[Animats]

To do 3D modeling professionally, you have to be very good and very fast, and have very clear mental images of what you're doing. I used to do physics engines for animation software, so I've met people in Hollywood who do theatrical animation. I've seen an animator draw a face by freehand drawing cross sections (circle for the top of the head, bigger circle, curves with indents for the eyes and outdents for the nose, etc.) and then have the program skin the result. The result was a good face model, the first time.

Pros and amateurs use drawing programs quite differently. Pros don't edit much. They redraw. They don't spend a lot of time pulling control points around.

There are 3,467 union animators in Hollywood, according to The Animation Guild. It's not a big field.

[wukerplank]

I don't know the 3D scene in Hollywood. But skimming the credits at ends of blockbuster movies reveals that a lot of the 3D work is being done in eastern Europe or in the Far East. How much is really produced in higher-wage countries?

[Animats]

There's a lot of outsourcing. In 2013, Rhythm and Hues both won an Academy Award and went bankrupt.

Simply providing a clipping path which separates the foreground from a background is widely outsourced. Effects movies use this heavily. It's manual green screen. Some outsourcing companies for this job:

    clippingpathindia.com
    offshoreclippingpath.com
    clippingpathasia.com

This ought to be automated by now, but apparently the automated approaches are not good enough yet.

[gjolund]

There is a lot more to that story, and to say it was entirely due to outsourcing is a half truth.

That being said the state of the industry in Hollywood, especially for animators and artists, is pretty dire.

[robbs]

Plenty of 3D work is done in Vancouver and London. I don't have real statistics but 3D work is done all over the place, low wage and high wage areas.