This AI Tool Looked So Good, We Thought It Was Fake

Hey, welcome to the Next Wave podcast. I'm Matt Wolf. I'm here with Nathan Lands. And today we're diving into the world of AI and visual effects. Today we're chatting with Nikola Todorovic, the CEO of Wonder Dynamics. Now, if you're not familiar with Wonder Dynamics, it's a tool that allows you to film yourself or any human on video and then re skin that video with like an AI generated or 3D CG character. So if you think of like Lord of the Rings and you've got Golem and Lord of the Rings, that was all acted by a human. And then special effects artists went in later and sort of reskinned it as a CG character as Golem. That's what Flow Studio from Wonder Dynamics does right now, and anybody can use it and it makes it super easy. And Nicole is actually going to demo exactly how to do that in this video. And make sure you stick around as well, because if you've got a business or are doing marketing or you're a content creator, we're going to dive into all sorts of use cases for you as well. So let's go ahead and jump in with Nicola from Wonder Dynamics.

Being a know it all used to be considered a bad thing, but in business, it's everything. Because right now most businesses only use 20% of their data. Unless you have HubSpot, where data that's buried in emails, call logs and meeting notes become insights that help you grow your business. Because when you know more, you grow more. Visit HubSpot.com to learn more.

Thanks so much for joining us on the show today. How you doing?

Pretty good. Thanks for having me. It's good to see you guys.

Yeah, thanks. You know, we were saying this right before we hit record, but the first time that we ever saw the Wonder Dynamics Studio tool, both of us thought it was fake. We saw the tool and went, I don't believe this. I think they're pulling our legs. And then we finally got our hands on it a couple weeks later and we're actually blown away that it did what it said it could do.

Yeah, I know. As I said, I think a lot of people thought that a lot of people thought we faked our demo, which is always a compliment, right when people think that. So it's actually a nice thing. But I gotta say, Matt, when you got access and data coverage, our team was really excited because a lot of people in our team for news on tech and AI and all that stuff, so they're really pumped that we got that coverage. Because we were working in stealth mode for about four years. Right. So one of those things with demos as well is you don't know what the reaction is going to be right when you're so close with something for so long. So I was very grateful to get the coverage we did.

Yeah, yeah, I appreciate it.

Yeah.

I remember I made a video where I was outside my yard and I was playing basketball, right? And then I switched myself with a robot. And then Elon Musk went and shared that video and said, maybe we'll have this in real life soon. I was like, oh, this is cool.

That's awesome.

So very cool. Well, let's get into your background a little bit. Like, how did Wonder Dynamics come to be? Were you in visual effects in Hollywood? What's the backstory there?

Yeah, so I always wanted to be in filmmaking since I was, you know, 12 years old and I come from a really small country. I was born in Bosnia. I lived in Croatia and Serbia all my life. You know, I couldn't really afford to go to a film school or something like that. But, you know, I started about 12, 13 years old, started watching YouTube tutorials, you know, video co pilot Andrew Kramer and those guys. You know, that was kind of my little VFX school. And, you know, I moved to US really to pursue career in filmmaking and, you know, started working as a VFX artist, as a compositor. First worked for, you know, freelance and a lot of different studios, you know, everything from ads to indie films. And then I started working as a supervisor and I met my co founder, Ty Sheridan, who's a young actor and a producer. And we really started writing together. We wanted to, you know, tell our own films. Usually whatever we wrote, it was, you know, sci fi with robot characters. So we really wanted to tell this story about the near future, you know, near future when we coexist with robotics. And every time we wrote something, we realized, all right, this is about $200 million budget. There's no way we're going to ever get that, you know, and then we started looking into a bit of AI. You know, first we built something that was more interactive nature. About 2018, we built this product where you can have a conversation with the character. So let's say watching a murder Myst and a little switch happens from a stream into a digital double. That's a 3D representation that you can have a chat with. And that's kind of when we, you know, it was cognitive AI, wasn't there yet. This is before ChatGPT and all this push, but we really saw a big opportunity in visual. We call it visual AI. There was no gen AI or any terms like that. And we said, okay, this is going to change production. So I always say, selfishly, we wanted to just do it to make our own films. So we're like, what's the worst thing it could happen? You know, and the worst thing could happen. We both concluded we're just going to learn what the future of filmmaking is before other people. So we kind of get a little head start. And then about six months in we realized, all right, this is bigger than just two of us. Let's turn it into a tool and a platform. And that's really how we started. We did a complete pivot bootstrapped first three years, you know, kind of trying to find your way what is it that you really want to do. And then, yeah, 20, 18, 19, we really focused on this and kept growing the team and kept building. Very cool.

What was the first prototype and like, what made you confident that you guys could actually build it?

Oh, you know, what was the first prototype we actually did if you know, the Spectre opening sequence in Mexico when James Bond walks on a ledge, we did that and test, we did kind of, you know, just focus on the mocap, you know, AI mocap. And obviously the quality wasn't even close to it. But then we really realized the potential, you know, was huge. You know, we really started looking more into kind of technology around, you know, self driving vehicles and robotics, which is all about, you know, understanding the world around you. You know, we call it scene understanding. How much can I understand what I'm seeing in the pixels? And really, you know, as a VFX artist, you're always trying to do that. You're trying to understand what looks real, what doesn't, what is it in 3D space from a 2D plate that I have. Right. So that's how we just kept building on top of that.

