You can now download Adobe’s new Project Felix 3D compositing tool

A few weeks ago, Adobe announced its Project Felix 2D/3D compositing tool at its MAX conference in San Diego. The announcement was one of the highlights of the event, but, sadly, the application wasn’t actually available yet. That’s changing today with the official launch of Project Felix. Sadly, you’ll need a paid Creative Cloud membership to get access to the bits — free Creative Cloud memberships aren’t eligible. If you do have a paid membership, though, you can now download the new tool here.

The basic idea behind Project Felix is that designers are now often tasked to create photorealistic images that combine a brand’s 3D assets (think models of logos, products, etc.) and a photo in the background. Project Felix lets you easily combine these 2D and 3D assets into a single, realistic-looking image. It combines quite a few of Adobe’s AI smarts with its existing image manipulation techniques. Felix analyzes 2D scenes to ensure that the 3D assets show the right reflections, for example.

It’s worth noting that Project Felix does have relatively high minimum system requirements. On Windows 10, you’ll need at least 8 GB of RAM and a Geforce GTX 770 or better graphics card. On macOS, the minimum is also 8 GB of RAM and either an Intel Iris Graphics 540 or GeForce GT 750M card, though here, too, Adobe recommends 16 GB of RAM or more. In my experience, Adobe isn’t joking here. I tried to use Felix on a machine that didn’t hit the recommended specs and, while it worked, I couldn’t see myself using it for more than a few minutes. On a similar system that easily hit the recommended specs, though, it worked just fine.

banana-hangout