. Data matters. It’s not the only thing that matters, but it’s part of this complete breakfast.
Here is a list of all the gear in my visual effects supervisor kit. Here’s what works for me this minute.
Here are a few big-picture thoughts and highlights.
Sticks
I’ve tried loads of tripods and the biggest challenge was finding something small enough to fit into a Pelican case, light enough to not be a chore to schlep, and strong enough to carry a mid-size DSLR or mirrorless with heavy L series Canon lenses, a small pano head, and a Camranger. I’ve been with the 3 Legged Thing ‘Leo’ for about 5 years now and for me, it’s the perfect option. It fits the bill and I’ll gladly buy another. The only thing I’d change is the color but I’m vain like that.
Pano head
Over the years I’ve experimented with all sorts of panoramic heads from Acratech, Manfrotto, Really Right Stuff, and Nodal Ninja. Each was a different spin on the same design and for the early days when I couldn’t afford a dedicated camera body for HDRs, the idea of needing to set up something so precisely so quickly on set was a non-starter. The 360 Precision Atome Rotator is by far the easiest and fastest way to start shooting an HDR. The dedicated ring mount has been on the lens for 10 years now. Built-in 120-degree detents and no moving parts mean it’s fool-proof. The lens can live on the sticks all day if you are a single camera body kinda gal. Just pull the body and cap the lens and off you go shooting textures or references or photobombing video village.
Chrome ball
Chrome balls, shiny balls, grey balls, gray balls, lighting checkers, vfx spheres…everybody calls them something different. I love my 25cm half shiny/half grey sphere from Akromatic. These are super high quality with carbon arms and 1/4 20 mounts for lots of mounting options. The trouble is, they are no longer in business. There are a few shops online that continue to sell shiny balls but I am hoping this is something I never have to pay for again. If you have experience with a different vendor, please drop me a line and let me know. Ya know, for science.
Camranger
Whilst the Ricoh Theta Z1 is certainly acceptable for a lot of CG pipelines and applications, I still prefer 7-13 exposures through a DSLR and Canon 8-15mm fisheye. My ancient Canon 6D which I am still nursing along after a decade of service leaves a lot to be desired with on-board exposure bracketing. The newer Canon R6 does allow for 7 exposures and 2.0ev - 3.0ev increments would get you all the latitude you’d need. However, a lot of my clients still prefer 13 exposures 1.0ev apart. For the last 10 years, I’ve been rocking a Promote Remote which has served me flawlessly. Trouble is, Promote is out of business. And there are a few USB cables involved for which I’ve never been able to find replacements. I’m always nervous when elements of my kit are irreplaceable in under 36 hours.
I’ve had my eye on Camranger for a few years now and took the plunge. I’m glad I did. The Camranger 2 has its own WiFi 6 network that allows remote operation of camera settings from 500 feet away via iOS, iPad, Mac, PC, and Android. Plus its built-in HDR bracketing programs, histograms and focus peaking means it’s a snap to check QC images as they are captured on a large iPad or laptop screen. The only things I wish were different are a more modern-looking interface and the non-standard batteries.
iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro M1 Max
The biggest evolutions for me personally have been Apple devices and the capacity and capability they’ve offered me and my clients on-set. iPhones and iPads with onboard lidar are an absolute must during scouts. Polycam is hard to beat for quick set surveys and proxy geo for layout and match move. Below is a sixty-second capture my client made for me in between takes. OBJ, FBX, and even Luma Labs AI export mean proxy geo and textures are accessible in Flame and Blender for quick mockups and planning. And fast. Sixty seconds to capture it and a couple of minutes processing on my phone in my pocket then Airdropped to my laptop and into Flame in under 5 minutes is borderline nutty.
The M1 Max screams through PTGui Pro HDR stitching. Stitching 39 CR2 files and outputting 8k 32bit EXRs is under a minute from start to finish. I’m not talking about rendering it, I’m talking about opening the application, selecting the 39 images, bashing through the three or four settings to test the stitch, and rendering it. Under sixty seconds. It takes longer to save to rename the pts file than it takes to make the HDR. Crazy times.
Last but not least, iPad Pro and ShotBot is a magical combination. ShotBot is an iPad app designed by Logik community member Todd Freese for visual effects supervisors to capture on-set data and metadata. It’s free to download and is an absolute go-to for me on set. It makes really nice reports and I love its Teradek integration where you can grab images straight off the VTR feed to populate your reports.
Polycam capture in between takes.