Yeah, I wanted to share too. You mentioned your co founder partner on this was Ty Sheridan. Anybody who's not familiar with them, if you've seen Ready Player One. Ty Sheridan's the main character in Ready Player One. Right. So you've probably seen him and not even and realized it, but very cool. I would love to dive in and actually take a look and show off to anybody who actually hasn't seen this product yet what it's capable of. So, you know, if you wouldn't mind sharing your screen and showing us some of the sort of sizzle reel of what this Thing could do. We'd love to just kind of take a peek and chat about that.

Yeah, absolutely. So I can guide you a little bit on some capabilities here. This is Flow Studio and we have about four project types right now, which is live action, which you mentioned earlier. And that's really tailored about having CG character inside a live action shot. And then we have AI motion capture, that's more just if I want to get the MOCA performance out of a shot. And then recently we launched something called video to 3D scene, which is more towards animation. But I'll show you quickly of how it works. We've really wanted to build an easy interface. So we have three steps. The idea behind Wonder was always how do I get someone who's not that proficient in 3D to also get in the 3D? But then also people that are proficient, how do they use it in their existing pipelines? This is a big issue I saw in Generative AI even early on it was a lot of black boxes. You get certain results, but you can't really push it and edit it. So we were from the get go, we said, okay, it's not there yet, but if I can get 60% there, what is the data I can get out that I can then plug in in existing tools and push it there? Because as you know, you know, being an artist is all about control of every single element. Whether you want to control your performance or animation, or you want to control the camera or lighting, et cetera. So that's the idea behind it. But I'll show you a quick kind of workflow on that work. And then the other thing we wanted to do, we wanted to not just work shot by shot, but we said, let's enable it so it works in a sequence. So I'll show you quickly a couple of shots that you've probably seen. But it's good to show so you know, a bit of another related shot. And then we have one with couple of connected shots with the same actor. So let's say I'm happy with my edit. I would go on my next. And then what I do is I scan frame for actors and then it looks for the actor in the shot. And then we have characters here that you can apply. You know, we have a couple of characters that we. A few characters we provide for people that don't have their own. But the idea is that you can upload your own characters. Right now we have a blender and a Maya add on to help you prep your character a bit easier in those so the idea was always create your character traditionally as you do, until AI gets there, that you can completely control it. So let's say for this first one, we'll assign this test crash dummy, and then I have my second shot and we'll come back to this one. And for this one I'll assign. We have this little alien character. So I'll just drag and drop. And then I have a couple of shots with the same actor. I don't have to go target for each one. I just need to target once. And then we use something called RE ID that's looking for the same actor in multiple shots. So let's say we'll do this also test crash dummy, and pretty much that's it as far as interaction, really, where the power of the software is. I can get a video out, but we say that's post vis at best. So it's just meant to show you where the AI worked, where it didn't work. Right. It's not meant to be your final VFX shot, really. The power is in these elements and the scenes. So I can export my mocap, I can export clean plate, alpha mask, camera tracked, and character pass. And then I can export a 3D scene out of it. So essentially what it takes, it takes that plate. We have about 25 models in there. And these models are everything from facial performance, tracking, body pose tracking, camera tracking, lighting estimation, and things like that. So then it takes basically from a 2D plate and puts it in 3D. In this case, let's say I'll export blender scene, and then something like this will take about 70 minutes to process. I have it from before so I can show you results, you know, and these shots are considered, if nothing, they're considered really easy VFX shots. So you're going to get pretty decent results out of it. Right? But for a trained eye, you're going to be like, all right, you know, obviously I can see a little leftover of the actor there, not happy with the lighting here, etc. So what I would do here is I would basically download my clean plate so my compositor can go in and clean what didn't clean well, you know, on the actor. But most importantly, I would really download these 3D scenes. So. So let's say I download this 3D scene. So clean plate, obviously pretty straightforward. You get image sequence of that shot. So obviously I can see the actor remaining. So my compositor will clean that up. But when it comes to 3D scene, essentially I'm getting each One of these shots in a separate 3D file. So if I open one, what happens is it takes that performance and it estimates the animation and the camera. So it actually tracks the camera and it tracks the animation. And then I have an option to download my path, which is my texture for the character, and I can download the clean plate, which would be my background. Then I can download textures of that character. Now I have that character as a texture also. But then I'm also going to add that background. Because that clean plate, essentially, let's say I cleaned it and I'm happy with it. That's basically clean plate is my background, right? Because it's 2D background. So essentially what that gives me, gives me that shot, right in elements. I need it. So I have full animation data in it that I can control. I have obviously camera, I have lighting info. So if I want to adjust my lighting right? So I would really continue my animation the way I do. So in this case, let's say, you know, I want to control to the smallest details. I want the character to actually look up a little bit higher. I can control that. So the idea always has been around. How do I not lose control as an artist, right, When I do things like that? So that's why the data you get out of it is really the main thing of what we did inside of FL Studio on that side. And then obviously, one of the things that we always get from artists is I don't need all the passes. Can you just give me a camera track and clean plates? So we opened these wonder tools as well that are essentially just these single models, because we have so many models running in the background. So these will do quicker as well. And let me show you a couple of other things that I think is interesting. You probably saw the demo we launched for animation use case. The idea for it was that if I have multiple sequences in one space, can I calculate my camera setups? So in this case, I have a shot, two shot that goes to one shot, another shot, and then it goes a little bit, two shot behind them. What it does, it actually calculates the footprint from those actors and the trajectory of the cameras. And then this is all one camera. But I just edited it, right? But what animation use case does? It really places it in 3D space based on the cuts. So it tries to guess where those cameras are. So it pretty much sets you up with a kind of virtual production inside of Maya or Blender just based on that sequence. So the idea was here was I also select my environment, not just the characters. But more importantly, what we wanted to do here is what if I'm in my living room and I want to frame my animation how I like it, but I also want to cut it how I like it. But I don't want to deal with each shot separately. I want to have that performance to be one continuous performance with different camera setups throughout the shot, right on the side. So there's obviously a lot of models working here together to try to calculate that. And one thing we saw is AI mocap, obviously opposed estimation is just one to two models out of 20. Something we have. But the problem is with kind of when you're doing markless mocap is you are only basically guessing position of joints and everything just based on an image, right? So once you lose an actor or they're occluded by another actor, an object, it's really hard not to have it break, right? So one thing we recently released after we've been building this for almost about 10 months to a year, is I have this issue is that anything you film as, you know, you're always going to have occlusion, right? So it's very hard to rely only on image. So we built something called motion prediction that essentially predicts motion if you lose the character. So if he sees it few frames before this tree, he will guess, okay, Most likely it's still walking, right? Or if he only sees half of the subject, it's still going to guess what it is. So in this position, I see upper body. Most likely it's sitting. So I'm going to set up my lower body. Why is this important? Because for live action, you kind of only care what you see in a frame, right? Because that's what you framed it. But for animation, you really want a full 3D body pose for that. So you can control everything. And it's going to affect your animation as well. So another thing also it does is if I go in a close up and you only see the top of the body, it will float, right? The bottom part will float, as you can see here. So even if he only sees the upper body like that on a close up, it's still going to generate what the bottom body is doing, right? And that's important for any animator, right? They don't want to be doing so much cleanup when the thing break on the side. So that's a couple of things we had added recently that really came as a natural flow of things that we were looking to add for artists to.

