Stefan Ihringer

VFX technical director and admin, working with Python, Nuke and Linux

#zuzai

blog: https://www.comp-fu.com/
imdb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2435231/
working @: https://www.bighugfx.com/

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Last Notes

2026-07-13 19:03:09 GMT

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Ah, yes, I didn't think about the drag. So even if you could float them and control their position sufficiently well, they wouldn't generate much power without putting too much pull force on the cable?
I think I've seen spinning kites and I've found this German company: https://www.kitekraft.de
They use multiple small rotors that fly the thing and also generate power. Didn't see any numbers though (how long does it work to offset the energy it needed to launch)

2026-07-13 18:37:24 GMT

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Those airborne wind turbines look so cool and I've seen them a lot in #solarpunk artwork. But do you know if these things would actually work or would be feasible to build?

2026-02-23 20:25:08 GMT

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you just loooove to hear about their mishaps.

2026-02-11 09:33:11 GMT

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Is there an article which artist's style all of these typical GenAI images are mostly based on? They're all glowing, there are thick black outlines and realistic shading.

2026-01-21 18:37:20 GMT

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There‘s a dcraw library and tool that every app uses for raw on Linux. But it‘s a messy commandline to get linear tiff files out of it. There might also be a binary for OpenImageIO‘s oiiotool for your Linux distribution.

2026-01-14 22:01:34 GMT

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I'm using Mona on my phone and it also doesn't do native quote toots. But at least it has a quote feature that just pastes the URL into the post.

2026-01-01 00:43:30 GMT

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Happy New Year! I haven’t watched it this year, but watching it really is a Germans tradition.
I have heard that there is a remake/prequel with the young Miss Sophie on Netflix. I haven’t had the courage to check or to even watch this heresy 😳

2025-12-25 14:17:03 GMT

This blog post links to all my #FreeSoftwareAdvent posts which are revolving around tools used in our VFX pipeline.
https://www.comp-fu.com/2025/12/free-software-advent-2025/

2025-12-24 11:00:03 GMT

#FreeSoftwareAdvent finale 2025! Without these free and open source projects our pipeline couldn't exist at all:
Python, the VFX world's favourite programming language. And of course... Linux itself 🥳
Happy Holidays!

2025-12-18 06:51:58 GMT

The better #Midjourney gets in correctly generating multiple words in a row the more we lose an ancient skill: pasting an image into Word, typing text on top and saving a screenshot of the result to send as a Christmas card.
I likes the old ways better, mum!

2025-12-16 20:54:25 GMT

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yet it was only today that it occurred to me that "John" was a misreading of "Join". I never second-guessed that name and just thought they invented a founder because they couldn't wrap their head around a non-venture capital-backed social network.
And will we ever know who ran @npub1g9z…0lvm ?

2025-12-16 14:52:59 GMT

Just started to read a #VOX article about the glorious AI future but I had to quit right away at this nugget: „we could all be so much more wealthier than we can even imagine today…AI and robots will be able to produce a lot more goods and services than when we have in today’s economy.“
Yeah. Because the lack of stuff that is churned out of factories and the artificial scarcity of digital goods is why people are poor. Holy moly that‘s a hot take.

2025-12-14 11:50:33 GMT

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Hoppa Bachata Style!
🐴🐎🐎🐎🐴🎶
beep boop

2025-12-06 10:01:30 GMT

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The first camera matchmoving software I saw was called (I think) Boujou and there was this rumour going around that it was technology made for missile guidance systems (which needed to track the ground). It probably wasn't a rumour.

2025-11-29 16:02:00 GMT

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never forget that 1 or 2 years ago, the German police didn't do anything like that when farmers were blocking roads or right-wingers prevented meetings of the Green party by throwing stones at the politicians. (edit: the farmers bit refers to the video of police violence further up this thread)

2025-11-23 18:01:28 GMT

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Have fun! I liked it a lot.

