The Future of 3D-AI from an Adobe Technical Artist
Adobe Firefly, SwitchLight 3.0, Volinga's UE5 plugin, plus how Cino Lai built a full AI-3D pipeline in 6 days.
This issue centers on Cino Lai, a technical artist at Adobe, and a close look at where AI-3D design is heading, alongside the usual weekly roundup.
New tech updates
Adobe Firefly unlocks unlimited credits
Adobe temporarily unlocked unlimited generative credits for all paid Creative Cloud Pro, Firefly Standard, Pro, and Premium plans through December 1. That includes Text to 3D in Substance Stager and Viewer, plus partner models like Imagen, Veo, and Topaz.
SwitchLight 3.0
SwitchLight turns video footage into PBR passes for relighting. Version 3.0 moves to a true video model that processes multiple frames at once for smoother, flicker-free output, and was trained on a dataset ten times larger for broader materials and lighting. It is available in the Beeble cloud app and the new Beeble Studio desktop app for local 4K processing.
Volinga's Unreal plugin
Volinga Plugin Pro brings 3D Gaussian Splatting into Unreal with mesh-based relighting, cull volumes, scalable multi-GPU rendering, ACES color, 16-bit HDR, and nDisplay support for LED-volume work, aimed at studios blending photoreal and real-time.
From the community: a full AI-3D pipeline in 6 days
Cino Lai broke down a pipeline that integrates 3D AI and texturing automation: Dreamina for 2D concepts, Hunyuan for 3D model generation, Substance 3D for texturing, and Unreal Engine 5 for presentation, with Blender for automatic decimation and UVs. The whole project went from 2D design to final assets in UE5 in six days. His ArtStation breakdown covers the prompts and the limits he hit at each step.
Tools covered in this issue
SwitchLight
Best for relighting footage and pulling PBR maps with AI.
Hunyuan 3D
Best for fast text/image-to-3D asset generation with a generous free daily quota.
Substance 3D Painter
Best for teams who want AAA-grade texturing with one-click export to any engine.
Unreal Engine 5
Best for teams chasing top-end visuals, big worlds, and cinematics.
Blender
Best for any indie doing 3D on a budget; usually the first tool in the pipeline.
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