How AI Fits Into 3D Animation Workflows

Sam here at Motion, the agency. In this video, we're looking at 3D workflows. 3D work like that by Microsoft Copilot looks awesome, but historically has a lot longer turnaround time and workflow process in comparison to 2D animation. The good news is that AI is now helping improve and create a more efficient workflow. In this video, we're going to show you how we're starting to use AI to speed up rendering times and get those awesome 3D results. Normally, 3D production follows three stages. Modeling, animation, then lighting and rendering. This last step is where most of the time goes. And our new workflow keeps the first two because we still get to model and animate everything by hand inside of Blender. But instead of going through a full render, we use Nano Banana to generate a photorealistic initial frame, then feed that alongside the gray viewport animation into Plane 3.0. So the AI will use both as reference to produce a fully rendered video, basically skipping this heavy render entirely. So the craft is still there, but the tool just removes the waiting. But that being said, there are real limitations. With simpler objects and animations, the results are genuinely promising. But with complex models, the detail can get lost. Things distort slightly and longer scenes just don't always behave predictably. A human touch is basically still needed to refine the output, but it's still interesting to think about. So in the future, creating high-end 3D videos like this might become more of a creative choice, not just a matter of budget. And if you're curious about our full 3D motion design workflow, you can check out the link below.