Tools to watch in Fall 2024: SwitchLight Studio
CG Channel is on holiday this week. While we’re away, check out five tools that caught our eye this year, but somehow, we never managed to do a story on. Today: a promising AI-based virtual production app that extracts actors from footage and relights them to match a new background.
Korean AI startup Beeble caught the attention of film-makers and virtual production professionals earlier this year with the beta release of SwitchLight Studio.
The software “redefines VFX and compositing”, extracting actors from video footage and “integrating AI and physically-based rendering to [relight them during] post-production”.
Now due to be rebranded Virtual Studio, it is moving closer to release, but you can still download the free public beta, along with its integration scripts for Blender and UE5.
What is it?
An AI-based virtual production tool, enabling film-makers to shoot actors against greenscreen, composite in a background plate or CG environment, and relight the actors to match the new background.
What kind of artists is it aimed at?
Film-makers, virtual production professionals and VFX artists, especially indie studios.
Why is it notable?
Early users say that it shows real promise as a production tool.
Artist and director Freddy Chavez Olmos, whose experiments in AI-based indie film-making we covered in this article, described the technology as “pretty incredible” in a tweet.
Beeble has just raised $4.75 million in seed funding to develop the technology further.
What are its selling points?
Beeble’s technology extracts a foreground object – usually an actor – from video footage.
It then uses inverse rendering to generate depth information for the actor, along with PBR texture maps, including albedo, normal, roughness, specular and ambient occlusion.
The data can be used to relight the actor to match a new backplate, with an integrated neural enhancer able to add effects like self-occlusion and subsurface scattering for skin and hair.
What are its key technical features?
Switchlight Studio can ingest 4K video and 32-bit EXR image sequences.
It exports PBR texture maps to any DCC app that supports PBR workflows: Beeble provides scripts for loading them in Blender and Unreal Engine 5, and there is a Nuke plugin for enterprise users.
What new features are planned?
There isn’t a public roadmap, but Beeble is getting closer to an official release: the open beta was originally due to end in July, although it has now been extended.
Beeble plans to rebrand the software before release: in an interview with TechCrunch, CEO Joon Kim said that the product name will be changed to ‘Virtual Studio’ later this year.
What are its system requirements?
Switchlight Studio is compatible with Windows 10+ and CentOS/Rocky Linux 8+ and Ubuntu 20.04+. It requires a NVIDIA GPU with at least 8GB of VRAM.
The integration scripts are compatible with Blender 3.x+ and Unreal Engine 5.3+.
For photographers, the underlying technology is also available in Switchlight Mobile, Beeble’s consumer iOS and Android app for relighting still images.
How much does it cost?
Switchlight Studio is free in open beta. The current beta build is SwitchLight Studio 0.6.4.
Where can I find more imformation?
At the time of writing, there isn’t any online documentation for Switchlight Studio, but you can see videos on Beeble’s YouTube channel, and post requests on the Discord server.
Download the open beta of Switchlight Studio from Beeble’s website
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