You know it’s interesting,
I just got done attending Epic Game’s Unreal Fest this week in Orlando (I also spoke on Advanced Design in Twinmotion). And every major marketing firm and CG agency is moving in that direction with hybrid AI workflows. This is especially true working with a major Hollywood mogul over the last few months who found my AI production work online and has since taken me under his wing. It’s very revealing.
Definitely not meaning to say to push it down anyone’s throat, but it’s crazy just how much the world is moving in that direction the better these tools are getting. Notes I took observing the panels and talks:
-
Hybrid production is the future. The integration of AI and CGI is transforming how content is created—streamlining workflows, enabling custom content generation, enhancing existing assets, and maximizing reusability. Many of the world’s leading brands are already leveraging this shift.
-
Industry trailblazers like Coca-Cola, Gucci, and Ferrari are adopting AI-powered production pipelines to cut costs and amplify creative output. Their examples set the pace for what’s possible with smart implementation.
-
Learn from emerging workflows. Major production studios are utilizing techniques like Gaussian Splatting to balance quality, cost, and speed. Key technologies—such as visual tracking, AI rotoscoping, and AI-assisted environment cleanup—are becoming standard components of this hybrid pipeline.
-
Product photography reimagined. These same AI+CGI workflows can be applied to generate high-end stills and product photography—cost-effectively, and at a quality that rivals traditional studio shoots.
-
Rethink traditional production. Compared to modern hybrid techniques, legacy video production is increasingly expensive, inflexible, and outdated. The new era of content creation is smarter, faster, and creatively limitless.
So I think what’s important to note here is that CG and 3D design aren’t going anywhere, rather it’s shifting into this side by side process with AI, especially because AI cant really nail down the fine details of product,objects and designs. It can’t think in a controlled and intentional way in the details…yet. It’s good at enhancing visuals, it’s great at organizing mundane tasks, it’s basically great at being your personal assistant on stuff. But it can’t do your core job and replace what makes you in-demand.
We are getting into “scanning” 3D models for use in AI images and I think it’s only a matter of time before the film world is completely changed in that way, but in terms of intentional, extremely controllable objects, that’s still something to be desired and figured out.
In your Kit-bashing example, I’d be surprised if there isn’t already an AI program that organizes and let’s you reconfigure models at the click of a button in seconds to iterate more ideas around the parts in your library. Something like “here’s my base CAD model, here’s my parts library for kitbashing…give me 10 iterations to look at based on what I just gave you”…and out comes 10 kitbashed versions of whatever it is your designing…in seconds. And if it doesn’t exist yet, some serious money on the table if someone can figure it out.
So in terms of AI in creative use, main takeaway is, it definitely benefits to learn how it works so we can evolve into it and work with it because you’re going to see more and more AI hybrid workflows as designers, but it won’t replace our specific job of being the creative in 3D. For now AI is more akin to an entry-level intern.
When i think of Rhino, I wonder what out there in the AI landscape today could be a set of tools that would become “superchargers” for the next version of Rhino? @nathanletwory maybe you have insight into that?
