Levoy first studied computer graphics as an architecture student under Donald P. Greenberg at Cornell University.

He developed a 2D computer animation system as part of his studies, receiving the Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Medal for this work.

Greenberg and he suggested to Disney that they use computer graphics in producing animated films, but the idea was rejected by several of the Nine Old Men who were still active.

He then did graduate study in computer science under Henry Fuchs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and received his Ph.D. in 1989.

[11] His team worked on underlying technologies for Project Jump,[12] a 360 degree camera that captures stereo panoramic videos for VR headsets.

[16] In 2024 his Adobe team launched technologies for automatically adjusting tone and color in HDR photographs[17] and for removing reflections from windows.

[18] For his work in volume rendering, Levoy was the recipient of the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award in 1996.