2025-11-21 21:41:06 GMT

It feels wrong that one needs to pay an org to be allowed to decode a video format. I know I know, patents etc... but why though?
MP3 back in the day, Apple's ProRes, AVID's DNxHD, this weird HEVC or whatever h26-number we're currently at. This feels like asking for royalties to use a cereal box decoder ring.
ffmpeg's gonna reverse-engineer this anyways. But officially, Linux and Firefox must jump through hoops to download an h264 decoder from Cisco for some reason.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46002989

2025-11-15 18:25:39 GMT

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tasty :-)
That photographer has made a few of these photos before. It's really incredible that he does it from within our atmosphere. Here's a blog post where he explains some parts:
https://cosmicbackground.io/blogs/learn-about-how-these-are-captured/capturing-our-star

2025-11-15 16:28:28 GMT

RE: https://mastodon.art/@colossal/115554534728508955
This is an amazing photograph/composite. The image of the skydiver would be very easy to do as a composite but there's an Instagram link in that article that shows that the skydiver actually did the jump in front of the sun! 🤯
Even if the final image was most definitely composited from multiple exposures of the sun.

2025-11-10 20:39:16 GMT

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I have read posts from some people who argue that reducing #solarpunk to aesthetics is missing the point of solarpunk (althouth they also say that if you misunderstand solarpunk and go buy solar panels you're at least not doing any harm...)
But since you already have or are working on a post-capitalism concept your solarpunk film will have a good foundation!

2025-10-31 22:03:29 GMT

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I liked how the puppet shows up again towards the end, the focus pull towards it, but it's just sitting there and is useless as a defence.

2025-10-31 22:00:47 GMT

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so cool.

2025-10-27 21:47:06 GMT

The whole #VFX industry is relying on Python. We should chip in.
https://hachyderm.io/@nedbat/115447871878351122

2025-10-24 22:27:13 GMT

German has a unique problem: the default noun for any job is male. Every effort to include the female or neutral form is fought tooth and nail by conservative parties. So when a mayor was forced to remove the mention of both genders in the statute for firefighters.... he kept just the female form of every job title 😈
"That's not what we meant!" the city council is now crying. "Not every person is female, after all!" they lament without noticing the irony.
https://hessen.social/@fahrradfalko/115430338440123127
#ChaoticGood

2025-10-22 06:40:37 GMT

So, wouldn’t it be the perfect end of the AI bubble if Nvidia bought #WarnerBros and tasked OpenAI with rendering AI movies…
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/21/media/warner-bros-wbd-sale-paramount-skydance-suitors

2025-10-19 18:35:33 GMT

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I'm dying. I was in such a meeting!
Once, we were asked by a client to put sharp CGI into the out of focus part of a shot. And on another project somebody asked us why we couldn't skip the whole rendering part as this seemed to be a large part of the budget (the project was a full-CG animation...)

2025-10-16 05:21:52 GMT

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Great trailer. The creature‘s face was a jump scare and then it’s kept in the background of shots. I like that.
The shots with blue grading were a bit dark on my phone screen. I need to watch it again on my computer 🤓

2025-10-12 08:59:16 GMT

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I think I threw away my box of blue 3.5" disks. I wouldn't know how to read them nowadays... do they even keep their data that long? I know CD-ROMs will become unreadable after a few years.

2025-10-12 07:20:57 GMT

Now there's a poll I can confidently answer with a yes and I see that the fediverse is 90% old geezers like me. Noice.
https://glaceon.social/@vaporeon_/115358293478088195

2025-09-30 19:48:25 GMT

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Did you use the suits on the Night Dancer after freemocap wasn't working? Or are you hand animating?

2025-09-30 16:39:39 GMT

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This photo looks like some sci-fi people were teleported away and left their clothes behind 😎

2025-09-18 09:33:07 GMT

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I've only now read this and it's great. Even if somebody doesn't think and feel what many gen AI fans are thinking ("finally Hollywood can go to hell, finally those pesky woke artists will be out of jobs") they are still getting gaslit by the AI hype machine to think that well, that's just the way things are now: "artists are going the way of horse carriages. Some people will still make art I suppose, so why make a big fuss about it."