Very cool. I'm curious, how has the sort of reception been to this in Hollywood. I know, you know, there's obviously when it comes to AI in general, there's a lot of sort of fear around job loss and things like that. How has the reception been?

Yeah, we were very cautious about it. I think, if you notice in our demo, I always say we don't generate art, we're accelerating. Right. It's still the artist that made that character, still the artist that made the environment. It's still. We're picking performance from the actor. Right. So we were very cautious about how we build it. And obviously, you know, we're a bit different also because, you know, everything we train on is synthetic data. You know, because we're not generating art, we didn't really have to rely on scraping the Internet or similar. So, you know, the way we started, we also had some really big names on a board, you know, from Russo Brothers to Spielberg, et cetera. And Ty's an actor. So we come from this space, from the entertainment industry. So as an artist, I saw the fine line. Right. It's a really tricky one. Sometimes you almost have to resist building certain things just because of that. Right. So. But you know, no question, how did Hollywood react? I think this example of OpenAI with the recent release, it's good example of how these reactions sometimes are very drastic. I've seen it early on, you've probably seen it 2023, a lot of panic around it and how things are trained. And then it calmed down a little bit and it comes back up.

Yep. Seems to be waves for sure.

There's waves? Yeah, there's waves. I would say, you know, we see a lot of innovation and a lot of directors that really accept it because it gives them an opportunity to make things quicker and iterate quicker. We see people that are scared of it mostly, sometimes lack of understanding. Again, flow Studio is a bit different. So we're in this interesting intersection where we went through a bunch of studios we worked with. We had to go through rigorous security processes and stuff. So the fact that we're not generating art is always something that is a big relief. Right. But I've also seen studios, some accepting Gen AI, some not, you know, some can talk about it, some cannot. So but for me, we really did build this for indie artists first and foremost, even though we have studios as customers. You know, I always say studios will be okay, they'll figure out their way no matter what the change is. To me, what's exciting about AI and I think for a lot of people is it is a Very hard industry to break into. You know, I got a lot of luck on my side. Took me many years to break in the industry. But I know a lot of artists that are way better artists than me that didn't have these opportunities. Right. So I think that's why people are excited, because you really going to open up opportunities for people to tell stories. And maybe I'm a little bit naive, but I don't think storytelling should be tied to any kind of socioeconomic status. It really. Storytelling is too important for you to be a good salesperson or meet a producer to be able to tell your story. Right. So to me, it's like, you know, it should be a clearer path and easier to tell stories. So, yeah.

