Boxel Studio on how it balanced speed and scale for the grand finale of Superman & Lois and the challenges of shooting movie quality VFX on TV schedules.
We got sent this article in from PR contacts in the industry, who are looking to highlight the use of the Beeble.ai software in the VFX pipeline for relighting. It is interesting enough, and the way that it details some of the pressures in delivery that VFX studios now work under — hundreds of shots in three weeks! — that we're running it pretty much as it is. Ed.
Superman & Lois’ fourth and final season brought Clark Kent and Lois Lane’s story to a dramatic close. Produced by Warner Bros. Television and Berlanti Productions, the series demanded a climax where Superman’s battles with Lex Luthor and Doomsday reached their peak. To achieve that ambition, VFX house Boxel Studio was brought in to deliver the visuals.
With facilities across North America, Boxel Studio is well-versed in high-profile work, having contributed to projects such as Euphoria, John Wick 4, Twisted Metal, and the previous three seasons of Superman & Lois. But for this final chapter, the team recognised that expectations were higher than ever.
“When we came onto the fourth season, we knew we had to create something truly special, driving the narrative to a crescendoing end,” says Andrés Reyes Botello, Studio Head. “But we were working against some tight deadlines. We had to use every tool available to deliver stunning visuals in a short amount of time.”
Boxel was tasked with delivering hundreds of shots in less than three weeks, a workload that required both speed and precision. The scope of work covered full CG environments, creature animation, digital doubles, large-scale destruction, and high-end compositing. Each sequence demanded the kind of polish usually reserved for feature films, but executed at the pace of television.
The challenge was as much logistical as creative. Maintaining cinematic quality on broadcast timelines meant tight coordination across supervisors, artists, and producers, supported by workflows designed for rapid iteration. The pressure reflects the new reality of episodic production, where audiences expect blockbuster visuals on a weekly basis.
Freddy Chávez Olmos, Creative Director for AI and Innovation, recalls: “Beeble AI was one of the first machine learning-assisted tools we used in a real production setting. The breakthrough was what we called ‘footage virtualisation’ – generating AOV passes (normal, albedo, specular, roughness) directly from live-action plates.”
This innovation gave compositors direct control over relighting inside Nuke, removing the need for additional renders, extra passes, or costly reshoots. The tool quickly became central to the studio’s workflow.
The impact was felt on multiple levels. From a production perspective, instant AOV generation eliminated time-consuming manual tasks such as rotoscoping and geo-tracking, freeing the team to focus on delivering large shot counts at broadcast speed.
Creatively, it enabled fine-tuned adjustments that would once have required complex setups, such as relighting Superman’s eyes for laser vision, simulating subsurface glows, and adding interactive light from explosions – all of which were completed directly in compositing.
“Relighting without rotoscoping was an absolute game-changer,” says Reyes Botello. “It allowed us to create striking visuals under extreme time pressure, while keeping full creative control.”
“In a show like Superman & Lois, where every shot has to carry both scale and emotion, having that level of control made all the difference,” concludes Reyes Botello. “We were able to build dramatic visuals that lived up to the show’s legacy, while automating lengthy tasks to save time for the creative process.”
For Boxel, the series underlined a broader shift in the industry: the need to rethink traditional workflows with new tools. By embracing AI-assisted relighting, the team demonstrated that it’s possible to meet the growing demands for speed and scale without sacrificing creative quality.
Based in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Latin America, Boxel Studio specialises in VFX content for episodic and film. Led by Andrés Reyes Botello, a seasoned post-production professional, the studio has worked on high-profile productions, including John Wick 4, Euphoria, and Twisted Metal. https://boxelstudio.com/