AI in VFX: How artificial intelligence is transforming visual effects

VFX has always evolved with technology. From matte paintings and miniatures to green screens and motion capture, every decade has brought its own wave of disruption. And now, the AI in VFX is changing how filmmakers work, speeding up rotoscoping, automating background replacement, generating digital crowds, creating artificial intelligence visual effects, and even handling complex tasks like de-aging and match-moving.

With AI being such a powerhouse, artists can sometimes feel like AI is taking over. However, the key is to remember that we are still the ones making the decisions. ILM’s Rob Bredow recently said in his 2025 TED that AI is here to streamline the grind and amplify your creative vision. And in this guide, we’ll take a look at how!

Artificial intelligence isn’t just changing how visual effects are made; it’s reshaping the entire industry. The global VFX market reached $10 billion in 2023, a clear sign of how central it has become to filmmaking, streaming, and gaming. Within that space, AI-powered VFX is one of the fastest-growing segments, projected to expand at 25% annually and hit $712 million by 2030.

Zooming out, these trends mirror the explosive rise of generative AI. Valued at just $1.2 billion in 2022, the generative AI market is expected to soar to $1.3 trillion by 2032, according to Bloomberg.

Much of this growth is tied to its ability to supercharge creative industries, from concept art to final renders. For VFX studios, the biggest impact is time. AI tools can cut production timelines by 20–65% depending on the genre. That means faster delivery, lower costs, and more time for artists to focus on creative storytelling rather than repetitive technical work.

With emerging techniques like Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) offering photorealistic scene capture and rendering, the industry is entering a new era where efficiency and imagination go hand in hand.

Now, let’s be honest, some parts of the VFX process can feel like a grind. Tedious tasks like isolating subjects, following camera movements, or scrubbing unwanted details from a scene… they’re essential, but not exactly the fun, creative stuff. And this is where AI can step in, by taking care of the grunt work so you can focus on the magic.

AI VFX tools are stepping in like the world’s fastest production assistant. And here’s where they’re already making a big difference.

Rotoscoping is the process of manually separating elements (like a person or object) from the background of a video frame-by-frame. It’s essential for compositing and visual effects layering, but it’s notoriously tedious.

AI-powered rotoscoping tools like Roto Brush 3 from Adobe After Effects and Boris FX Mocha Pro’s Mask ML do the heavy lifting with surprising accuracy and often in just a few clicks. So instead of getting bogged down frame-by-frame with a mask around a moving actor, you can let AI handle the base pass and refine the results with your creative eye.

This is the process of removing or changing the background behind a subject (e.g., sky replacements, set extensions, or cleaning up distracting objects in the frame).

AI tools like DaVinci Resolve’s Magic Mask and Runway’s background remover use deep learning to track and separate subjects, even when there’s motion or noise in the footage. That means faster environment cleanups and more creative flexibility.

Pair that with overlays and stock footage, and you can completely change a scene’s tone with just a few clicks.

When you need large groups of people (e.g. armies, city pedestrians, or stadium crowds) you can either hire hundreds of extras… or simulate them digitally.

AI-based crowd tools like Kognat, Massive, and Cascadeur generate realistic animated characters at scale. By using prompts or presets, you can randomize different things (e.g., how they look, move, and interact with each other). Crowd generation tech is currently used by major studios, but it’s increasingly becoming available to smaller teams and indie creators, too.

This is how VFX artists recreate the motion of a real-world camera so that 3D elements can be composited seamlessly into live-action footage.

AI is making this process faster and more accurate. Tools like SynthEyes, Adobe After Effects’ AI-powered tracker, and Autodesk Flow Studio use machine learning to analyze footage and generate highly accurate camera motion (even when there are no tracking markers or stable geometry).

This is the process of making an actor look younger on screen, often used in flashbacks and period films. This combines facial tracking, skin smoothing, and expression mapping.

In Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, ILM blended AI-trained models on past Harrison Ford footage with traditional CG techniques to create a convincing younger version of the character.

The rise of AI in VFX has opened the door to a whole new generation of creative tools. Here’s a look at some of the most talked-about tools in the space right now, and what they’re actually being used for.