Nicholas. I spent a little bit of time in Hollywood, so I was partnered with Barry Osborne, the producer of Lord of the Rings and the Matrix. And we tried to create a movie studio together. And the same thing you're talking about, like, you know, it takes like $200 million to do a film with big special effects. I was like, this is nuts. If you want to, like, start a new studio, you're talking about, like, raising hundreds of millions of dollars. That was what I found exciting about Wonder Studio. Just imagining, like, in the future, small independent creators, whatever's in their head, they'll be able to get it out of their head and on film, which just has not been possible before.

Yeah. And Nathan, you know this well, I mean, there's so much sacrifice from a script. It's very hard to write scripts. You know, I used to write and I still write. And to me, sometimes I say starting a company might be easier than writing a script sometimes. But you know, how much sacrifice you go from a script, what's on paper to what's on screen. There's always, you know, as they say, like, you can push that imagination to the screen. There's so many technical challenges, and I don't know, to me, it's a little bit ridiculous. Ty and I always joke when we walk. I think we were in San Francisco and we're like, how much do you think that building cost? And we look it up, it's like $40 million. We're like, someone makes one movie, that's three of these buildings, spent three years and then has a weekend to potentially get the money back because they have to make double that amount. It's such a broken system. I mean, think about it from a standpoint. If you're starting a company, a startup, if you have a startup that you built for five years and you put $200 million and you only have that weekend to get your money back. And you have no control of what's going to happen that weekend. Nobody would fund it. Nobody would fund it. So I had a friend that said he's like, the difference between a tech and a film industry is that in tech space there's obviously much more capital. And film we do because of love and occasionally a hit here and there. Yes.

It's also like sexy to be involved in. Right. Like some people invest because, like, if I get my money back, that's cool. But I get to be involved in. Around Hollywood, but slightly how I got involved through friends in Silicon Valley, actually.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, it's such a. Such a passion thing, Right. Storytelling is very important. You know, I was fortunate enough to work with a lot of people that are really, you know, not in it to become famous or anything. They're in it because they really believe their story can make a difference. And that's novel to me. So that's one of the reasons I came into it as well. Very cool.

You mentioned that some of your clients are big studios. Are there any films out in the wild or maybe even stuff in production right now where this technology is in use?

Yeah, we have a lot, but unfortunately we have hefty NDAs that you can imagine.

No AI involved in any of the films. Okay.

Unfortunately, we do have some. That one I really like. Voxel Studio, did Superman and Lewis and they did this case study. They used it for it. So that's one of the public ones that, you know, see for a TV show. And it's very cool. I like those guys at Boxer Studio. They're really innovative. They're like throwing a lot of tools and playing with it and combining and being more efficient on a turnaround. But obviously, besides film and tv, we've also seen it being used in gaming. Also marketing a lot of brands as well on that side. And then obviously a lot of content creators, kind of individual content creators. And what's exciting for me is we saw early on people that don't know what rigging is or what they would get into 3D and start learning. Cause it seems easier, right? Because to me, 3D was always. I used to do compositing. And then when I switched to 3D, I was like, this is so overwhelming. It's so hard to start. It's so complicated. CG is so slow. So I think that's the beauty. If we can make it easier for people to get in the field. And not be so scared of even going that way. As you said, Nathan, it's like sometimes when you look at the process, filmmaking process from the outside, you're like, oh, my God, this is so hard. This is so scary. Right?

Yeah. I got a tour of Weta and also got to go backstage when they were working on Mulan for Disney and got to see the early special effects and things like that. I was very intimidated. Like Silicon Valley. I was like, there's so much money involved and it's so hard to get involved. I wish I could just be like a. Just raise like 5 million to be able to create, like something cool just out of my own head versus having to depend on some gigantic studio like Disney.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think a lot of people feel like that. And also I think a lot of artists are introverted as well. So it's very hard for you to go and pitch a project or go in a room and try to ask for money and things like this. So a lot of true artists I know are brilliant artists, but they're just not good at that part of the game. And unfortunately, today you have to be good at both parts of the game. So I do see a lot of benefits. When we see this AI, I think obviously it's not there yet, whatever tool you're looking at, but it's getting there. I'm excited. And also it's going to be much more global. It's going to be much more global. Right now. It's still very local. You have to be in certain part of the world to be able to get funding or greenlit on a project.

I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are on, like, AI Video, because I imagine using something like Wonder or. What are you calling it now? Wonder Studio. Or maybe it's Wonder Dynamics or Flow Studio. Flow Studio. Imagine using something like that and, like getting the shot I want and then going into some kind of AI video tool in the future and like spicing it up and changing it.

Yeah, yeah. We've seen people do it the other way also. We've seen people generate AI video and then getting that to use that for animation source so they can run and get mocap out of it and then get a 3D source out of it.

Right.

