In this episode, I sit down with Mustafa Al-Aobaidi, VFX Artist founder of Mad VFX @mad-vfx the learning platform focused on realistic VFX for games. Mustafa shares his full journey: from Iraq to Syria and then to the US, all the way to real-time VFX, and building a platform to teach production-ready VFX to the next generation of artists.

Links:

- Mad VFX: https://courses.mad-vfx.com/?ref=c2474d

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- Mad VFX Discord: https://discord.gg/txhpRwfETf

- Mustafa on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mustafa-alobaidi

- Jack: https://linktr.ee/jack.the.generalist

We dive deep into:

- How Mustafa built a career in VFX

- Why environment effects are key in AAA production

- Why learning realism in VFX is the secret weapon nobody teaches

- Mad VFX's future plans for production-focused education

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro & Mustafa’s Background

03:00 Discovering Real-Time VFX

07:00 The Importance of Self-Research

11:00 Landing His First VFX Jobs

18:00 Burnout in the Industry & Lessons Learned

30:00 Why Realism in VFX is Underrepresented

42:00 How Mad VFX Was Born

50:00 Realism vs Stylization Debate

58:00 Where to Find Mustafa & Mad VFX

59:30 Outro

Keywords

real-time vfx, vfx career advice, mad vfx courses, battlefield vfx, learning vfx for games, production vfx, houdini vfx, game development podcast

Hashtags

#RealTimeVFX #GameDev #MadVFX #VFXCareer #TheGeneralistsPodcast