Runway has become one of the most popular tools for studios and indie creators when it comes to AI-assisted video editing. It excels at time-saving tasks like rotoscoping, motion tracking, and background removal.

Fun fact: The team behind Everything Everywhere All At Once used Runway to help isolate elements and build quick effects during post-production. Proving that even Oscar-winning films can benefit from a little AI assistance.

Autodesk Flow Studio offers a unique way to automate aspects of performance tracking (like body motion and camera alignment) across live action footage. While it can be used in CG character workflows, many artists use it to assist with tracking passes or previsualization planning.

It’s best seen as a time saver in early production stages, especially when building scenes with hybrid CG and practical elements.

Kaedim can really give 3D artists a bit of a head start by converting 2D images into 3D meshes. While the results still need a bit of refining, it’s still very useful for game asset previsualization or for quickly prototyping models that can later be cleaned up in Blender or ZBrush.

It offers a way for VFX teams juggling 2D concept art and 3D needs to bridge the gap more efficiently.

Adobe’s AI features have been slowly included in the tools many designers already use (such as After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop). Features like automatic scene detection, intelligent masking, and content-aware cleanup are now available for everyone to use.

Integrating AI in your VFX workflow doesn’t mean tossing out everything you know! To start with. You can let AI take care of the repetitive and time-consuming bits for a first pass. Then you can come in and refine the scene.

Here’s a simple breakdown of how AI might slot into a modern VFX pipeline:

AI can get you most of the way there in record time. But that last 20% is where your creativity and style come into play. It simply gets the groundwork done, so you have more time and energy to push your ideas further.

AI is opening up incredible possibilities for visual storytelling, but with that comes a new set of creative and ethical questions. De-aging an actor, recreating a historical figure, or generating digital crowds sounds like sci-fi magic… until you ask the questions, “Who gave permission? Who owns the result? And where do we draw the line?”

These aren’t just hypothetical concerns. As AI tools become more powerful, creators are being asked to consider not just what they can do but also how they do it.

Ethical grey areas pop up quickly. For example:

Filmmakers and VFX studios are already asking these questions and calling for clearer guidelines. Rachel Antell, from the Archival Producers Alliance, put it simply:

To stay grounded, many teams now follow a “human-in-the-loop” philosophy. Which means letting AI handle technical tasks, while humans make the creative decisions. This model ensures transparency and keeps the artistic vision front and center.

So now that you know how AI is already streamlining today’s VFX workflows, what’s next? Let’s take a quick look at how the AI creative tech landscape is moving and how AI could potentially develop in the future.

The rise of real-time VFX is one of the most exciting developments in AI, especially in virtual production. This is helping filmmakers adjust lighting, environments, and effects live on set, without needing a full post-production pass. This means AI could automate things such as:

AI is also changing the way we plan shots before they’re filmed. Examples include things like storyboarding tools that generate scene layouts from scripts, and AI-driven previs that can simulate camera movement and basic lighting setups. Pre-production is becoming more dynamic and visual. In the future, we may see things like:

As AI becomes more accessible, there’s a growing potential for creators to produce high-end visuals on smaller budgets. Imagine things like:

As AI continues to evolve, one of the more intriguing developments is the potential for emotion-aware color grading. By analyzing facial expressions, dialogue tone, and scene pacing, AI could soon assist colorists in shaping a shot’s emotional feel.

Machine learning (ML) is no longer futuristic; it’s actively reinventing how visual effects are created. Let’s see how ML is revolutionizing how filmmakers create:

Tools powered by ML, such as SmartROTO and other automated roto/matte solutions, can isolate characters or elements in a shot with minimal manual effort. Features like edge and motion analysis streamline masking workflows that once took hours (or even days) to complete by hand.

On Dune: Part Two, VFX Supervisor Paul Lambert leveraged Foundry’s CopyCat, a machine-learning compositing tool within Nuke, to tackle a massive roto challenge. It handled 40% of the 1,000 Fremen-eye shots without requiring any touch-ups; literally saving artists thousands of hours.

