You've probably seen the viral video of a crazy pool fail on Instagram. What's surprising is that it's actually a high-quality 3D render. The ball physics and trajectory do look odd, but the clip could pass for a strange trick, a sign of poor billiards skills, or an AI simulation made to mock unlucky beginners.

It turns out the clip was made in Blender by a 3D artist known on Reddit as BrutalDuck. "Not AI we made this with the power of CGI," the artist writes. The creator started with real-world footage of a person pretending to hit invisible balls, then added the balls themselves in Blender.

If you're wondering how it looks in the viewport, or you're still suspicious, BrutalDuck shared a WIP image that reveals the behind-the-scenes setup:

And here's a comparison of the original and the edited videos:

In another clip, BrutalDuck breaks down how he made another similar pool VFX. First, he recorded base footage using the Omniscient app, an iPhone camera-tracking and LiDAR-scanning VFX app that lets you capture, scan, control, and do previs from your iPhone. The app provides an auto setup for Blender, Unreal Engine, After Effects, and other software. The artist scanned the pool table with the app and later used it for animation.

Pool balls are free 3D models from Sketchfab. BrutalDuck did a great amount of work, animating each keyframe individually. After that, he added lighting and adjusted the nodes – which turned out to be a tricky part, according to the artist – and proceeded with After Effects and further enhanced the lighting. 

Check out the video breakdown:

If you liked the pool video, keep reading for more crazy billiard setups visualized in Blender:

Realistic scenes in Blender are achieved through detailed texturing and camera work that resembles the casual movements of a person taking a picture. For more realistic Blender setups, have a look at some that we featured before: a setup looking so realistic that it was removed from the Blender subreddit by Rayan Zomorodi, a desktop render by an artist known on Reddit as Unable_Coat_8100, a mouse and keyboard setup by S4mu3lll, a river landscape by a Redditor HastyBen, a photorealistic render from tzbtzb, a riding animation by a Reddit user known as Yo, or rawrcewas, and a setup that resembles footage from a security cam by TAK-WAN:

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