2024 State of the VFX/Animation Industry

Grant Miller, Partner & Executive VFX Supervisor, Ingenuity Studios

AI really pushed into the mainstream VFX space [in 2023]. While there’s been apprehension around how the technology will be used, we’ve seen a lot of positives so far. For example, clients are using Midjourney to clearly articulate their vision. Software, like Cascadeur, is using AI to add believable secondary and physics to animations. AI-generated Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) are exploring novel ways to represent 3D scenes.

While we’re not quite there yet, AI also has the potential to remove many tedious tasks in the pipeline, affording artists more time to focus on quality and creativity. It will also enable ideas and workflows that would be nearly impossible without the help of machine learning. In the near future, we’ll be able to create robust depth and segmentation maps for moving footage, allowing artists to add fog to a forest or change the leaves to autumn.

The industry has shifted from chemical compositing to digital, from stop-motion to computer animation and from matte paintings on glass to fully 3D set extensions. Technology has driven each of these transitions, and each has increased the use of VFX in the content we consume. We’re excited about what the future will hold as AI improves the tools we use in our craft, and I’m thankful to be working in the industry during such a transformative time.