2025-09-17 19:04:40 GMT

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on the one hand it's sad to hear that freemocap wasn't working for you (I myself have never used it) but on the other hand it's inspiring to read about your peertube server and that you're doing keyframe animation to finish your movie.

2025-09-11 21:51:03 GMT

This detailed behind-the-scenes look of a horror film by director David Sandberg is really worth your time! Warning: it's super gory, like, exploding people, smashed skulls... definitely not my type of movie but it's very interesting to hear about all those editing tricks they did. Even cutting from a set to a miniature version of the set during a whip pan! Moreover, the director shows some tiny fixes that blow up the VFX shot count nowadays.
https://mastodon.social/@ponysmasher/114898652400236227
#vfx #PracticalEffects

2025-09-08 21:09:16 GMT

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Haha, yes, indeed.

2025-09-08 21:06:41 GMT

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The song is so recognisable and yet every part of it is interpreted so uniquely. I admit I had to laugh when the heavy guitar solo part sounded (to my ears) rather happy and upbeat. I'm sure I miss out on a lot because I neither know much about the music nor do I understand the lyrics.

2025-09-07 05:50:38 GMT

More info on the OK Go music video made with #Blender and facial capture:
https://social.coop/@cwebber/115159149329871264

2025-09-05 07:25:58 GMT

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I find this a really hight bar. To get to just below 20 books you still have to finish one every two weeks. That’s not „sometimes“. Sometimes in my mind would be 1-3 books a year.
I only read bedtime stories and maybe one „grown-ups“ book but I‘d pick the last option here since I might not even finish that one.

2025-08-30 08:02:12 GMT

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how cruel and kafkaesque.

2025-08-26 18:28:15 GMT

The modern Magnificent Seven movie starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt is still on Amazon Prime for a few days -- at least here in Germany.
We did some VFX for it. Back in the day I was still doing comp and comp supervision. My shot that I'm most proud of is the knife action on the straw dummy. Our company's showreel of that movie starts with a breakdown of it:
https://vimeo.com/188261245
#VFX #compositing #bighugfx

2025-08-10 19:21:24 GMT

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This is an amazing fluid animation! Was it animated by hand or did Jakob trace a 3D animatic? Not that would make the video any less amazing -- I'm just curious about the making of it 🤓

2025-08-07 05:28:41 GMT

To all professionals & retirees in the VFX industry, join the #vfxPeopleChallenge to post a photo of yourself at work. Just share a picture along with a brief description. The goal is to demonstrate that people are working on movies & shows that are supposed to have no CGI!
Thanks for your participation and boots on this project!
#vfx #vfxPeople #noCGI #studio
---
This is not me but my late dog Nemo (the right one) at Scanline Munich around 2010.
https://mograph.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/985/829/656/803/374/original/e107131edc39e8f0.jpg

2025-07-27 17:36:50 GMT

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Is that a ghostbike? Here in Germany they put those up when a cyclist gets killed by a motorist.

2025-06-24 07:02:01 GMT

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In my feed, this post showed up right after a report about the increase in air traffic — mainly in the „global south“ but also 2% annually here in Germany. 😢

2025-06-22 13:32:42 GMT

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wow, that's amazing to hear. Are both things (repair disk and timeshift) features of Linux Mint?

2025-06-21 20:19:19 GMT

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phew... that is bad. gparted is available as a bootable USB stick. I have used it but don't really have any experience in rescuing partitions like in your case. I only know that deleting a partition doesn't delete the filesystem or its data, so if you recreate the partition in exactly the place it was before, all might be well again. But I can't say for sure.

2025-06-19 16:36:10 GMT

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Wow, didn‘t know about that software.

2025-06-17 19:59:43 GMT

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I felt a similar thing about Andor‘s 2nd season. A big deal was made of that senator’s speech and that the empire wanted to prevent it. But then she held it, the episode ended and the next one started „One Year Later“ and nothing seems to have changed.
I like the 1st season though.

