Smoke, shadows and portals: Adobe's TransPixar takes AI VFX to the next level

Team from Adobe Research and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has developed an artificial intelligence system that could change the way visual effects are made for movies, games and interactive media.

The technology is called TransPixaradds a crucial feature to AI-generated videos: the ability to create visible elements such as smoke, shadows, and ethereal effects that blend naturally into scenes. Current AI video tools can usually only generate solid images, making TransPixar a significant technical achievement.

“Alpha channels are critical to visual effects, allowing transparent elements such as smoke and shadows to blend into scenes,” said Yijun Li, project director at Adobe Research and one of the paper authors. “However, the generation of RGBA video, which includes alpha channels for transparency, remains a challenge due to limited datasets and the difficulty of converting existing models. “

The development comes at a critical time as demand for visual effects continues to rise across the entertainment, advertising and gaming industries. Traditional VFX work often requires manual effort by artists to create visible effects.

TransPixar: Bringing transparency to AI visual effects

What makes TransPixar particularly special is its ability to maintain high quality while working with very little training data. The researchers achieved this by developing a novel approach that extends existing AI video models instead of building one from scratch.

“We introduce new signals for generating the alpha channel, reset the position setting, and insert a zero-started field to separate them from RGB signals,” explained Luozhou Wang, lead author and researcher at HKUST. “Using a mini-tuning scheme based on LoRA, we insert alpha signals into the qkv space while preserving the RGB quality.”

In demonstrations, the system showed impressive results producing different effects from simple text suggestions – from blowing storm clouds and magical portals to broken glass and flowing smoke. The technology can also render still life images with transparency effects, opening up new creative possibilities for artists and designers.

The research team has developed their code publicly available on GitHub and sent a the demo is Face Huggingallowing developers and researchers to test the technology.

Transforming VFX workflows for creators big and small

Early tests show that TransPixar could make visual effects production faster and simpler, especially for smaller studios that can't afford expensive effects. Although the system still requires significant computing power to process longer videos, the potential impact on the creative industry is clear.

The technology is important beyond technical developments. As streaming services require more content and virtual production grows, AI-generated visual effects could change the way studios work. Small teams could create effects that a major studio once needed, and larger productions could complete projects much faster.

TransPixar may be particularly valuable for real-time applications. Video games, AR applications and live production could create visible effects immediately – something that today requires hours or days of work.

This development comes at an important time for Adobe as a company AI sustainability and Runway competition to develop professional impact tools. Major studios are already looking to AI to reduce costs, making TransPixar's timing ideal.

There are three growing challenges facing the entertainment industry: Viewers want more content, budgets are tightand there there are not enough impact artists. TransPixar offers a solution by making effects faster to create, cheaper, and more consistent in quality.

The real question isn't whether AI will change visual effects — it's whether traditional VFX workflows will even exist in five years.