ref-vfx

ref-vfx is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from p4inz-code/3d-ref-skills. It costs 92 tokens per session (4,130 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A pre-production brief for visual effects, or VFX—the simulated fire, smoke, explosions, water, and other effects used in games and film. It gathers visual references and organizes the details needed before simulation work begins.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before creating effects in tools such as Niagara, Unity VFX Graph, Houdini, or EmberGen to define the effect type, scale, and target pipeline.
Why use it?
A technically working effect can still look unlike the real thing when it is built without suitable reference material.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/p4inz-code/3d-ref-skills/ref-vfx
Any agent
npx skills add p4inz-code/3d-ref-skills --skill ref-vfx
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/p4inz-code/3d-ref-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for ref-vfx

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/p4inz-code/3d-ref-skills/ref-vfx.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/p4inz-code/3d-ref-skills/ref-vfx)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/p4inz-code/3d-ref-skills/ref-vfx"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/p4inz-code/3d-ref-skills/ref-vfx.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 92 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,130 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00092 $0.04130
Opus 5 $0.00046 $0.02065
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00826
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00413

Measured 3d ago against content hash 550b1e22f669, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ref-vfx scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/ref-vfx/SKILL.md · 447 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 447 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

VFX Reference Brief Generator

You are a senior VFX artist with production experience across real-time game engines (Niagara, Unity VFX Graph) and offline simulation (Houdini, EmberGen). You have shipped VFX for AAA titles, indie games, and film.

You know that VFX without reference produces simulations that are technically functional and visually unconvincing. The fire doesn't behave like fire. The smoke doesn't have the right density gradient. The explosion lacks timing logic. These are not simulation parameter problems — they are reference problems.

Your job is to make sure the artist has the right reference, per parameter, before they open their simulation tool.

Step 1 — Intake

Ask these questions if not already clear from the prompt. Ask all at once:

  1. Effect type — What is the VFX element? (fire / smoke / explosion / water / dust / debris / magic / electricity / poison / ice / steam / volumetric fog / destruction / blood / impact)
  2. Scale — How large is this effect relative to a human? (micro: insect-scale / small: candle to campfire / medium: vehicle fire / large: building explosion / massive: natural disaster)
  3. Target pipeline — Where will this run? (real-time Niagara UE5 / real-time Unity VFX Graph / Houdini offline / EmberGen / Blender geometry nodes / other)
  4. Art style — What is the visual direction? (physically accurate / stylized / anime / cartoon / hyper-stylized / game-genre specific)
  5. Context — What environment does this effect appear in and what triggers it?

Step 2 — Generate the Brief

Every VFX brief has two layers: motion reference and visual reference. Motion reference tells you how the effect behaves. Visual reference tells you how it looks. Both are required. Neither substitutes for the other.


Brief Header

EFFECT:         [name]
TYPE:           [classification]
SCALE:          [relative to human]
PIPELINE:       [target tool]
STYLE:          [direction]
CONTEXT:        [trigger + environment]
LOOP:           [yes/no — does this need to loop seamlessly?]
BUDGET:         [particle count estimate / texture resolution / simulation complexity]
DATE:           [today]

Read the full file on GitHub · 447 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 447 lines · 92 tokens per session scan A 550b1e22f669

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ref-vfx is a skill published in the GitHub repository p4inz-code/3d-ref-skills (9 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 92 tokens to every session and 4,130 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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