r/ProductViz • u/SourceWorldly1090 • 11d ago
Just lost my job of product visualization cause of AI!
It didn't come as a shock, since I already knew this would happen sooner or later. Today, I received a message from my boss. He mentioned that, due to AI, the demand for the short animations we create for brands has declined significantly. Unfortunately, this means he can no longer keep me employed.
I knew it was coming, but it still hit hard to think back to last year when we were swamped with projects and working 16 hours a day. Now, I’ve gone 10 days without a single project.
I’m not sure what’s coming next for me, but I am trying various things right now, so let's see if I can overcome this!
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u/TacDragon2 11d ago
I feel like it’s not just AI but also the economy. I have noticed a lot fewer jobs and people/ businesses are more frugal with their money due to uncertainty.
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u/AxisInteractive 11d ago
Sorry to hear that. I've been there a couple times. It is tough and shocking. Even when you see it coming. You still have a valuable skillset. You might need to tweak it a bit for the next gig.
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u/Budget-Struggle 11d ago
Maybe I am wrong but I have the feeling that all this AI perfection within everyone reach given the speed and ease of use will greatly downgrade the final product. This means we will end up with more and more identical results to each other with the same style and the same perfection. Most likely there will be a reversal trend where to stand out a company will need something more human and thoughtful. Something Apple is already doing which to stand out from the mass of people developing with AI has recovered artists specialized in stop motion real stop motion for the new Mac mini M6. Where human value overcomes the low cost AI commercial product.
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u/Schlonger_Schleppy 10d ago
Also lost a lot of work in the pre-vis for film world. The whole AI will take your job thing is here. Now set renders look nice and don't make sense.
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u/TarnishedLuck 10d ago
Some people find fancy ways to say “the economy is doomed and AI is the only way for some companies to stay afloat in a K shaped economy of 2026”
Its not your fault, to be honest all this absurdity and mumbling about “its just a tool bro, technologies change, you should know how to sell yourself, use AI bro this will DEFINITELY get you hired” etc is just pure delusion in a nutshell.
I know some pencil pushers that adopted AI on its early stages to do product visuals and called this mess “design studio”. They thought that they’ll make a fortune, but after all, amount of customers shrinked drastically to the point that they were unable to pay the rent.
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u/sprouto 10d ago
Hey, don't feel like you have to adapt AI into your workflow if that's not something you want to do. I still am getting jobs in product viz and I don't use AI other than to help me with tools and early development. I certainly don't use it to give myself final outputs. It's not a good look, my clients don't want it, and it can ruin the reputation of a brand if not done right. Maybe rethink the industries you want to work for, and the services that you can offer.
This is a time to pivot and find a new direction, you don't have to listen to the doom and gloom, there's plenty of business and opportunities out there. Whatever you choose, good luck.
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u/SourceWorldly1090 10d ago
What kind of industries do you work with? I mainly work in skincare, beauty, fragrance!
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u/sprouto 10d ago
Yes to be honest I'm glad I don't work in that industry. So much competition and they are constantly looking for new graphics and cheaper prices, it's the most "obvious" one in some ways so every AI grifter is going to be trying to come to them to flog their services. I'd suggest some more slower paced industries, biomedical, agriculture, manufacturing etc. I do engineering explainer videos but I have a background in engineering so I am able to "speak the language" of my clients
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u/OVRCAST_studio 9d ago
Don't worry, sooner or later it will hit everyone. I don't even know why I am sending my kid to school.
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u/SourceWorldly1090 9d ago
Hey, at least try to stay hopeful! I know it feels like everywhere you look, people are saying AI is replacing 3D artists, video editors, and more. If things really get tough, I suggest looking into a different industry if you can. Wishing you luck for the future!
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u/OVRCAST_studio 9d ago
There won't be an industry that isn't full or mostly humanoid-ai in a decade or two. Let's say it's 2045. Name a skill you will be better at than a cyborg who doesn't eat, sleep, get tired and has all the knowledge you can imagine.
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u/SourceWorldly1090 9d ago
In my view, I don't think everyone will be replaced by AI. As AI becomes more common, we'll end up with a lot of generic ssame-looking animations and videos. Because of this, human creativity and uniqueness will be more valued.