2025-06-08 13:29:02 GMT

If you want to support the Fediverse financially, here's a way to do it: @npub12k0…e2sz, a French non-profit, is raising money for the development of Peertube.
https://fediscience.org/@Ruth_Mottram/114641673922538397
#fundraising #fediverse #peertube

2025-04-25 18:50:53 GMT

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thanks for sharing!
Did you see the easter egg that shows up when your filter settings result in no matching designs? :-)

2025-04-17 10:10:29 GMT

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I've recently seen a related video on my feed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4mdMMu-3fc
It's a long (but cool) video essay and it's mostly concerned with how innovative software for artists got bought up by Autodesk or Adobe and made too expensive for freelancers in the creative industries. But it also has a part about Macromedia Flash and the way it got (mis)handled after Adobe acquired it.

2025-03-29 10:19:49 GMT

This is terrifying. And I think rooftop swimming pools sloshing down from a skyscraper haven't been foreseen in disaster movies...
https://mastodon.social/@Ulfh3dnar/114239885771884315

2025-03-27 22:29:17 GMT

Go home, KeePassXC, you're drunk!
(just kidding @npub16s6…2ny3 you're awesome! But something was slightly off after a MacOS reboot. I sometimes have double icons during automatic updates of various apps, but I've never seen three icons before)
https://mograph.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/236/755/548/686/247/original/081733d13f030b30.png

2025-03-04 00:37:44 GMT

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I need to bookmark this. I remember seeing Max and Mary (as well as Harvie Krumpet) years ago. Very touching stories.

2025-02-26 04:45:06 GMT

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I went to a show recently and saw the couple in front of me use ChatGPT to find out how many seats there were in the venue. I could have punched them in the face and asked them how many bottles of water they wasted for this and if they were sure that information was correct. They would have called the cops instead of using a simple search engine, typing "seats venue X how many" into it or going to the venue's homepage where the information is on some inaccessible floor plan 4 clicks away.

2025-02-26 04:40:56 GMT

Articles like the one linked in that thread are interesting to read and I'd like to see AI hucksters fall as much as anybody else here on the Fediverse... but crypto is still here, CO2-spewing private jets are still here, deforestation is still here. Things don't go away because people want them to go away. ChatGPT - for many - makes good on the decades-old sci-fi promise of searching for information using natural language. People will use it.
https://toot.cafe/@baldur/114063876183260704
#AI

2025-02-15 21:31:03 GMT

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welcome to Germany! I hope you brought a jacket. 🥶
(I once traveled the other direction: from cold Germany to hot Australia in February. I was feeling dizzy due to dehydration after 2 days)

2025-02-10 12:32:27 GMT

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Hi, maybe it has something to do with theming support, but on MacOS I can’t set a fully bright UI style. While the icons and so on are light the background around the page stays dark gray. Can’t do a screenshot right now….

2025-02-08 18:29:53 GMT

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Good point. It wasn’t nearly as yellow, so probably not ripe.

2025-02-08 12:30:57 GMT

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Oh that's what is looks like!? You can get it in stores that sell vegan products, but it's only chunks of it in a tin. I've used it for curries once but it was very sour (maybe marinaded in citric acid to prevent it from spoiling?). I once had a tortilla with jackfruit instead of meat in a restaurant and it was amazing.

2025-02-03 18:23:53 GMT

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That sucks. But may I say that UGX is a hell of a cool currency name ;-)

2025-02-03 07:23:39 GMT

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Do the drives have a fixed mount point or is it something like /run/…? Maybe the file manager can mount those drives on demand but Davinci needs something permanent?

2025-02-03 06:11:09 GMT

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Could it be that DaVinci has to be told in some kind of general settings which drives or folders are displayed when searching for footage? I remember that recently Inwas also stumped that exporting videos wouldn’t just display a file browser for everything. Davinci had to be told which folders were allowed for exporting files.