So we've seen it both ways. Yeah, we've seen it both ways. My problem still with AI video, I think it's going to get there, but it's really that editability because it's too general. I'm a big believer in separation of elements like I have to control my character, but I have to control individual elements of my character. Whether it's hair, whether it's eyes, whether it's right. And then I'm also a big believer. You can't prompt the performance. Performance is too subtle, especially reactions. Right. If you look at your reaction now, Nathan, I can't describe what you're doing to the word right. It's very, very subtle. And every actor is going to do it differently. So I do think this multimodality is really where we're going. You know, even though we marketed this kind of animation and live action, we really are building foundational models so we can add these models on top of it that can help us get consistent in spatial awareness. It's a big issue, as you know, because right now with AI video, you can get a couple of good shots, but if I go from a Y to a close up and then do five step and then I cut to another shot, will it really be consistent of how much space event? Right. This is the limitation of the training data, really, because these AI video models are trained on a 2D video that doesn't have this 3D awareness, the world awareness. So we're seeing a lot of companies now understanding that we've been from the beginning kind of making a bet of let's build this world synthetic data. And so we can then have this consistency in 3D space, but then we can also control it. But as I mentioned, I do think it's going to take a little longer than people think. So the pipelines will not change overnight, at least for professionals. You know, you still need passes, you're going to still get notes, you're going to still have to control every single element of your video. So I think it'll get there. It's just, you know, right now it probably is going to get used a little bit quicker on social media, maybe advertising and et cetera. And then we'll see where we end up with copywriting. Because a lot of people that want to make commercial thing still can't touch it because it's still being, you know, to be determined, you know, is fair use a real thing or not a real thing. So we'll see what happens.

Yeah, I still really feel like none of the AI video tools have nailed character consistency. You know, I feel like a lot of them are starting to claim that they've got character consistency now. But you watch them back and you're like, do they really, though?

It's a hard problem.

Yeah, I don't really feel like they have. I do like that workflow though, of using something like Flow Studio, generating sort of what you want to see and then sort of doing like a, you know, a video to video sort of AI transfer. That kind of stuff I think is going to get really, really cool. Especially, you know, I know early on when I first heard about Flow Studio, when it was Wonder Studio, I remember the corridor crew guys, they did some content around it as well. And those guys also did this big video where they were trying to use AI to make an anime film. And Yeah, I mean, how much easier has that gotten now, right? You can actually use stuff like Wonder Studio, Flow Studio to actually go and, you know, create all those scenes now, run them through a video to video workflow and get a very sort of consistent look. So I think these workflows are really, really improving right now.

Yeah, 100%. That's one thing we also want to do in a sense of like kind of having at least that look, that sort of post vis and then really push it. I think the kind of rendering approach will change. We're going to see a lot of change in it. I love what companies like Pika and Runway and Loom and those guys are doing, and it's really cool and it's progress. But I think what's really exciting for me is that before this AI boom, you had VFX studios that had engineers, maybe 30, 50 on a big studio, right? And that's who was building these tools. A bunch of these major tools like Nuke came out of Digital Domain. It was engineers and TDs inside of these VFX houses that had to solve a problem. And then they built a software that ended up being a global software. Right. But now you have millions of people working on these tools. So the pace of innovation is such a growth that we're seeing. So that's exciting. I think we're going to see much, much quicker. And I'm excited also that content creation is such a main thing people are talking about. But it's also a little bit ironic. The idea behind AI and robotics has always been how do we help humanity not do monotone things and focus on creativity, which really we're meant to do. And then the first industry in danger is creative industry. So it's like, okay, an irony, right?

Yeah. I've seen memes going around that are like, yeah, I want AI to do my dishes and fold laundry so I can be creative. I don't want AI to be creative, so I have to go do my dishes and fold laundry.

I know, I know. But I think also it's a bit like, you know, Nathan, as you said, if we can get quicker to a shot, we can iterate quicker. And really, to me, that creative aspect, you know, obviously you have to build it ethically. And I think we need to build it inside of our industry as well. I think the best tool will be built by storytellers. And it's a good question. I'm interested what you guys think. So do you believe that we're going to have a future because a lot of these AI video tools are generating humans? Right. Do we believe that five years from now all the celebrities and actors on the box office top five are all synthetic? Right. Are we going to be okay with that? I'm not a believer in that. I do think we love take like certain TV shows severance or things like this. We love talking about it because we also love those artists behind it. Right. We love their performances. So I don't know. I don't know. I have this conversation a lot lately. So interested to see what you guys think.

I mean, I've got my take on it. I don't know if it's the same as Nathan's take or not, but here your source. I still believe that, you know, humans appreciate the skills of other humans. You know, people go to live theater. I still go to the theater with my wife and we watch like, you know, Hamilton and we just watched a Harry Potter play. We're going to see Book of Mormon in a couple of weeks. Like, we still go to live theater. Even though movies exist, even though I could watch it on my home tv, Like, I still like that sort of getting to see humans be talented in front of me. And I don't think AI is going to take that away, personally. I think people are still going to really, really appreciate it. I can generate any song with AI that I can imagine now with tools like Suno and Udo and things like that. But I still love to go and watch live acts. I still want to hear music that I know was created by a human. And I mean, I do think AI is going to get better and better, but I think just the idea of knowing that a human created that is still an important factor to the list and to the viewer. And I don't really see that going away, personally.