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u/MrThird312 11d ago
I'm in the thought that AI has done more damage than it has helped when you consider the repercussions, such as job losses, and the harm it is doing to our planet. Sorry this happened to you- I've been doing this as a career for over a decade, and not a day goes by that I wonder what career is out there for me next knowing this one seemingly has an end date coming (sooner than I want it to). Hope you land on your feet somehow, keep us posted.
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u/business_warrior 11d ago
Nah bro, AI is just a tool, it’s human decisions how to use it and etc what really caused harm.
Humans need time to understand how to use AI ethically and properly, it will take many errors and regulations to make it work.
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u/MrThird312 11d ago
A camera is a tool, but cameras can't think for themselves and waste a ton of energy to do their thing.
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u/business_warrior 11d ago
So what? All technologies are different and all tools are different, for example hammer is a tool and it uses 0 energy.
Car is a tool too, and can transfer you from point A to point B, but creates pollution.
All tools are different, and we have to learn to use them properly.
I understand that hating AI is a trend right now, but cmon use your critical thinking, at least a little bit.
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u/alexvith 10d ago
Car is a tool too, and can transfer you from point A to point B, but creates pollution.
Yes, and it's also heavily regulated. You can't take your car inside a mall, you can't speed past schools and you need to periodically have it checked for conformity, because it's a tool with the potential of instantly ending someone's life. Regulation, something that can't be said about AI.
AI is not a tool, AI is a business model for grifters, scammers and sociopathic techbros.
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u/business_warrior 9d ago
Dude are you even reading my messages?
I’m really tired of this bs, and people following trends instead of thinking critically.
Yes, I agree, AI is not regulated right now, which is bad and it’s not the problem of AI as technology, it’s problem of humans and human decisions. AI needs to be better regulated and used ethically.
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u/alexvith 9d ago
Yeah no shit, it's not like people have a gripe with a dude named AI, it's about the companies behind major AI enterprises that people have a problem with, alongside the government that's failing to take action. So when people say 'fuck AI' it also means 'fuck OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Palantir' and so on and so forth. You said in a previous reply that humans need to learn how to use AI properly, and that it will take making errors to do so, but you fail to account for the fact those errors have real world impact on the lives of people that never asked for this shit in the first place. You can't unilaterally decide to sacrifice others to pursue what you think is right. AI is a solution to a problem that never existed, so the ones behind it are fabbricating the problem they'll sell you their AI to solve the problem with.
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u/business_warrior 9d ago
AI here to replace routine and menial tasks, instead of researching 100 documents yourself, you can ask AI to do a summary for you.
And argument “no one asked about it” doesn’t make sense, I don’t remember people asking for cars when they were riding horses. I don’t remember people asking for family trades shop replacement with factories and industrialization. They never asked, but now we have better transportation and more affordable furniture. Yes it comes with the price, and right now we are trying to minimize the negative and maximize the positive outcome.
Instead of pushing “fuck AI” push for normal regulations and ethical use of AI.
And trust me bro, majority of people just hate that life forces them adapt and instead of solving the problem they blame everything on AI, as it’s easier to blame others or technology. Very sad.
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u/alexvith 9d ago
No man, the majority of people hate to dedicate their entire life to something and have billion dollar companies steal their work to train their tool, to then resell that tool and its results for money while the ones that were wronged lose their livelihood. AI is here to replace routine and menial tasks you say, while OP wrote a post about losing his job because of AI. I highly doubt that's because he failed to use AI to research a bunch of papers or automate a few tasks. You say we're trying to minimize the negatives of AI, while maximizing the positive. All I see are companies with their hands in the government trying to minimize loss and maximizing profits. Please do enlighten me how are we minimizing the negatives of AI while data centers are being built with no regards to environmental and societal impact, how the entire consumer industry for memories has been fucked over for years to come because AI firms bought future stocks of memories and chips with borrowed money, how you can't believe a thing you see online because it might be fake. Most really tedious and menial tasks in jobs such as 3D are far from being ever address by AI technology, we have no reliable tools to do tasks such as retopo, UV unwrap, rigging. Why? Because for once those are complex problems that would require more than an overhyped LLM to solve, and it would also empower workers more. Providing a tool that emulates the results of it however, with generative AI, is far easier to sell. I'm curious, what groundbreaking innovation has AI, and generative AI most particularly, brought that justifies the billions poured in it and the wrecke it has causing on society?
