Will This Open-Source AI Tool Change How VFX Keying Is Done?

For pretty much as long as there’s been digital VFX, chroma keying and green screens have been a huge part of the industry.

And while technology has certainly evolved over time, and an endless number of tutorials and explainers have been made available online to help filmmakers and VFX artists with these tasks, it can still be quite cumbersome and annoying to pull off.

However, that might now change as the team behind Corridor Crew, a popular VFX YouTube channel we’ve covered many times in the past, has released CorridorKey, a new open-source AI chroma keyer that aims to solve some of the most complex problems in video compositing.

Corridor Crew Releases CorridorKey

Dubbed CorridorKey, this new open-source system has been designed to help achieve a clean, realistic chroma key for all types of challenging video shoots and edits. Green screening isn’t too hard these days, per se, but it can be challenging when the footage isn’t shot just right.

What’s cool about this CorridorKey solution is that, instead of producing a simple binary mask, it uses an AI neural network to reconstruct elements of the foreground color, allowing it to separate a clean linear alpha channel and preserve extremely difficult details with ease.

Released on GitHub, CorridorKey supports 16-bit and 32-bit float EXR files and can integrate with some of your favorite VFX workflows like DaVinci Resolve, Fusion, and Nuke. It can also process 4K footage using its neural backbone and only needs your original green-screen footage and a rough alpha hint to work.

Find Out More

As you can see in the video above from the Corridor Crew, developing CorridorKey does look like it was a fun problem to solve. If this is something you’re interested in checking out, you can access all of the files and more info on GitHub here.