Estimation Models

Today I’m showing how powerful estimation models can change how we work with images and video by giving us accurate approximations of aspects of image such as depth and normals.

Depth Anything

Depth Anything is a monocular depth estimation model developed by researchers at HKU, TikTok, CUHK and ZJU. This model creates a depth representation of an image based on an estimation of how near or far away objects in the image are from the camera. These kinds of depth images can be helpful in many kinds of visual effects work, like adding haze and fog to a scene, or dimensionalising archive photographs.

SwitchLight

SwitchLight takes this concept of estimating aspects of a given image and by utilising multiple models built for different estimations, creates a whole toolkit for relighting video. As you can imagine, these sorts of tools could be invaluable to compositors that often have to take things like green screen footage and make it work in a different scene.

SwitchLight: Production Ready AI Lighting (CVPR 2024)