On behalf of my product team at Adobe, I’m thrilled to share Project Felix, our latest evolution for graphic designers. Project Felix enables you to create photo-realistic composites with 2D images and 3D assets like materials, models and lights to produce high-quality images without cumbersome and time-consuming steps.

Composite created in Project Felix

What’s in it for me?

We talked to hundreds of designers about the challenges you face in modern compositing. Many of the traditional workflows just don’t cut it anymore. For example, you need to create realistic product shots where the product may not exist in the real world yet. You need the flexibility to make changes quickly, and generate different comps for different layouts and screens at any point in the design process. In addition to real scenes, you need to create abstract images for more creative compositions and surrealistic designs – and this all needs to look real…and exquisite.

We live in a 3D world and as designers, you naturally understand how lighting, perspective and depth looks. You know what looks good and what looks slightly off. And, sometimes it’s not possible to achieve reality when compositing only in 2D.

One way to overcome this is to use 3D elements as part of your composition. But let’s face it, working with 3D tools can be intimidating and take years to master. That’s why we are introducing Project Felix – a powerful tool created for designers that enables you to combine your existing skills and familiarity with Adobe tools with the benefits of working in 3D.

More goodness…

In this first early release, Project Felix brings you a focused workflow that lets you place 3D objects into any background image. We are introducing new and intuitive ways of working with traditionally complex workflows that will improve your productivity. Further, working with high-fidelity 3D models lets you adjust perspective, lighting and materials easily to get the final look you want. Users will also be able to experience state-of-the-art photo-realistic rendering inside Project Felix. This gives you the ability to iterate quickly resulting in stunning photorealistic imagery.

Design mode for Project Felix

Another design challenge we heard from you is the difficulty in obtaining content – particularly high quality 3D content.

Many designers don’t want to start from a blank canvas, or be forced to create their own 3D models. Project Felix makes it easy to get started. I’m really excited to share the news that Adobe Stock is introducing three new asset types to support Project Felix workflows. Today, we are releasing thousands of new, high quality models, materials and lights – all optimized for Project Felix. This is just the beginning as we will continue to build out this marketplace and add more, and even better content.

How can I get involved?

We debuted Felix at Adobe MAX 2016 as part of the keynote. Later this year, Felix will be available to download as a beta desktop app for Win 10 and OSX. The app will be in English-only at this first release, but will be available worldwide for Creative Cloud customers with a paid subscription. Learn more about Project Felix and how you can get involved.

What’s in Project Felix?

Our focus for this first beta release are key features that help you create photorealistic composites and optimize a basic workflow.

For example:

• Designer-targeted interface and focused workflows – everything we do is targeted for Designers. We offer optimized workflows and interactions balanced with familiar ways of doing things from Photoshop and/or Illustrator.

• Auto-Lights – Automatically create lights from your image so that your object looks like it naturally belongs in the background. In a single-click we automatically generate an environment (Image Based Light) for you so there is no hassling with complexities that working with lights could bring.

• Auto-Align to Image Horizon – Project Felix automatically detects the vanishing point or horizon in your image to save you the hassle of camera perspectives and alignment. Your object will scale and align realistically and proportionally with respect to the perspective of your image – in a single click!

• Magic Wand – Selections as easy as using the Magic Wand from Photoshop – but 3D aware! We use machine learning to determine logical edges based on the shape, curves, symmetry and patterns.

• Real-time Render Preview Window – Get the best possible ‘what you see is what you get experience’ while working with 3D using our real-time rendering preview. This gives you the best idea of how your design will look with respect to lighting, shadows and materials while you work so no need to wait for a final render.

• State of the art photorealistic rendering – Built with proven solutions from the 3D modeling industry, Project Felix comes with the most powerful rendering engine to date, allowing you to preview your changes without making you wait for a final render to export.

• Seamless workflow with Photoshop – Export to PSD layers and continue working in your favorite graphic imaging tool, Photoshop.

• Adobe Stock assets – Integrated access to high-quality Adobe Stock assets including thousands of new 3D models, lights and materials – all optimized for Project Felix.

• Adobe CC Libraries – With Adobe CreativeSync technology, users can pull assets from collaborated Creative Cloud Libraries like models, materials, lights and images – all directly in Project Felix.

• Physically realistic (MDL) material editing – Get the look you want with our rich library of materials. Easily customize any of them to get the exact representation of your design. Project Felix will have everything you need to get started but you can always download more materials from Adobe Stock.

For a high-level look at Project Felix, check it out:

What’s still to come?

Based on feedback we’ve received so far, we are already busy working on the following areas:

• Improved interoperability with Photoshop and Illustrator
• Easy label/decal application
• GPU rendering
• Working with basic (3D) shapes, modifying and combining them together to create abstract designs
• Vector and type extrusion for abstract design
• Support for more CC Libraries assets (color, vectors, etc)