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Creating Visual Effects with Neural Radiance Fields

Cyrus Vachha

TL;DR

The paper addresses the challenge of integrating Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) into conventional VFX pipelines. It presents a Nerfstudio-based workflow and a Blender add-on that aligns NeRF renders with a virtual camera by transforming coordinates with $C_t = N^{-1} C_o$, exporting an aligned camera path in JSON for Nerfstudio, and enabling multi-NeRF compositing with meshes, shadows, and environment maps. The contribution is an end-to-end pipeline that supports per-frame FOV decisions, RGB and accumulation renders, and scene-scale adjustments to facilitate realistic compositing in production. This approach bridges neural 3D representations with established visual effects tooling, enabling practical use in film and virtual production contexts.

Abstract

We present a pipeline for integrating NeRFs into traditional compositing VFX pipelines using Nerfstudio, an open-source framework for training and rendering NeRFs. Our approach involves using Blender, a widely used open-source 3D creation software, to align camera paths and composite NeRF renders with meshes and other NeRFs, allowing for seamless integration of NeRFs into traditional VFX pipelines. Our NeRF Blender add-on allows for more controlled camera trajectories of photorealistic scenes, compositing meshes and other environmental effects with NeRFs, and compositing multiple NeRFs in a single scene.This approach of generating NeRF aligned camera paths can be adapted to other 3D tool sets and workflows, enabling a more seamless integration of NeRFs into visual effects and film production. Documentation can be found here: https://docs.nerf.studio/extensions/blender_addon.html

Creating Visual Effects with Neural Radiance Fields

TL;DR

The paper addresses the challenge of integrating Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) into conventional VFX pipelines. It presents a Nerfstudio-based workflow and a Blender add-on that aligns NeRF renders with a virtual camera by transforming coordinates with , exporting an aligned camera path in JSON for Nerfstudio, and enabling multi-NeRF compositing with meshes, shadows, and environment maps. The contribution is an end-to-end pipeline that supports per-frame FOV decisions, RGB and accumulation renders, and scene-scale adjustments to facilitate realistic compositing in production. This approach bridges neural 3D representations with established visual effects tooling, enabling practical use in film and virtual production contexts.

Abstract

We present a pipeline for integrating NeRFs into traditional compositing VFX pipelines using Nerfstudio, an open-source framework for training and rendering NeRFs. Our approach involves using Blender, a widely used open-source 3D creation software, to align camera paths and composite NeRF renders with meshes and other NeRFs, allowing for seamless integration of NeRFs into traditional VFX pipelines. Our NeRF Blender add-on allows for more controlled camera trajectories of photorealistic scenes, compositing meshes and other environmental effects with NeRFs, and compositing multiple NeRFs in a single scene.This approach of generating NeRF aligned camera paths can be adapted to other 3D tool sets and workflows, enabling a more seamless integration of NeRFs into visual effects and film production. Documentation can be found here: https://docs.nerf.studio/extensions/blender_addon.html
Paper Structure (3 sections, 3 figures)

This paper contains 3 sections, 3 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Implementation
  3. Conclusion

Figures (3)

  • Figure 1: Blender editor with a NeRF representation and meshes using the add-on
  • Figure 2: Cropped NeRF object (a) RGB render and (b) accumulation render as an alpha mask
  • Figure 3: NeRFs composited in live action footage