SLAPSHOT, the AI-powered VFX toolkit from Hotspring, has officially rolled out its most ambitious update yet: a professional-grade AI Camera Tracking tool that can generate accurate camera solves and detailed point clouds in just minutes — cutting down a process that often takes hours or even days.

If you work in 2D compositing, this one’s a game changer. The new tool finally delivers what many artists have been waiting for: precise camera tracking that’s fast, intuitive, and production-ready. “A track that might’ve taken a day or more to do manually can now be done in under ten minutes,” says SLAPSHOT Co-Founder and CEO Jon Mason.

Camera Tracking Made Simple for Every Artist

The tool was built with accessibility in mind — whether you’re a VFX pro or someone who doesn’t touch 3D on a daily basis. Mason explains: “For people who don’t routinely work in 3D, camera tracking can be intimidating. It’s a very technical area, so it was really important for us to make it as simple yet powerful as possible.”

You can simply click “Solve Camera” and let the AI do everything automatically — no camera data required. Or, if you already have camera information, you can add it in and the system will use it intelligently. Either way, you get a high-quality, production-ready track.

Outputs include .abc and .glb camera files, .exr STMaps, undistorted .jpg plates, and a .mov playblast, all compatible with major 3D and compositing tools.

The system shines on the kinds of shots that make up most compositing work — background replacements, screen comps, sky swaps, and clean-ups — where precision matters, but speed matters more.

“This isn’t meant to replace expert tracking for heavy CG sequences,” Mason adds. “But for those medium-difficulty shots where a 2D track just won’t cut it, this will save artists hours, if not days, on every job. The speed-to-quality ratio is unlike anything else out there.”

Who It’s For

Compositors and 2D leads in commercials, music videos, and episodic projects.
Mid-size studios or freelancers without large CG departments.
Artists doing background replacements, cleanups, screen comps — anywhere the camera track slows things down.
People who’ve lost time to slow matchmoves or had to redo comps because the final track came in too late.

Behind the Scenes of a Breakthrough

Getting there wasn’t easy. “There’s no off-the-shelf way to do something like this,” says Mason. “We were building something no one else had done before, so it required coordinating and contributing at the highest level of the open-source AI community to make it happen.”

Now, Camera Tracking joins SLAPSHOT’s expanding suite of AI-powered VFX tools built to remove friction from the creative process and elevate the quality of output across commercials, films, and episodic projects.

By making high-quality camera solves possible even on tight timelines and budgets, SLAPSHOT gives artists the ability to deliver faster results without compromising quality.

The SLAPSHOT Suite

Here’s the full lineup of SLAPSHOT’s AI-powered VFX tools:

Camera Tracking: Generates dimensionally accurate point clouds and precise camera solves in just minutes, compatible with all major 3D tools.
AI Rotoscoping: Streamlines the traditionally labor-intensive task of isolating elements. Users can export results as EXR, JPG, or MOV files in hard or soft mattes — perfect for speeding up comp pipelines.
Generative Retiming: Predicts and generates new frames to extend footage by up to 200%, without artifacts or visual glitches. Just upload a clip, set the target length, and export.
Video Depth Maps: Produces stable depth predictions for creative or technical uses — from depth-of-field effects to advanced grading.

All SLAPSHOT tools are hosted securely on AWS, independently audited, and support resolutions up to 8K, meaning artists can work at high fidelity without investing in expensive local hardware.

Together, these tools create a new kind of creative infrastructure — a smarter, faster generation of visual effects workflows.

SLAPSHOT runs on a fast, efficient, and secure web interface, powered by robust cloud infrastructure compatible with the latest AI models. It supports resolutions up to 8K and removes the need for local high-end hardware.

A Toolkit Built by the Team Behind Hotspring

SLAPSHOT was created by the same team that built Hotspring, a globally trusted VFX outsourcing platform used by studios worldwide. Co-founders Jon Mason and Varun Parange, alongside Managing Director Ben Stallard, bring experience from high-end projects across Oscar-, Emmy-, and VES-winning productions.

Drawing from that background, they built SLAPSHOT to tackle the bottlenecks artists face every day — delivering tools that are production-tested and artist-approved.

It’s an approach that’s getting noticed: SLAPSHOT has been shortlisted for two 2025 Broadcast Tech Awards — Best AI Innovation (Workflow) and Standout Tech of the Year (Post-Production) — recognizing its fresh approach to automating and accelerating complex VFX tasks.

“There’s always been a lot of interest from our users in a camera tracking solution,” Mason says. “It was always just slightly out of reach. But once the research matured across a few different areas, we realized we could finally piece it all together. The stars aligned, and the result is something truly unique — no one has ever built anything like this before.”

Hotspring Managing Director Ben Stallard adds, “We built SLAPSHOT to solve the real-world problems artists face every day — the tasks that eat into creative time and production budgets. Camera Tracking continues that mission by turning a complex process into a ten-minute task.”

For more information, visit slapshot.ai and thehotspring.com.