2025-02-02 18:47:43 GMT

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Since you mention the disks app, I think that will update fstab for you especially if it asked for superuser permissions. But usb drives are usually not listed in that file. Are these usb drives or builtin disks?
Diagnosing from afar… are the drives still mounted after changing labels? (Can you find them in the file manager?)
Resolve might just have to reconnect the media using the new drive name. It‘s like changing drive letters on Windows… it won’t find the footage.

2025-01-03 06:59:33 GMT

„Your privacy is important to us“ the popup reads… while the fine print talks about your „131 partners“ you’re sharing my visit with. And when I don’t click on „accept all“ immediately you‘re employing dark patterns to make me accept them all anyways (light gray button beneath a bold green one).
@npub1300…a9nl
But you’re in good company, every newspaper website does it or is even worse. But that doesn’t make it „caring about my #privacy“.

2024-12-30 17:30:36 GMT

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I‘ve googled their name to find out exactly how tiny they are. Seems like in German they are called (verbatim) „string bonnet fairy“. 🤩

2024-12-21 12:41:59 GMT

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Yeah. Its co-author is a cartoonist and he‘s on Mastodon: @ [email protected]

2024-12-21 07:28:40 GMT

Loving #ACityOnMars so far. What irks me a bit though is the subtext that "idea X about living in space is naive because nobody but us has ever thought it through". It's very funny to read but... there's #SciFi movies and literature about all of this! Millions upon millions of pages have been written about why humans won't magically become better people in space or how living in a metal tube is vastly more difficult than living on even the most hostile place on earth... #TheExpanse

2024-12-21 05:08:22 GMT

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Saw this on a German satire site similar to what the onion is in the US. I‘m assuming they made did.
https://www.der-postillon.com/2024/12/musk-sprung.html

2024-12-15 17:17:03 GMT

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yeah, same. But that's because I'm so bad at recognising faces, especially on a phone screen :-)

2024-12-15 13:45:31 GMT

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Fantastic clip! I think it's shot on static cameras with 2D motion added in post. So doing split screens requires just a bit of roto and no camera tracking.
Maybe some AI-assisted rotoscoping tool was used as it's getting pretty good nowadays for that kind of video resolution... The front guy's shadow doesn't seem to fall onto the guy to his left. But the sun's position hides that quite well.

2024-12-14 22:23:20 GMT

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seriously waiting for the #MegaMan episode though. It's not out yet but that one looks a bit more whimsical.

2024-12-14 22:22:23 GMT

I've just started #SecretLevel on Amazon Prime. It's a series of full CG short films based on video game IPs. Basically a new season of #LoveDeathRobots. So it looks incredible from a visual point of view. But oh boy... video games... If you wanted to make a case that video games are just bloody ego shooters for boys then good job!
We have: grim dark Warhammer, grim futuristic Unreal Tournament. An (drum roll) GRIM DARK PACMAN!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvY9Uq7I30Y
#VideoGames

2024-10-28 09:48:47 GMT

There's this amazing video about the universe doing the rounds from #EpicSpaceman. It has very high production value yet it's made by one guy doing all the #VFX and motion capturing using #Blender.
Since I was more interested in some behind-the-scenes info I found that video that shows bits and pieces (guess you can see more as a Patreon subscriber). Minute 4 has something about his face tracking and mocap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQPhexl5DWE

2024-10-06 21:39:16 GMT

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it noticed we took a photo so it's changing its pose 😁

2024-09-09 11:49:26 GMT

The most unexpected bit in this story (for me) was that it’s Jim _Stephanie_ Sterling now. Haven’t watched their channel for a long time and it’s as enjoyable as ever.
#doom #jimquisition
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/09/07/googles-gamengen-ai-doom-video-game-generator-dissecting-a-rigged-demo/

2024-08-04 08:03:30 GMT

Saw #TheCreator yesterday. Really really good sci-fi ship, robot and gadget designs. There's such a variety of designs yet they all feel like they are part of the same world. Some of it feels straight out of an art book because it looks so damn cool but over-designed at the same time. Why build police robots with creepy ant-like mouths that can move while they are talking even though that serves no purpose for generating their voices?
#movie #SciFi