Yeah, my take's pretty similar. Right. I do think we'll have a new genre in the future where it is like entirely AI video generated. You know, it'll be entirely AI generated and it'll be like Just crazy stuff that humans can barely even imagine. Especially, like in horror and sci fi and anime and some of these categories. I think AI Video will be able to do some stuff that humans just haven't done yet. Like, I've seen some things from AI Videos. Like, that's more terrifying than anything I've ever seen in any horror film ever. Right, right. And so I think in some of those areas, it'll be like new genres or it'll, you know. But I think overall, I think you're right. I mean, like, the human performance is so important, but I think you'll probably start to kind of like, mix the two. You'll have human performances and then like, probably stuff with like, you know, Flow Studio and things like that. You'll, you know, integrate that human performance into having AI enhance it in other ways. Different special effects or changing the environment or things like that.

Yeah, I think so too. I think as long as to me, it's like, okay, if you're gonna have a character that doesn't exist in this world, it makes sense, right? Whether you're gonna do traditional CG or you're gonna kind of generate it. But if you want to just generate a human that doesn't exist, you know, that is where I'm a little bit like, okay, maybe we're gonna have few celebrities, like little Mikayla, if you remember. You know, it was like kind of cg, but I just don't see. And I also don't hope we have a future where. Because I know these technologies are starting like this, but really, you know, they're kind of same as we're doing with, you know, getting facial performance. Like, you want to transfer that performance and drive a character by human performance. That's why I don't. I think multimodality is really where to go. But I hope we're not in a future where, you know, certain actors are kind of licensing their likeness and sitting at home and doing five production at the same time. You know, that also, to me, it's like a bit of a scary future that might happen. You know, some people might do that.

It could. I mean, so like the one possible positive there, if that actually technology does get that good to, like, recreate, like, human performance. You know, you imagine someone like a Quentin Tarantino where they're like a control freak. Well, now they can really be a control freak and actually control, you know, really control their actors. Like, they want to, you know, like here, you know, virtual character, do it exactly this way. Oh, you didn't do it.

Right.

I want to tweak you a little bit.

You know, I'm going to be really.

And so on that side, I kind of find that except exciting, but I'm not sure if we'll get there.

Yeah.

But I also feel like a sort of future, like, that could lead to just, like, too much choice, that the cream kind of has to rise to the top. I mean, if you look at, like, streaming services right now, you've got Netflix, Hulu, Disney, hbo, Max. Like, the list goes on and on and on. At any given moment, you have 2 million options of something that you can watch right now. Yet we still all talk about severance. Right. We all still talk about Breaking Bad in the office and some of the cream that rose to the top. And so I think if you kind of hit that future where, you know, the rock is in 17 releases all in the same month, there's going to be a lot of slop mixed in there and the cream will have to sort of rise to the top. Yeah, I don't know. I don't see that being a future that, like, the majority of people want.

Yeah, no, I agree, too. I mean, similar when digital cameras came out and DSLRs came out, right? Everybody's like, everybody's going to be a filmmaker. But I do think the artistic eye, and I see it with, you know, artists and wonder. You know, we, you know, we have internal artists and we worked on some projects and some big films, really. And you can see how it takes so much time to train artistic eye. It doesn't matter that your tools sped you up from a week to a day. You still need to recognize when a shot is good, when something's good and let's say shot, maybe recognition when shot being good is going to be easier. But when the story is good, when your beats are good, when your performances are good, right. That's really hard. That's what I learned. Like, you know, Nathan, you can probably back me up on this. Like, if you look at your work 10 years ago, you can be like, I can't believe I thought this was good. I can't believe I actually showed this to someone. It's embarrassing, right? So I think that's what really comes down to, you know, doesn't matter what tool it is. Like, can you recognize when there's a good story that you made? Is this shot and sequence work together? Right. Does this, you know, structure of your story work together? So that's why I think I agree with you, Matt. I think it's going to be, you Know, kind of like what happened with music as well. You have everybody can release their own song on Spotify and self release, but it's one is you're gonna get, as you say, like the cream on top. But I think also marketing is gonna be such a hard thing. Like who can break through the noise. Right, Right. Because it's really hard to break through the noise on the side.

So I hope it doesn't happen like music though. So I feel like music's been a horrible spot for a long time. So when you say that, that's like kind of terrifying to me. It's gonna be like music. It's like, oh, it's like suck for like 30 years. Okay.

That'S funny. But I do look at Lord of the Rings is a great example. You've got Gollum in Lord of the Rings and we know that a human played all of that behind the scenes. Right. You can actually see the emotions in Gollum. You can see that acting come through, even though it's sort of a CG character overlaid on top of that. And something like what Flow Studio does now is it kind of democratizes being able to do that for more people and more companies, like smaller budgets can do that same kind of thing now.

Yeah. And that to me is exciting. Regardless of wonder. I think in AI in general, I think if we can get more people, We've had when we launched especially a lot of smaller production tell us, hey, we had this project forever. We're a team of seven. We could have never do it. Thank you so much. Now we can finally do it. And that's so rewarding. You know, as a founder and a storyteller, it's very rewarding to hear that because you're like, okay, I made something that, you know, we made something that people actually can do something they couldn't before because of the financial constraints. And it's nice to hear.

