AI wire & rig removal. Only the rig changes.
Safety wires, ropes, cables, light rigs and the glow they throw, painted out of the plate shot by shot. AI wire removal here is not one button: every element gets its own tracked mask, each one goes through the pass that suits it, and the result is composited back inside the masks only, so every pixel you did not ask us to touch is still the original plate.
Wires, ropes, light rigs and their glow, with sparks and a performer that must stay.
Each rig element tracked across the shot with promptable video segmentation. The performer’s hand gets its own mask.
Generative passes for large areas and lights; flow-based inpainting for thin lines.
Only masked pixels change, colour-matched to the plate. Everything else is the original.
Sparks the generative pass wiped are lifted from the original plate and screen-blended back.
Schematic of the per-shot pipeline · diagram, not client footage · plates we work on stay under NDA
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VFX wire removal, split by what each tool is good at
There is no single model that removes every rig. A thin rope over a busy background, a floor light and its spill, and a strap in a performer’s hand are three different problems. We run each element through the method that handles it, then composite the results back under fixed rules instead of trusting any one model’s output.
| The element | Traditional paint-out | Pixazo AI |
|---|---|---|
| Mattes for each rig element | Hand roto, element by element, frame by frame | Promptable video segmentation, auto-tracked across the shot |
| Thin lines: safety wires, ropes, cables | Clone and paint along the line on every frame | Flow-based temporal inpainting, filled from neighbouring frames |
| Light rigs and the glow they cast | Paint out the fixture, then fight the spill it left | Video-to-video regeneration that removes the light and re-lights the area |
| Pixels outside the rig | Untouched, if the artist is careful | Untouched by rule: results are pasted back inside the masks only |
Where people still matter: where a rig touches the performer, where a generative pass drifts the grade, and in deciding whether a shot should go to AI at all. Every result ships with side-by-side original/result QC videos for your supervisor to check against the source plate; shots with performer contact get an extra supervisor review on our side.
Rope, cable and light rig removal on a night fairground plate
Recently our AI VFX lab ran rig removal on real client test plates for a VFX vendor. The footage stays under NDA, so here is what was in the shot and what we did, without the pictures.
A dancer under a canopy, a night fairground commercial plate
The performer works under a canopy board with falling sparks around the performer. The brief was to remove a safety rope and a cable, floor LED light panels and a hand-held spot rig, glow included, a dark metal strap on the underside of the board that the performer grips with one hand, and the seams and folds on that board. The sparks had to stay.
The rope and cable went through flow-based temporal inpainting, because generative inpainting left coloured artefacts on thin lines over the busy background. The light panels went through a video-to-video regeneration that removed the lights and the light they cast. The hand on the strap was tracked as its own element and composited back over the paint-out, which took several iterations. The sparks the generative pass wiped were extracted from the original plate and screen-blended back.
A second plate, a puppet spider on suspension wires, was a wire removal job.
Client, production and brand withheld under NDA. No client footage or stills are shown on this page.
How AI rig removal works: six steps, chosen per shot
Not every shot needs every step. The per-shot assessment decides which elements go through which pass; the compositing rules in steps 05 and 06 apply to all of them.
What comes back: ProRes 4444, PNG sequences and QC
The cleaned plate in a form your comp can take straight in, plus the files a supervisor needs to sign it off.
| Deliverable | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cleaned plate | ProRes 4444 MOV | The shot with the rigs removed. Pixels outside the masks are the original plate. |
| Frame sequence | PNG sequence; EXR on request | Frame-by-frame for your comp, named to your convention. |
| Review file | H.264 MP4 | Lightweight file for review and notes. |
| QC side-by-sides | Original and result in one video | So a supervisor can check every removal against the source plate. |
What helps most in the brief: list every element to remove and everything that must stay, especially particles, atmospherics and anything the performer touches. Sparks, dust and haze are what generative passes remove by accident.
What’s hard in rig removal, and when we say no
AI paint-out is a strong tool for a defined set of problems. These are the limits we found on real plates, not a disclaimer.
- Safety wires, ropes and cables. Safety wire removal, rope removal and cable removal all start the same way: thin lines are masked, tracked and filled from neighbouring frames with flow-based inpainting.
- Light rigs, with their glow. Floor panels and hand-held or spot rigs are regenerated so the light they cast goes too, not just the fixture.
- Suspension wires on puppets. Wire removal with the same masking and compositing rules.
- Set-piece paint-out. Straps, seams and folds on a board or flat that should read as one clean surface.
- Shots with particles. Sparks and similar particles are restored from the original plate after the generative pass.
- Rigs the performer touches. A hand on a strap or other rig needs extra passes and supervisor review. It can be done; it is never a one-pass job.
- Practical lights flickering on the performer. On our fairground plate a lamp flickering against the dancer in the opening seconds could not be cleaned, and the delivery was trimmed to the clean section.
- Raw generative output. Generative passes can drift the grade and wipe particles. We never ship them raw: they are composited inside the masks and graded to the plate.
- Shots that suit traditional paint. Some shots are faster and safer with traditional paint and roto. When that is the case, the assessment says so.
The question that decides the scope: does the rig touch anything that must stay? A strap in a performer’s hand means protecting the hand as its own element, which takes extra passes and supervisor review; the assessment flags it up front.
How wire and rig removal services run
Help us get better on your kind of shot: if you can share before/after pairs from past paint-out work under NDA, they help us tune the passes to the problems your shows actually have.
Frequently asked questions
What can AI wire and rig removal take out of a shot?
Safety wires, ropes and cables, suspension wires on puppets, light rigs on the floor or hand-held, and set-piece details such as straps, seams and folds. Each element gets its own tracked mask, so wire removal and rig removal can be scoped element by element.
How does light rig removal deal with the glow, not just the fixture?
Large areas such as light panels are regenerated with a video-to-video pass that removes the light and re-lights the surroundings, so the glow the fixture cast goes with it. The regenerated area is then colour-matched to the plate and composited back inside its mask.
Why not use generative inpainting for every wire?
On thin lines over a busy background, generative inpainting produced coloured artefacts in our tests. Ropes, cables and safety wires go through flow-based temporal inpainting instead, which fills the line from neighbouring frames.
What happens where the rig touches the performer?
Contact points are the hardest case. The performer’s hand is tracked as its own element and the original or a regenerated hand is composited back over the paint-out, so the anatomy is preserved. These shots take extra passes and a supervisor review.
What formats do you deliver?
ProRes 4444 MOV and PNG frame sequences, with an H.264 review file and side-by-side original/result QC videos. EXR sequences are available on request.
Is every shot a good fit for AI rig removal?
No. Every shot is assessed individually. Some are better done with traditional paint and roto, and we say so. Some problems may not clean up at all. On one plate a practical lamp flickering against the performer could not be fixed, so we said so and trimmed the delivery to the clean section.
Rig removal is rarely the only fix on a shot
Moving people, vehicles and their shadows are a clean plate job. A performer you need to isolate takes an alpha matte, a new background goes in through compositing, and a plate that needs different light goes to relighting. All of it sits inside the AI VFX Studio: 16 production capabilities, 200+ models, human-finished on every shot.
Send us the plate with the rig still in it.
You get a per-shot assessment: which elements AI removes cleanly, which need extra passes, and which we would hand to traditional paint. Your plates stay under NDA.
Send a plateWires, ropes & light rigs · Per-shot assessment · QC side-by-sides
