Remix.run Logo
echelon 4 days ago

0.0001% of the population can sculpt 3D and leverage complex 3D toolchains. The rest of us (80% or whatever - the market will be big) don't want to touch those systems. We don't have the time, patience, or energy for it, yet we'd love to have custom 3D games and content quickly and easily. For all sorts of use cases.

But that misses the fact that this is only the beginning. These models will soon generate entire worlds. They will eventually surpass human modeller capabilities and they'll deliver stunning results in 1/100,000th the time. From an idea, photo, or video. And easy to mold, like clay. With just a few words, a click, or a tap.

Blender's days are long in the tooth.

I'm short on Blender, Houdini, Unreal Engine, Godot, and the like. That entire industry is going to be reinvented from scratch and look nothing like what exists today.

That said, companies like CSM, Tripo, and Meshy are probably not the right solutions. They feel like steam-powered horses.

Something like Genie, but not from Google.

fwip 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> These models will soon generate entire worlds.

They may. It's hard to expect this when we already see LLMs plateauing at their current abilities. Nothing you've said is certain.

scotty79 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I don't see them plateauing. I see that they are in their infancy. So far AI people were just persistently doing the dumbest possible thing that turned out to work, with very limited understanding, insight and innovation. At some point they will buy all the gpus and all the GWh they can and will be forced to actually figure out how to really improve what they are doing. Then the real breakthroughs will start showing up. There are probably improvements of 3-4 orders of magnitude right behind the finish line of the low hanging fruit picking contest.

d0100 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

AI will just be cheaper procedural environments

weregiraffe 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> That entire industry is going to be reinvented from scratch

Hey, I heard that one before! The entire financial industry was supposed to have been reinvented from scratch by crypto.

pomtato 4 days ago | parent [-]

Well it kinda did change things up a bit. Me being able to receive payments across borders without significant delay or crazy fees is a decent perk, you can hate crypto culture and grifters trying to make a quick buck but it's applications are very real.

ares623 4 days ago | parent [-]

Won’t you get taxed on “gains”when you do that and then eventually convert to fiat?

I was considering this path a few years ago but all my research pointed to me being taxed for moving my own money from one country to another. Which would’ve cost significantly more than a good ol’ bank transfer. (I needed the fiat on the other end)

My understanding was that as far as the receiving bank is concerned, the converted crypto would’ve appeared out of an investment/trading platform and needed to be taxed

The bank transfer cost like a couple of bucks anyway so it wasn’t worth the risk of trying the crypto route in the end for me.

charcircuit 4 days ago | parent [-]

If you use stablecoins there will be no gains or losses.

catlifeonmars 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> These models will soon generate entire worlds. They will eventually surpass human modeller capabilities and they'll deliver stunning results in 1/100,000th the time. From an idea, photo, or video. And easy to mold, like clay. With just a few words, a click, or a tap.

This is a pretty sweeping and unqualified claim. Are you sure you’re not just trying to sell snake oil?

weregiraffe 4 days ago | parent [-]

I'm sure he is just trying to sell snake oil.

echelon 4 days ago | parent [-]

I've been predicting this since Deep Dream (which feels like a century ago) and HN loves to naysay.

I claimed three years ago that AI would totally disrupt the porn and film industries and we're practically on the cusp of it.

If you can't see how these models work and can't predict how they can be used to build amazing things, then that's on you. I have no reason to lift up anybody that doubts. More opportunity on the table.

bigyabai 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

FWIW I'm a 3D modeller (hard surface Blender modelling, ~10yrs) and I've been reading your comments for a while now. Reality wasn't disrupted quite as far as you suggested, most of the naysayers that advised restraint under your comments have largely been proven right. Time and time again, you made enormous claims and then refused to back them up with evidence or technical explanations. We waited just like you asked, and the piper still isn't paid.

