I’ve never met a nuke artist that was hostile towards me when I told them I was a flame artist. I feel a little bit like that outward hostility comes mostly from very jaded and cynical vfx artists who don’t just hate flame, they just seem to hate… everything except nuke.
In regards to the pay disparity, I would love to see the folks being underpaid for the absolutely vital work they do to not be pissed that people doing something very similar, if not the same thing, are getting payed more, but to realize that they are being underpaid and band together and raise their rates collectively. It’s a whole community of people who are being exploited and have WAY more power at their fingertips than they realize, but are really scared to try to ask for more ( I don’t blame them, it’s messed up) and instead just write diatribes on reddit and get a thousand upvotes but nothing changes because turns out that’s not how real change is affected. That’s sad, because it’s people of immense talent doing incredible work and being treated like garbage a lot of the time.
But if we squabble amongst each other and sh*t on each other, that’s not solidarity. And it goes both ways, as someone mentioned above. This is a tough industry, a wicked, brutal, money is king industry, and that’s why I personally believe the only people it serves to squabble about what software you’re using to do the same thing but at a different pay rate are the people that make a lot of money from ALL of our efforts and off all our backs, not the artists.