Achieving photorealism has always been the holy grail of the 3D and CGI industry. It’s certainly what we strive to do on a daily basis, but it takes a great deal of skill, patience and experience to create exceptional CG images on a consistent basis. From lifelike textures and carefully crafted lighting setups to faultless models with the most intricate details, every element must come together perfectly to create convincing images that pass as photography. Get any of these slightly wrong and your image will often come out jarring with an obvious unrealistic character. Even worse for an inexperienced eye, it can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint what is exactly wrong with these images. Often they just need enhancements in post-production to add that final bit of realism, but this is time consuming and again requires a trained eye to generate realistic results.
Enter Magnific.ai, an AI-powered tool that promises to enhance image resolution and add details to images like never before. But is it really destined to be the new secret sauce of the 3D industry?
[Comparison showing before and after Magnific has been applied with subtle settings]
Elevating realism.
We’re always on the lookout for new tools and software that push the boundaries of what’s possible in CGI, it’s an essential part of our culture to be ahead of the curve. This constant experimentation allows us to discover new workflows and improve the way we work and the results we get. Magnific AI caught our attention with its impressive ability to add impressive amounts of detail and clarity to images, particularly for adding enhancements that might take a post production artist hours to achieve or for situations where fine texture details might have become lost in the rendering process.
[image comparison - zoomed and showing details that have been added by Magnific]
The magic and the mistakes.
Our initial tests with Magnific looked very promising. The first images had a noticeable improvement with stronger lighting and shadow effects and increased texture depth, but on closer inspection the results aren’t always without quirks. The same AI that adds stunning details can sometimes go overboard, introducing elements that are out of place or downright incorrect. For instance, we regularly see fabric textures that are re-rendered with stone-like qualities. At a first glance it looks fine, but on close inspection the results are far more jarring and unrealistic. Another problem that became very obvious in our testing is Magnific’s overzealousness to improve on elements that don’t really require adjusting. For example, we take great pride in reproducing our clients products accurately using 3D capture and surface scanning, but often found that these high-quality textures are replaced, adjusted in colour or crunched to unrealistic levels by the AI.
[Cloth re-rendered as stone by Magnific]
[Colour inaccuracies and unwanted flaws and noise added to shadows by Magnific]
Balancing creativity with accuracy.
One of Magnific’s stand out features is its intuitive interface with easy to use sliders. This, combined with the ability to use natural language text prompts make it a breeze to use, but powerful enough for almost any skill level. The combination of these controls allow users to adjust the level of detail and realism, though this itself can also be a double-edged sword - set the sliders too high and the AI can hallucinate and give unconvincing results. For our professional CGI work, where precision is key this is a problem.
[unrealistic output where creativity slider is at max]
A powerful tool, but with many caveats.
From our testing we’ve found Magnific.ai isn’t quite the silver bullet we hoped it would be. It’s certainly a powerful tool when used correctly and its ability to add detail and enhance images can take CGI projects to the next level. But it is also essential to be aware of the limitations and double check the output remains true to life. By combining Magnific’s AI enhancements with human oversight from our retouchers, we’ve been able to speed up some of their workflow and ensure that the final results are both visually stunning whilst remaining true to the real world products.