Smoke, reflections and portals: Adobe’s TransPixar takes AI VFX to the next level

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

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

“Alpha channels are critical to visual effects, allowing transparent elements like smoke and reflections to blend seamlessly into scenes,” said Yijun Li, project manager at Adobe Research and one of on paper authors. “However, generating RGBA video that includes alpha channels for transparency remains challenging due to limited datasets and the difficulty of adapting existing models.”

The breakthrough comes at a critical time as demand for visual effects continues to grow in the entertainment, advertising and gaming industries. Traditional VFX work often requires painstaking manual efforts on the part of artists to create convincing transparent effects.

TransPixar: Making AI visual effects transparent

What makes TransPixar particularly remarkable is its ability to maintain high quality while working with very limited training data. The researchers achieved this by developing a new approach that extends existing video AI models rather than building one from scratch.

“We introduce new alpha channel generation tokens by reinitializing their positional embeddings and adding a zero-initialization domain embedding to distinguish them from RGB tokens,” explained Luozhou Wang, lead author and researcher at HKUST. “Using a LoRA-based fine-tuning scheme, we design alpha tokens in the qkv space while preserving the RGB quality.”

In demos, the system showed impressive results, generating a variety of effects from simple text prompts—from swirling storm clouds and magical portals to shattering glass and billowing smoke. The technology can also animate still images with transparency effects, opening up new creative possibilities for artists and designers.

The research team made their code publicly available on GitHub and deployed a it’s the demo Hugging faceallowing developers and researchers to experiment with the technology.

Transforming VFX workflows for creatives big and small

Early testing shows that TransPixar can make visual effects production faster and easier, especially for smaller studios that can’t afford expensive effects. While the system still needs significant computing power to process longer videos, its potential impact on the creative industry is clear.

Technology matters far beyond technical improvements. As streaming services need more content and virtual production grows, AI-generated transparent effects could change the way studios work. Small crews could create effects that once required large studios, while larger productions could complete projects much faster.

TransPixar can be especially valuable for real-time use. Video games, AR applications and live production can create transparent effects instantly – something that today requires hours or days of work.

This advance comes at a pivotal time for Adobe, as companies like it AI for stability and Runway compete to develop professional effects tools. Big studios are already looking to AI to cut costs, making TransPixar’s timing perfect.

The entertainment industry faces three growing challenges: Viewers you want more content, budgets are limitedand there not enough effects artists. TransPixar offers a solution by making effects faster to create, cheaper and more consistent in quality.

The real question is not whether AI will transform visual effects – but whether traditional VFX workflows will even exist five years from now.