Adobe MAX isn’t just about what’s now, but also what’s coming next. One of the highlights of any MAX showcase is the fabled Sneaks event, where developers get a chance to showcase their WIP passion projects. This is an overview of the 2024 edition and the nine Sneaks on offer.
Sneaks are not guaranteed to be made, or even considered in active development. But, if you love what you see, you can let Adobe know and they’ll consider making it an active feature. It might even end up as a key point in a keynote like Project Neo, which started life as a Sneaks project.
If the crowd reaction was anything to go by, we may be seeing all of these labors of love being moved into active production shortly. The developers were greeted like rockstars by the room, and rightly so when you see the line up. Let’s take a look.
Project Clean Machine is a tool designed to eliminate unwanted visual intrusions in both photos and videos. Whether it’s camera flashes disrupting a time-lapse of the Milky Way or unexpected overexposure from fireworks (both demoed on stage), this technology detects and seamlessly removes these anomalies, restoring the original scene’s integrity.
Any videographer worth their stripes—especially those shooting in uncontrolled environments like concerts or events—can tell you how quickly unwanted flashes and obstructions can ruin otherwise perfect footage.
Project Clean Machine automates the cleanup process, saving potentially countless hours in post-production, or having to live with a ruined shot. It ensures that the final video maintains visual consistency, enhancing the viewer’s experience without the need for manual frame-by-frame editing.
Project Remix A Lot lets you transform simple sketches into fully realized, editable graphics. By selecting a sketch and writing a prompt, the tool generates a poster or design that retains the original concept but enhances it with professional elements. It can also adapt designs into various formats suitable for different social media platforms.
Currently, this is aimed at a purely graphic design level, but video integration seems certain if production continues on the project.
The main video utility here, as it currently stands, could be to streamline the process of developing graphics for video overlays, title cards, and end screens. By quickly generating high-quality visuals from rough sketches, video editors can quickly generate unique ideas or concepts to use in any graphic lead design elements.
Or, finally, you can bounce back those vague client demands. Want to know what “it needs to be more fun, but also more serious” actually means? Get them to do a rough sketch of what that looks like, and it will be a usesable asset in minutes.
Project In Motion introduces an innovative way to animate shapes and designs using generative AI. Users can morph custom shapes into animations simply by describing the desired outcome or by dragging in other shapes, designs, etc.
It also allows for style changes based on text prompts or reference images, enabling dynamic transformations like turning a vector graphic into a watercolor or oil painting animation.
Animators and motion graphics artists could leverage this tool to expedite the creation of complex animations. By using natural language prompts, they can easily generate intricate motion sequences without extensive manual keyframing.
As someone who has lost days of his life to extensive manual key framing, I fully support this.
Project Super Sonic is a generative AI audio engine capable of producing high-quality 48kHz audio tracks based on text prompts.
Even more impressively, It can perform object detection within videos and suggest corresponding sounds, ensuring that audio elements align perfectly with visual cues. In the demo, it detected an alien ship taking off in a forest and created perfect sound effects to match the scene.
Additionally, it can modify existing recordings to match specific timing, tone, and dynamics while applying new styles. The example shown was the host roaring, not entirely convincingly, like a dinosaur. The tool created some dinosaur roars that would give Spielberg a run for his money, but kept the length and tone the same as the host's.
Audio is half of the viewer’s experience in video content. Project SuperSonic could entirely alter the way soundtracks and sound effects are integrated into videos.
By automating sound generation and synchronization, video editors can enhance their projects with professional-grade audio on the fly, perfectly matched to their needs In terms of timing, tone, and vibe.
Project Hi-Fi allows users to capture any part of their screen or input rough drawings to serve as guides for AI-generated images. By preserving the layout and dimensions of the original input, it creates detailed visuals that can be further refined in applications like Photoshop.
Storyboarding and scene planning seem like the obvious video utilities here. By turning rough sketches or screenshots into high-fidelity images, you’ve got a massive leg up on your pre-visualization and animatics. This can only accelerate the planning phase and help communicate ideas more effectively to teams and clients.
I can also see scope for background generation for green screen—or even virtual production technology—as the project progresses.
Project Scenic merges 2D generative AI image creation with 3D scene manipulation. Users can build a 3D scene layout using prompts, adjust camera angles, and modify objects within the scene. The tool then generates a realistic image based on these parameters, providing greater control over the final output.
The impressive demo involved creating a camp scene, and manipulating all of the details, such as the placement of the tents, the density of the forest, and deleting some chairs ruining the shot.
This was all quickly converted into prompt controllable imagery of the scene.
Another one that will massively help with pre-viz! But on top of that, Project Scenic also provides a new way to conceptualize and generate backgrounds or environments. By manipulating 3D scenes and then rendering them into 2D images or even video backgrounds, creators can craft complex scenes without extensive 3D modeling skills.
This could be particularly useful for virtual sets, matte paintings, or integrating CGI elements into live-action footage.
Project Perfect Blend focuses on seamlessly integrating people or objects into existing images. It adjusts colors, lighting, and shadows to ensure that the added elements blend naturally with the background.
While demoing, the host brought in four entirely different image sources, and had them all almost perfectly blended shortly after, with no manual editing required.
Compositing is a staple in video production, especially in visual effects and green screen work. This tool could automate the challenging aspects of matching lighting and color grading when integrating elements from different sources.
It also has the potential to entirely solve the Hollywood epidemic of badly photoshopping actors on to pre-existing photos to use in films!
A simple way to scan any video or image to see if it has content authority credentials from the Adobe Content Credentials app.
This one is more of an enhancement for the new content authority app and effort from Adobe, essentially serving as a ‘business card scanner’ of sorts for creative works. Point your camera at some creative work, and find out who made it!
You could find out how to work with them, where their work is normally showcased, how it was made, or even just find similar pieces of creativity to enjoy.
Project Turntable allows users to rotate 2D vector art in a 3D space while maintaining its 2D appearance. By simply dragging a slider, artists can spin their artwork as if it were a 3D object, providing new perspectives and creative possibilities.
This tool, and I don’t say this lightly. could be a game-changer for motion graphics and animation within video projects. It enables creators to add dynamic movement to traditionally static 2D assets, enriching visual storytelling.
In the short term, the main utility I can see would be for quickly animating logos, explainer videos, Infographic style videos, and potentially even a form of digital stop motion! But really, the sky would be the limit with this one if it continues to develop.
Seen a sneak you 100% NEED to have as part of your workflow? The process is simple. You’ll notice each one has been named with a hashtag. To manifest these tools into reality, all you need to do is make as much noice on social media as you can using that hashtag, and encourage others to do the same. That’s it!
So get out there and start hashtagging! We may even think about printing #ProjectTurntable t-shirts to spread the message...