Have you ever asked yourself why this revolution hasn't come yet? Why we're still "on the cusp" of it all? Because you can't push a button and generate better pornography than what two people can make with a VHS camera and some privacy. The platonic ideal of pornography and music and film and roleplaying video games and podcasting is already occupied by their human equivalent. The benchmark of quality in every artistic application of AI is inherently human, flawed, biased and petty. It isn't possible to commoditize human art with AI art unless there's a human element to it, no matter how good the AI gets.

There's merit to discussing the technical impetus for improvement (which I'm always interested in discussing), but the dependent variables here seem exclusively social; humanity simply might never have a Beatlemania for AI-generated content.

nl 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I don't work in the field but I observe it pretty closely and my feeling is that comments like this remind me of the people I spoke to in the 1990s who said that Windows and Intel would never replace their Unix workstations.

Right now if I go on LinkedIn most header images on people's posts are AI generated. On video posts on LinkedIn that's a lot less, but we are beginning to see it now. The static image transition has taken maybe 3 years? The video transition will probably take about the same.

There's a set of content where people care about the human content of art, but there is a lot of content where people just don't care.

The thing is that there is a lot of money in generating this content. That money drives tool improvement and those improved tools increase accessibility.

> Have you ever asked yourself why this revolution hasn't come yet?

We are in the middle of the revolution which makes it hard to see.

echelon 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I hope the walls don't cave in on you. Eyes up. My friends in VFX are adopting AI workflows and they say that it's essential.

> Why OnlyFans May Sell for 75% Less Than It’s Worth [1, 2]

> Netflix uses AI effects for first time to cut costs [3]

Look at all of the jobs Netflix has posted for AI content production [4].

> Gabe Newell says AI is a 'significant technology transition' on a par with the emergence of computers or the internet, and will be 'a cheat code for people who want to take advantage of it' [5]

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the cofounder of DreamWorks [6]:

> "Well, the good old days when, you know, I made an animated movie, it took 500 artists five years to make a world-class animated movie," he said. "I don't think it will take 10% of that three years out from now," he added.

I can keep finding no shortage of sources, but I don't want to waste my time.

I've brushed shoulders with the C-suite at Disney and Pixar and talked at length about this with them. This world is absolutely changing.

The best evidence is what you can already see.

[1] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/onlyfans-may-sell-75...

[2] https://archive.is/Xndzx

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9vr4rymlw9o

[4] https://explore.jobs.netflix.net/careers?query=Machine%20Lea...

[5] https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/gabe-newell-says-ai-is-a...

[6] https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/cofounder-dreamworks-say...

topato 4 days ago | parent [-]

Frankly, that is all just speculative, once again. AI is hitting a significant roadblock. Look at how disappointing GPT-5 was. No amount of compute is ever going to match the hype matching those quotes.

The C-suite who don't realize how wrong they are about AIs potential are going to be facing a harsh reality. And artists will be the first to be hurt by their HYPE TRAIN management style and mindset.

Edit: most of all, the 3d generation in this LLM3d model is about the same as the genAI 3d models from a year ago... And two years ago... A good counterpoint would be Tubi's recently released, mostly AI gen short films. They were garbage and looked like garbage.

Netflix's foray, of memory serves, was a single scene where a building collapses. Hardly industry shattering. And 3d modeling and genAI images/videos are substantially different.

mlinhares 4 days ago | parent [-]

The only consequence they will be facing is being parachuted off with bootloads of money after they have failed to deliver on their magical promises.

vrighter 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

on the cusp means nothing. We are on the cusp of agi, tesla autopilot, cryptocurrency taking over, achieving nuclear fusion, and a bunch of other things. Companies don't sell working products anymore, they sell products that are "on the cusp of working"

We have been on the cusp of some things for literal decades.

imtringued 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Your prediction compresses 24 hours into a single second or a single day of work into a third of a second. How exactly do you expect to be proven right when just the network latency alone will eat a big chunk of that time?

You'll literally be proven wrong simply because the AI will take time to generate things even if the quality of the output is high.

lelanthran 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I claimed three years ago that AI would totally disrupt the porn and film industries and we're practically on the cusp of it.