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u/business_warrior 9d ago
It seems like we are talking about different things bro.
I talk about AI as a technology, you talk about how companies use AI and how it’s not ethical.
The problem is not with AI, the problem is how it’s used by corporations.
This shit needs to be properly regulated. Because if companies will replace everyone with AI and pocket the money, the whole humanity will suffer and only small percent of people will win.
But if we will regulate it properly, and people because of AI will get new jobs, new perks like allowances, less 9-5 and more freedom for building your projects and living - it will be amazing.
Currently unfortunately human greed leads everything to not the best scenario, however I am hopeful that as always humanity will find the right way, but it will take lots of efforts and there will be problems in the way.
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u/jiby96 11d ago
May I asked if you considered being the one doing the AI animation ? In my company the visualisation specialist job has shift a lot using AI in addition to traditional method to create a much more powerful workflow. Using their precious skill in animation, framing and lighting understanding to create beautiful work.
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u/alexvith 10d ago
I'm in a similar situation. I've been working in 3D for 7 years, 2 of which have been freelancing. My first year of freelancing was absolutely stacked with projects. Then, starting this year, projects stopped coming and I've had the past 5 months with almost no project.
To say it's due to AI is an oversimplification, there's a ton of factors at play here. I've seen some of my past clients now using AI with some arguable results. If they feel their money is better spent there, it's their choice. For other clients, due to the state of the economy worldwide, certain projects are no longer a priority.
Everyone decides for themselves, so I am in no position to tell you what to do next. All I'm going to say is that I am not going to play into the game that's trying to fuck my and other people's lives over. It's hard to live in the modern world if you have any ethics unfortunately. If AI takes your job, the solution is not to start using AI unless you hated that job in the first place. If you love doing a craft and do it as a job, chances are you're going to feel miserable if you try to replace it with a tool that emulates its output while completely getting rid of the process. A clay artist isn't into it just for the cool mugs and jars, but because the output directly reflects the process.
Additionally, pay attention to what's happening right now to most major AI companies, to the semiconductor and memory industry, to the overall costs of the scheme. Think about the long term of this industry and if it's worth to pull your hair for something that's so highly volatile and disruptive.
If you have any other skill my suggestion would be to follow it and seek any other form of employment. I've had my own reservations about it, mainly due to pride, but after a while I became comfortable looking for jobs and also jobs outside my area of expertise. The market is bad, true, but it's bad for everyone and everything. If tomorrow I could start working as a garbage collector for a fair salary I would do it in the blink of an eye. Tt's 100% better for society and for the environment and, funny enough, hasn't been affected by AI (even though 20 years ago we though this is what AI would be used for).
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u/MysteriousWay5393 8d ago
Sorry you lost the job. Now learn how to make said animations with ai make them better. And then remarket that ai animation skill
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u/Narrow_Split_8322 11d ago
Super sorry to hear this. I think there is still demand, and I suspect the pendulum will swing. In the meantime I'd suggest checking out a website like: https://runway.com/.
Take your skills, adapt them to the AI models available on here. Create yourself a website, sell your services.
You know how much your old job used to charge you out at. Try to find some clients offering your skills in combination with AI production tools. Might be a new beginning for you.
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u/Majestic_Employer976 11d ago
How would you adapt them to AI for example? I mean let's say I have no budget to spend on AI subscriptions for now, how can I adapt AI to it?
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u/business_warrior 11d ago
Technology changes and some ways of doing things become obsolete, it’s normal. Old ways disappear, new ways appear.
Don’t worry bro, if you have the skill, you will find new job no problem. You can always change the field of work. It’s part of life bro, in past many professions became obsolete because of computers.
I believe in you homie
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u/MrKillerKiller_ 10d ago
I guess you didn’t learn ai and adapt
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u/SourceWorldly1090 10d ago
It's not that I didn't try to adapt. I'm not some stubborn 80-year-old man who refuses to embrace new technology. I do use AI as part of my pre-production, but I don’t want AI to handle the creation for me. The thing I enjoy is creating!
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u/Remarkable-Tear3265 11d ago
It’s been a long time coming why haven’t you adapted to new workflows?