Films like Infinity War and Endgame used ML-driven tools to enhance realism in CGI characters. Digital Domain developed a facial capture system called Masquerade, which translated actor Josh Brolin’s performance into a high-resolution digital Thanos, blending human nuance with animated fidelity.

When Pixar needed believable fire effects for their character Ember in Elemental, traditional methods fell short. They tapped neural style transfer, a form of machine learning, to blend realistic flames with expressive artistic control, yielding visuals that felt both natural and emotive.

Wonder Studio, now under Autodesk, applies AI to track actor performances from raw video and transfer them onto CG characters—handling motion, lighting, and composition automatically. It integrates with tools like Blender and Unreal Engine to speed up character-based workflows.

Beyond automation, machine learning helps improve VFX realism: tools that predict light behavior or simulate fluid dynamics make scenes look more natural without exhaustive manual tweaks.

AI is transforming VFX with real-time rendering, XR, dubbing, and procedural generation, shaping the future of visual storytelling.

Technology is now in a new era of real‑time rendering, bridging the gap between pre‑ and post‑production with:

Game engines such as Unreal Engine and Unity now support real‑time animation rendering, enabling live previews of virtual environments during production. Features like ray‑tracing, Lumen (dynamic lighting), and Nanite (virtualized geometry) bring cinematic-quality visuals into Extended Reality (XR) experiences.

This approach removes traditional bottlenecks, so artists can see final‑quality visuals on set or within interactive environments, leading to more immersive and responsive storytelling.

AI in VFX is also redefining how content crosses language barriers. Tools like Flawless AI’s TrueSync enable seamless visual dubbing by syncing new voiceovers with lip movements, retaining cinematic authenticity across languages.

Speechify, for example, offers real‑time AI dubbing that preserves the original voice, enabling multilingual versions of videos without sacrificing voice identity.

The broader AI dubbing market is booming. It is projected to reach $2.9 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of ~13.9%, driven by global demand across media, corporate, and educational content.

Speaktor and AudioPod, both dubbing tools, automate workflows with text-to-speech, voice cloning, lip-sync, and machine translation, to produce fully localized video faster and more cost‑effectively than ever. It’s expected that by 2026, real-time live‑stream dubbing will become mainstream, with innovators like Reelmind building low‑latency solutions for virtual events.

AI is extending procedural generation far beyond digital extras, embodying environments, textures, and neural scene synthesis:

As artists, we can sometimes feel like AI is taking over. But when used with care, it can become a helpful collaborator and assistant, helping us with the more tedious areas of our profession.

So far, we’ve seen things like faster rotoscoping, crowd generation, and de-aging. And as the technology with AI continues to evolve, you have to remember that your creative vision is still the most important part of the process.

So stay curious! Use these tools to experiment and explore where AI can help. And if you’re still looking for a bit of a creative boost, check out the Envato website, where you can find assets, templates, and even Gen AI tools like ImageGen and VideoGen to keep your VFX workflow smooth, creative, and ready for whatever’s next.

AI in VFX refers to the use of artificial intelligence tools and techniques to enhance or automate parts of the visual effects process, such as rotoscoping, match-moving, or compositing.

Nope. They’re changing the game, not ending it. Think of AI as your assistant, not your rival.

No, AI will not produce complete films on its own. While AI can assist with certain aspects of filmmaking, such as generating ideas, visuals, or editing support, human creativity and direction remain essential for producing a finished film.

No, using AI models does not add your content back into the training data. The outputs generated from using AI are not used to retrain or improve the underlying models.

Generative AI focuses on creating new content such as text, images, music, or video based on learned patterns. Broader AI applications, however, extend beyond content generation to include tasks like recommendation systems, fraud detection, predictive analytics, and robotics.

AI is best understood as a tool to enhance and support artists, not replace them. It can streamline repetitive tasks, spark creativity, and provide new possibilities, but artists’ vision, style, and decision-making remain central to the creative process.

Runway, Wonder Studio, Adobe Firefly, and Kaedim are among the top picks right now.

Yes! Real-time AI VFX tools are emerging, especially for environment mapping and virtual production.

Start with one task—like rotoscoping—and test how AI tools improve speed and precision. Then scale up.