AI relighting. Rewrite the sun, keep the shot.
The take you have is flat midday and the scene wants golden hour. A VFX lab would quote a relight as compositing: roto, CG light passes, a week. Our AI does it in one pass: point a light-direction sphere at the clip, name one of twelve looks and eight directions, and the whole shot comes back with shadows, reflections and colour temperature following the new light, camera and motion exactly as shot.
Ocean plate · 5 s · relit by AI in one pass · the light-direction sphere top-right is the control
ProRes
What a comp team does in a week, the model does in one pass
We are not a VFX lab with faster artists. We are an AI lab: the tedious, per-frame work that fills a vendor’s schedule is done by the model in a single pass, and artists are spent only where judgment matters. The result is the same deliverable, in a day or two instead of weeks.
| The job | Traditional VFX lab | Pixazo AI |
|---|---|---|
| Changing the light | A reshoot, or roto plus CG light passes | One pass; shadows and reflections follow the sphere |
| Sequence continuity | Shot-by-shot grading and matching | The same sphere setting across the whole scene |
| Turnaround | A week of comp per shot, or a reshoot | 24–48h on a standard shot |
| Cost driver | Artist-hours per shot | Shot class; one free test clip gives the number |
Where the artist still matters: faces in close-up, interiors and anything that must match a reference still. Every frame is checked before it leaves.
Same clip, different sun
A second exterior plate through the same pass (the ocean plate is at the top of the page). Drag the divider. The light-direction sphere in the top-right corner of each output is the control, left visible here so you can see what drove the result.
Snow ridge, first-person · 5 s · look: warm golden low sun
Shadows that follow the light, not a grade
A grade changes colour. A relight changes where the light comes from. On the ocean plate the rock throws a hard shadow away from the new sun; on the ridge the footprints cast long shadows and the sky and valley take on the colour temperature. Spray, rock and wave motion, and the camera move, are identical in and out.
What actually comes back
You name the look and the direction the way a DP would, we return the plate. The controls are fixed on purpose: twelve looks and eight directions the pass was trained on with real exterior pairs, so the result is predictable rather than a prompt lottery.
| Deliverable | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Relit plate | EXR / DPX / ProRes, your frame rate and colour space | The full clip relit to the chosen look and direction, grain matched to source, guide sphere removed. The master picture is otherwise untouched. |
| Looks | 1 of 12 per pass | Hard directional · soft diffused · warm golden low sun, front or side · dim overcast · strong backlight with rim · soft hazy backlight · frontal sunlight, and more. Ask for the full list with the test clip. |
| Directions | 1 of 8 per pass | Front · front-right · right · back-right · behind · back-left · left · front-left. Set by the sphere, so it reads the same on every shot in a sequence. |
| Look variants | 2–3 versions of the shot | Golden hour vs. overcast vs. hard noon of the same clip. Cheap once the first version is approved; ask for them in the same brief. |
| Sequence continuity | Per-shot, same sphere setting | Every shot in a scene relit to one look and direction so a sequence shot across two days cuts as one afternoon. |
The question that decides the scope: is it an exterior? The pass was trained on real exterior pairs with matched lighting. Interiors, mixed practical light and night scenes are quoted as compositing, not as a relight pass.
AI relighting cannot do every shot
It is very good at daylight exteriors with a single dominant light source. It is not a general lighting rig. Knowing which you have saves a round of notes.
- Daylight exteriors. Coast, mountain, street, field, rooftop. One sun, open sky. Both samples above are this.
- Time-of-day moves. Flat noon to golden hour, overcast to sun, soft to hard. The most common brief, and the one the pass is best at.
- Light direction changes. Moving the sun from behind the camera to a side or back light for shape and rim, without a reshoot.
- Continuity across a sequence. Shots from different hours or days pulled to one look so the scene cuts as a single moment.
- Moving cameras and moving subjects. Camera move and subject motion are identical in and out; the pass does not re-render geometry.
- Interiors and practicals. Lamps, windows, neon and mixed colour temperatures are not what the pass was trained on. Quoted as compositing with a relight element.
- Day for night. Dim overcast is a look; night is not. True day-for-night is a grade plus a relight plus sky work, scoped separately.
- Exact matches to a reference frame. The controls are twelve looks and eight directions, not a free-form prompt. If the brief is
match this still
, the result will be close, and an artist takes it the rest of the way. - Faces in close-up. Relighting skin at close range is possible but is finished by hand, because a wrong shadow on a face is the first thing an audience sees.
- Water, glass and chrome as the subject. Reflections follow the new light on the samples above, but when the reflective surface is the whole frame, expect an artist pass.
What works in the brief: say it the way you would on set. Warm golden low sun from the back-left, soft
is a complete instruction. Make it look like the trailer
is a conversation, and we will have it with you on the test clip.
How a relight moves through
What moves the number
We do not publish a rate card, because a five-second ocean plate and a two-minute dialogue scene in close-up are not the same job. These are the drivers; the test clip gives you the actual figure.
| Driver | Cheaper | Dearer |
|---|---|---|
| Scene | Daylight exterior, single sun | Interiors, practicals, night, day-for-night |
| Subject | Landscape, architecture, wide and medium shots | Faces in close-up, reflective surfaces as the subject |
| Brief | One of the 12 looks and 8 directions | Match a specific reference still |
| Length | Under 10 s per shot | Long oners; sequences priced per shot class bring the per-second cost down |
| Deliverables | Relit plate only | Look variants, sequence continuity across many shots |
Faster than a rate card: send one clip, ideally the one the DP is least happy with. We return it relit and a firm per-shot number for that class of work. If you are already being quoted elsewhere, tell us the number you need to land under.
Frequently asked questions
What can AI video relighting change?
The sun: direction, hardness and colour temperature, with shadows and reflections following. You choose one of 12 looks and 8 light directions.
Does relighting change the camera or the motion?
No. Geometry, camera move and subject motion are identical in and out; only the light changes.
Can you relight interiors or make day into night?
Not in one pass. The model was trained on daylight exteriors. Interiors and day-for-night are scoped as compositing.
Is the guide sphere in the delivered shot?
No. An artist removes it and matches grain before delivery; it is only visible in the samples on this page.
How long does it take and what does it cost?
24–48 hours on a standard shot. We do not publish a rate card. Send one shot free and you get a finished result plus a firm per-shot number for that class of work.
Relighting rarely arrives alone
A relight is often the second half of a clean-plate or crowd job, and a sky change usually wants the light to agree with it. Isolating a subject from the new light needs a good alpha matte; archive material comes through restoration and upscaling first. For a single still, try the self-serve AI relight photo tool. All of it sits inside the AI VFX Studio: 15 production capabilities, 200+ models, human-finished on every shot.
Send us the take that was shot at the wrong hour.
One clip, no charge, no commitment. You get it back relit to the look you name, with a firm number, and you compare both against the cost of the reshoot.
Send a test clip12 looks · 8 directions · 24–48h standard shot · Artist-finished