Meh. We were on the cusp 5 years ago. Five years later, we're still on the cusp?

Maybe I'm working with a different meaning of "cusp", but to me "On the cusp of $FOO" means that there is no intervening step between now and $FOO.

The reality is that there are uncountable intervening steps between now and "film industry disrupted".

weregiraffe 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> practically on the cusp of it.

Two Girls One Cusp.

_0ffh 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> More opportunity on the table.

Hate to disappoint you, but as the models get better, and eventually deliver the results, you won't have to wait a microsecond until the masses roll in to take advantage.

mxmilkiib 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Blender will just add AI creation/editing

ilaksh 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

There are probably already a bunch of Blender Add-Ons or extensions that build with AI that are in the approval queue and just being ignored. https://extensions.blender.org/approval-queue/

echelon 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Why bolt magic rocket boosters onto a horse?

That's like saying we'll add internet browsing and YouTube to Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS.

It's weird, legacy software for a dying modality.

Where we're going, we don't need geometry node editing. The diffusion models understand the physics of optics better than our hand-written math. And they can express it across a wide variety of artistic styles that aren't even photoreal.

The future of 3D probably looks like the video game "Tiny Glade" mixed with Midjourney and Google Genie. And since it'll become so much more accessible, I think we'll probably wind up blending the act of creation with the act of consuming. Nothing like Blender.

HappyPanacea 4 days ago | parent [-]

> The diffusion models understand the physics of optics better than our hand-written math.

How well will they do with something like creating two adjacent mirrors with 30 degree angle between them with one of them covered with varying-polarized red tinted checkerboard pattern?

echelon 4 days ago | parent [-]

I don't know. Diffusion is weird and a little uneven.

They do a better job of fluid sim than most human efforts to date. And that's just one of thousands of things they do better than our math.

topato 4 days ago | parent [-]

Haha, despite the 1000s of instances where it DOESNT simulate correctly. Very specifically chosen 10000-shot generated videos show somewhat impressive fluid physics... And even then, it MUST be something it's seen before. Diffusion is in NO way modeling physics in a realistic matter, there is not an infinite amount of training data to show all fluid dynamics...

Now I know you're too far down the hype rabbit hole. Either that, or you lack a cursory understanding of diffusion models.

jayd16 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think you'll come to realize that the margin between people willing to learn blender today and people looking to generate models but won't learn how today is razor thin.

What's the use case of generating a model if all modelling and game engines are gone?

numpad0 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

All these pro-AI framings hinge on the fact that they can't tell apart AI data from human arts. That's like saying that because they don't know what improper bounds check is the code must be secure. It's just all broken logic.

HappyPanacea 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>What's the use case of generating a model if all modelling and game engines are gone?

Because using LL3M-style technique will probably be cheaper and better (fidelity and consistency and art direction wise) than generating the entire video/game with video generation model.

echelon 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> you'll come to realize

No. The Roblox of this space is going to make billions of dollars.

There's going to be so much money to make here.

topato 4 days ago | parent [-]

So, an ai generated psuedo-game engine with a majority of users under the age of 13? I'm sure that WILL make a lot of money. Those of us who didn't grow up playing Roblox will find this comparison impossibly stupid.

Some what related: im still amazed that no one has made a Roblox competitor, as in, a vague social building game that tricks children into wasting money on ridiculous MTXs. Maybe you are right, but I think that taking an already sorry state of affairs, and then removing the only imagination or STEM skills required by giving children access to GenAI.... is a really depressing thought.

I kinda meandered with my point lol.

x-complexity 4 days ago | parent [-]

> So, an ai generated psuedo-game engine with a majority of users under the age of 13? I'm sure that WILL make a lot of money. Those of us who didn't grow up playing Roblox will find this comparison impossibly stupid.

> ...with a majority of users under the age of 13? I'm sure that WILL make a lot of money. > ... will find this comparison impossibly stupid.

I'm ignoring the insinuations here for obvious reasons.

