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

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

The technology, called TransPixar, adds a crucial feature to AI-generated videos: the ability to create see-through elements like smoke, reflections, and ethereal effects that blend naturally into scenes. Current AI video tools typically can only generate solid images, making TransPixar a significant technical achievement.

“Alpha channels are crucial for visual effects, allowing transparent elements like smoke and reflections to blend seamlessly into scenes,” said Yijun Li, project leader at Adobe Research and one of the paper’s authors. “However, generating RGBA video, which includes alpha channels for transparency, remains a challenge 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 surge across the entertainment, advertising and gaming industries. Traditional VFX work often requires painstaking manual effort by artists to create convincing transparent effects.

TransPixar: Bringing transparency to AI visual effects

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

“We introduce new tokens for alpha channel generation, reinitializing their positional embeddings, and adding a zero-initialized 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 project alpha tokens into the qkv space while preserving RGB quality.”

In demonstrations, the system showed impressive results generating diverse 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 has made their code publicly available on GitHub and deployed a demo on Hugging Face, allowing developers and researchers to experiment with the technology.

Transforming VFX workflows for creators big and small

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

The technology matters far beyond technical improvements. As streaming services need more content and virtual production grows, AI-generated transparent effects could change how studios operate. Small teams could create effects that once required major studios, while bigger productions could finish projects much faster.

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

This advance comes at a key moment for Adobe as companies like Stability AI and Runway compete to develop professional effects tools. Major studios are already looking to AI to reduce costs, making TransPixar’s timing ideal.

The entertainment industry faces three growing challenges: Viewers want more content, budgets are tight, and there aren’t enough effects artists. TransPixar offers a solution by making effects faster to create, less expensive, and more consistent in quality.

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