Yeah, absolutely. I want to go back to something you said a little bit earlier in the conversation. You mentioned that you've actually been seeing it used for marketing and by content creators. And our audience on this show specifically is a lot of those solopreneurs, small businesses, content creators, that makes up a lot of the audience. So I'm curious if maybe you can share some of the like ways you've seen it used in those worlds.

Yeah, I think a lot of it's been used by people. Well, let's maybe separate YouTube and some other social media platforms. We've seen it on a lot of use on kind of VFX creators. Like you have a lot of these at home VFX creators that do incredible things. And I love seeing that because again, going back to video copilot Andrew Kramer, that was my intro in visual effects. I saw someone who was producing and making things that inspire you to follow. So we see it a lot in kind of this short form content where people are creating content with CG characters or they're just doing it to drive their camera or something. They need out of the two elements. And then on YouTube side. Actually, we've also seen it a lot on obviously 3D content creators. There's a lot of subcategory on YouTube of 3D content creators, pretty large. We also seen it a lot of kids animated show, which is cool to see, you know, kind of some of these mainstream kid animations. I think the reason why it lends itself naturally to YouTube as well is because you guys know this well. My release time in a film is two to three years. My release time in a TV show is a year to two. My release time on YouTube is a week. Right. I can't really do CG much when I only have a week. Right. And you mentioned corridor crew. That's what they do, you know, two, three weeks. They release a new video. And it's so impressive how quickly they do it. I mean, I remember I was in some indie films and you can't afford to do any Roto because your budget's only 10 million. And you're like. And the producer is like, no, we just can. We can't even do roto. Not alone green screen. And then you're so limited, you're like, wow, like I. 10 million is little. 10 million. When you tell someone who's not in the film space, they're like, 10 million is a really small budget. They're like $10 million.

Like, are we talking dollars?

Right? So that's that concept. And I think this new generation of, you know, YouTubers, they're just. They're just so crafty and they move much quicker, right? And so they find the tools, they combine a couple of tools and they're releasing content. So I think that's what's going to happen. I think we're going to see a bit of shift of like, you had big studios, they're only one that can do big visual film. And then indie films cannot. You got a more grounded, more like live action. And then you have, you know, your social media content creators. I think what's going to happen is like, your indie filmmakers are going to be able to produce now major visual stories. But to me that's exciting because now you're going to have grounded stories like more character driven stories that you can make higher risks because studios cannot really risk. If you make something for 200 million, you can't really make an art piece.

Yeah. Finally can explore new ideas. Like films have been repeating the same things with barely any new ideas for a long time.

So yeah, you said that Nathan, you said that.

It's the same thing in the game industry. Same thing in the game industry. So in both of those I'm excited for AI to of bring new ideas hopefully.

So I do think like that where indie filmmakers are we're going to see kind of this social media content creators really push it more. So they're going to be creating and then I think studios will just push it higher. So that's really exciting for me. It's like kind of like we're shifting where everything was a little step forward. Right. And you know, I don't know, I've seen some in AI video space as well. I've seen some things that are so creative. You're like wow. Because if I had to do this traditionally I would have spent so much time. And then during that process you still have to keep that vision and then creation of some element will take you forever. Animating with hand, everything will take you forever. So you might not actually keep that original vision because of the limitations will push you back and you might change, you'll sacrifice. You do something so kind of that artistic. I guess instinct works fast when you're ideating something you're like ooh, got it this right. But sometimes that comes and then three months later you're still trying to work it and now you question it million times. You're like is that really what I wanted? Maybe this is better and then this I can because I don't have money, et cetera. So yeah.

Have you seen like any like brands or you know, e commerce companies or you know any sort of like marketing use cases where maybe they've you know, had a alien selling their product or something like that? I'm just curious about some of the like really fun sort of marketing.

It's out of this world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

We have seen a bunch of it and we can recognize our characters and our characters. We open it free for license wise people can download it. So we've seen it and sometimes it's going to pop up on my YouTube as an ad and I'm like oh, that's our robot. I've also seen ads on my Instagram where they're advertising a tennis game. And you know those ads on Instagram where you see it and it looks so good, then you download it. It's nothing what they advertise. It's like, not even close. Right. I've seen one. It's like tennis game. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure this is Floor Studio. I'm pretty sure this is ours. Because I can recognize animation. I can see where little clean play didn't go fully. And I can also. I'm a tennis player. I can recognize this is real footage. This is based on real movements. This is not someone animating it. So it's funny. You see it in those aspects. And then we've had some major brands also that we worked with closely that did it with certain characters as well. So it's been fun. I think advertising makes sense because you have a lot of kind of spokesperson like Geico, but not every brand can afford spend that much money because Geico traditionally is known how high production. And I love those ads. Right. But it's not cheap to make. So, yeah, it's been interesting to see how some of the ads. But some of the ads are just also kind of terrible.

You're like, all right, I actually think that's a really smart approach. I think companies should start making their own little mascot. And then, you know, like the Geico Gecko mascot or Tony the Tiger kind of mascot and start using something like Flow Studio to have that be their brand representative.

Yeah.

