Most of these 3d asset generation tools oversimplify things down to stacking primitives and call it modeling, which skips fundamentals like extrusion, subdivision, and proper topology. If they wanted to make a tool actually worthwhile, what do you think the core features should be? Like it would be great if it enforces clean topology, streamline subdivision workflows, but given your xp I'm curious what you’d consider essential.

I could probably write a book to answer this question :D Blender has gone "everything nodes" route, and in particular it created the Geometry Nodes system. I'm very good in geonodes and pretty much specialize in it, and yet I think the system is severly flawed: the nodes in compositing and shading work very well, but in geonodes they are too low-level, and you don't get the easy learning curve of usual node systems (learning geonodes is very hard), while you get all the annoyances of using a very shoddy programming language and having to manage node positioning and fighting with noodles...

...And here's where AI comes into play, If AI could be contained into steps: - Input node: describe where the starting data comes from and AI automatically loads a file from hard drive or Internet or generates a primitive - Select node: describe a pattern by which to select elements of the geometry - Modify Geometry node: perhaps should be split into multiple nodes as there's so many ways to modify the geometry. - Sample/connect data: create an attribute and describe a relation of it to something else to create an underlying algorithm populating this attribute. - Save node: do you want to output the data through the usual pipeline, or maybe export to a file, or save to a simulation cache?

This way AI could do low-level stuff that I think it excels at, because this low-level stuff is so repeatable AI can be well trained on it. While the high-level decision making would be in control of an artist.

These models could still be useful when rendered. But when animated or in a game probably less so. Maybe as a prototype to get funding and hire an artist.