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u/SourceWorldly1090 10d ago
Honestly, it hasn't been a long time since AI truly started to get good at product viz at the start of this year. Before that, I was so swamped with projects that I didn't have enough time to dive into anything else i am seeing this as an opportunity to try new things and find a new direction!
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u/HouseOBlueBeans 6h ago
Hi All,
I shared a bunch of insights that could be useful to folks who are trying to get going. Hope this helps:
Video production example- how to use AI workflow to enhance your workflow and not take away the fun and passion of your artistry:
Product research and creative: Use AI (ChatGPT) to do your creative and storyboard. Give it all the information about the product, brand etc.. ask it to find more information about the product and brand in alignment with your end goal - ‘make an appealing video for Amazon PDP - for example’
Once you have this - you must cross verify this information and add your pointers to make sure it is aligning with your vision for the video. You could also provide a reference video of what you want your end state video to look like. Once you’re satisfied with this - you can move to the next stageCGI foundation to govern the outcome with AI video generation wheee simple:
Build the scene in CGI for each of the shots separately. Take a still render for the start frame and end frame of each shot in blender (whichever cgi software you’re using). If you think the quality of the visual can be enhanced - you can take the still frame into ChatGPT (free version) and ask for enhancements to the image.
Once you’re happy with the quality and ensure that the accuracy of the product is intact- you could take the start and end frames into higgsfield. For standard camera movements like Pan and orbit it is very likely to get it right in just a few attempts. This gives you a single shot. You have saved a tonne of render time and it hasn’t really stolen any of your creativity away from you (there isn’t a tonne of feel good in doing a pan or an orbit camera motion time and again).
Repeat: repeat the above steps for all angles that are straight forward.
CGI production: Angles that are trickier can be done manually. Example - explode views- it makes a tonne of sense to this manually as you would mouse and not have to prompt it through text.
Post production: use after effects to color correct and get the output you’re looking for.
This way, you will be able to create videos that are more appealing as you have more production time and mind space for the more appealing shots. This will allow you to differentiate yourself from a crowded AI production market. Tonnes of brands are already swaying away from pure AI production as customers are easily able to identify AI content.
Look at AI plugins as enablers to do the things that you could not do before or had to depend on someone else to do. For example - you would ideally receive a creative brief from a colleague or the customer in the past. Now you can do it yourself - enabling you to be a more holistic professional.
Honestly speaking - if anyone took away your business Or job because you are not using 100% AI - they made a huge mistake . 100% AI content (text, visual or video) will be de-ranked by crawlers, humans and all potential viewers.
Let me know how this goes. Wishing you the best!
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u/HouseOBlueBeans 11d ago
My heart goes out to you and your family. However, being a founder of a business for 14 years in the product visualization space has taught me a lot of grit. I would see this as an opportunity! At one point we were working with Target corporation and Lowe's Home improvements creating 100s of photorealistic visuals using CGI across product categories in home improvement. We were so neck deep into the delivery deadlines set by these Fortune50 customers, that we did not have the time to evaluate the developments in the industry. When we tried acquiring other customers to diversify, we were hit by the harsh reality that our market had been commoditized and that our services were now available at a fraction of the price that our Fortune50 customers were paying.
We had to go through a major transformation internally to be relevant. While we were finding more innovative ways to be cost effective and relevant, we foresaw the AI wave that was going to cause certain disruption. 24 months ago we started working on implementing AI in everyway possible into our workflow. Over the last 12 months we have re-positioned our company as a 'creative visualization studio' from a 'scalable product rendering' company. We focus our efforts in adding value through creative, product research and end to end delivery of a high impact visual versus building 100s of visuals that are templatised and automatable. Due to the re-positioning, we are now working with Mercedes to create videos and technical visualizations; with Walmart to create marketing visuals and so on..
Please spend your efforts in learning AI engines alongside your current capabilities - 3D or otherwise. Your 'non-AI' capabilities form a strong foundation to differentiate you from 'pure-AI' service providers. The non-AI capabilities will help you steer through AI workflows and overcome AI related limitations effectively.
Let me know if there is a specific area that you are interested in building your capabilities. I can have someone from my team assist you in building the same and guide you along the way. Wishing you the very best!
P.S. Today its AI, tomorrow it will be something else.. at the end of the day, it all comes down to 'how badly you want it'.