It's safer than having a person. Right. You know, the person could go off and say some crazy things on social media or whatever.

It's not us. It's not us. It's the lizard. We didn't say it.

But it's funny how we all remember these characters. Right. They're not real, but we all, as you mentioned, you know, the tiger gecko. There's so many of them that we see. What is the fox? The Carfax. Right. It's a fox.

You got the Jack in the box Jack character.

Yeah.

So it's interesting how that stays with us.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is sort of the last little rabbit hole I want to go down with you. And I don't know how deep you want to go on it, but I'm curious about the relationship with Autodesk. I know you guys were recently acquired by Autodesk. How did that whole thing happen? Was there a reason you decided that they're the people we want to work with?

Yeah. Always happy to go down the rabbit hole with you, man.

How big was the check?

Well, I'd say we started the Autodesk partnership maybe a year before acquisition. And we did it because we knew a lot of our users used Maya. Obviously, Maya has been a leading tool in animation and character creation for so long. So we spent a year working with them and Diana, who runs the media entertainment part of it, we kind of really aligned on the vision. And then one thing that was really important for me is you always had this perception as a startup founder. Like once you go into corporation, they're going to tell you what to do. It's going to be like they're going to turn you an add on or whatever. So from the get go, Dana is very honest in like, hey, Roadmap's your product is yours. I believe in your vision. You're still running it as your startup. And that really has been true. And every decision has been our team and mine on what we're building, what the roadmap is going, how the product's going to look. I mean, I just showed you we use Blender as one of the outputs. We actually doubled down on that. We were like, let's have an open ecosystem. So I've been very fortunate on that side, I got to say, because I had a lot of friends as founders that really went into a bigger company and kind of lost that control completely. So from the get go, Autos came to us and said, hey, you guys been building this for a while. We want to learn from you guys and we don't want to be steering you in certain directions. We really want you to be independent and we like the product and you should build the platform and the vision you have. So we always went with like, here's my five year vision. And you know, so far that's been really supported on the side. And to us it made sense because we are big believers in 3D. You know, like you have your AI video, but I do think that 2D 3D approach is needed for one another. You know, that kind of consistency, whether it's latent consistency or you're talking a spatial consistency, it's a big problem to solve. And I think you need to be in 3D space and I think you need to be in 3D space to be able to control it. What I've seen is a lot of startups is this, they come from research space, they create something that generates and then you're like, okay, how do I control animation? What's a rig? How do I Control a body. Oh, how do I control a camera? So they're kind of learning the film terms as they go, Right. They research first and then the film term. We went kind of bottoms up. I'm a big believer in like, okay, I have to be able to control the camera in an inch, I have to be able to control the performance, and then I have to go back and forward a lot. So for us, that made sense. And also, as I mentioned earlier, I don't think the pipelines will change. I don't think it's going to be one AI tool that's going to replace it all. I think it's going to be a combo because they are built for a reason by very smart people for the past 30 years, right. In the industry and how the creative process works. So I'm a big believer it's going to be a mix. And also, we never wanted to build our product to be like, hey, I'm going to destruct completely. So that's what we built. Let us fit it in until some of this research gets better so we can take more part of the pipeline. But the control and editability being the main aspect of it. So that's where our vision's really aligned on that side.

Nicola, are you still going to make a studio one day?

We're still going to make movies, yeah. Ty and I are still writing. We're still looking at projects. Looking for projects to produce and also write and direct. So I'm still doing that. I'm still writing. I don't have as much time. Obviously, you know, running a company is not writing at the same time, but, you know, it's my passion. I don't think being a part of storytelling from one way for another, that's something I always do. Cool.

Awesome. Well, so is wonderdynamics.com is that the best place for people to go check it out and use it themselves?

Yes. Wonder dynamics dot com.

Cool. And if anybody wants to follow you personally, do you have any sort of social platforms that you hang out on, anything like that?

Oh, man, I'm not big on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm more of someone who, like, goes, you know, on Twitter and Instagram to follow things than to post.

Gotcha.

I'm not the best at it. I'd say Follow Wonder Dynamic Socials. Like, Follow Wonder Dynamic Socials. Yeah.

Awesome.

You're not gonna learn anything's too smart for my socials.

Well, amazing. This has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for demoing everything and going down these rabbit holes with us. We really, really appreciate it. And thanks for your time on the episode today.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, guys. I'm a big fan of what you guys do, and I think it's important that you're kind of educating people in this moving environment we're in.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thanks guys.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. If you haven't already, make sure you go subscribe on Apple or podcast or YouTube or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And also one last thing, this podcast is up for a Webby Award in the business category. So if you could do us a huge favor and go cast a vote for this podcast, we might actually win an award and we really appreciate it. So thanks again for tuning in and hopefully we'll see you in the next one.

Look, I am always getting questions from people on how I create my thumbnails, graphics and all this content at such a fat pace. It's AI, but I know that's easier said than done. Starting is the hardest part. Well, HubSpot has your back. They just dropped a step by step Guide on which AI tools you can use today to 10x your content creation process. If you've been looking to create content with AI, this guide is a total game changer. You can get it right now at the link in the description.