1. Roblox is the newest (note: not necessarily the best) iteration of the genre that Secondlife & (to a limited extent) modded Minecraft servers occupy: An interactive 3D platform that permits user-generated content.

2. Generative models just accelerate their development up to the brick wall of complexity much faster.

> Some what related: im still amazed that no one has made a Roblox competitor

This comment is just the HN Dropbox phenomenon, *again*, only this time from the angle that thinks it's easy to build a "pseudo game-engine" from scratch.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Few competitors exist because of the moat they have built in making their platform easy to develop on, so much so that kids can use them with little issue.

> , as in, a vague social building game that tricks children into wasting money on ridiculous MTXs.

This part is entirely separate from the technical aspects of the platform. Roblox is a feces-covered silver bar, but the silver bar (their game platform) still exists.

> Maybe you are right, but I think that taking an already sorry state of affairs, and then removing the only imagination or STEM skills required by giving children access to GenAI.... is a really depressing thought.

This is a hyper-nihilistic opinion on children laid bare.

To think that the children (*with the dedication to make a game in the first place*) wouldn't try to learn about debugging the code that the models are spitting out, or that 100% of them would just stop writing their own code entirely, is a cynical viewpoint not worth any attention.

srid 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This reminds me of Elon Musk's recent claims on the future of gaming:

    This – but in real-time – is the future of gaming and all media
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1954486538630476111
darepublic 4 days ago | parent [-]

Just don't slap a release year on this future and I'll be compelled to agree

Etherlord87 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The only sculpting example I see is the very first hat. Do you want to tell me you wouldn't be able to sculpt that?

I perfectly understand the time/patience/energy argument and my bias here. But even Spore (video game) editor with all its limitations gives you a similar result to the examples provided, and at least there you are the one giving the shape to your work, which gives you more control, and your art more soul, and moreover puts you on a creative path where the results are getting better.

Will the AI soon surpass human modeller? I don't know... I hear so much hype for AI, I have fallen victim to it myself where I spent quite some time trying to use AI for some serious work and guess what - it works as a search engine, it will give me a ffmpeg command that I could duckduckgo anyway, it will give me an Autohotkey script that I could figure out myself after a quick search etc. The LLM fails even at the tasks that seem optimal for it - I have tried multiple times to translate movie subtitles with it, and while the translation was better than using machine learning, at some point the AI goes crazy and decides to change the order of scenes in a movie - something that I couldn't detect until I watched the movie with friends, so it was a critical failure. I described a word, and the AI failed to give me the word I couldn't remember, and a simple search on thesaurus succeeded instead. I described what I remembered from a quote, but the AI failed to give me the quote, but my googlefu was enough to find it.

You probably know how to code, and would cringe if someone suggested to you to just ask the AI to write you the code for a video game without you yourself knowing how to code to at least supervise and correct it, and yet you think the 3D modelling will be good enough without intervention of a 3D artist; maybe, but as someone experienced in 3D I just don't see it, just like I don't see AI making Hollywood movies even though a lot of people claim it's a matter of years before that becomes the reality.

Instead what I see is AI slop everywhere and I'm sure video games will be filled with AI crap, just like a lot of places were filled with machine-learning translations because Google seriously suggested on its conferences that the translations are good enough (and if someone speaks only English, the Dunning-Kruger effect kicks in).

Sure, eventually we might have AGI and humanity will be obsolete. But I'm not a fan of extrapolating hyperbolic data; one Youtuber made an estimation that in a couple decades Earth will be visited by aliens, because there won't be enough Earthlings to satisfy his channel viewership stats.

numpad0 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

100% of population has all the tools needed + ChatGPT for free to write a novel. Only 0.0001% are even able to complete even a short story - they often can't hold a complete and consistent plot in their head.

"AI allows those excluded from the guild" is total BS.

Gut figures, ~85% of creativity comes from skill itself. ~10% or so comes from prior arts. And it's all multiplied by willingness[0, 1] which >99.9999% of population has << 0.0001 as the value. Tools just don't change that, it just weighs down on the creativity part.