Is AI killing the 3D star?
Federmann
Posts: 111
Is AI killing the 3D star?
Only very recently I have started to ‘publish’ some of my work on DeviantArt. Doing that I also made my personal assessment of the state of affairs on that platform. It would seem that AI is crushing it. Despite the lack of narrative continuity AI imagery seems way quicker to generate ‘likes’/’favs’ than carefully conceptualized and composed 3d renders. Some 3d artists that I liked said they were feeling the crunch in their already modest online revenue streams since the advent of AI (‘nobody is interested in story lines anymore’). As for AI, I keep hearing that 2024 will have AI that is so much better (and I am already blown away with what is possible now). All this won’t keep me from plodding away at 3d especially since I want to do some (minimalistic) animation to accompany my music but I now realize that new kid in town will soon own the town except for a few 3d hovels near the (burning) forest.
I hope you disagree!
PS: I have already discovered it is not necessarily an either/or question; I have created some very nice (AI) BGs to be used in 3D renders and AI 'can come up' with great ideas for architecture, props, clothes etc.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
To be honest, I am totally uninterested in AI art, I am uninterested in 'Likes/Faves/I'm a Sheep Too' statements. I do my art for me. If anyone else appreciates it, that's nice. Has to be said, people usually don't, but that's not a problem for me.
However, I am in the situation where I don't need (or get) any income from my art.
I wonder if we are now at the point where white collar artists lose income in the way blue collar workers did with the introduction of manufacturing automation. It feels as if we are.
Regards,
Richard
I think the general "will AI kill off 3D rendering" has already been discussed in other threads but I would say I agree with the DeviantArt point. From what I can see that place is now completely flooded with AI art and all the ones I see get a decent amount of interaction so clearly that is what the users want. Even worse is that they are monitizing them (either direct sales or links to patreon) which irks me considerably given how AI art is generated in the first place and how easy it is to spam-flood it out there.
I guess some established users are still doing OK but for the rest of us it seems a bit pointless posting 3D renders there now. Not that I have revenue streams but it's still not worth the effort of uploading anything when nobody cares.
For those of us who enjoy making 3D artwork (rather than just looking at it as a way of making money) things will continue I guess. We can still publish artwork here and maybe a few other places that have not opened the floodgates to AI stuff. This does tie into another thread from a few days ago where it was mentioned that the gallery on this site could use a few extra features and improvments.
I have combined 3D, AI, and painting in what I suppose we'd call mixed media images... and yes, I'm totally blown away with the results (mainly days/weeks of time saved introducing AI for complex backgrounds, using 3D for precision items and then painting the whole thing pretty much like I would postwork many purely 3D renders).
The problem as I see it is that non-artists see how impressive AI art can be and there appears to be a trend of some folks feeling that "art takes no real effort or proper skill, and therefore has no proper value", and that will mean lean times for artists trying to use their work to pay bills.
Alas, the genie is out of the bottle, but hopefully things will settle-down a bit when people realise there are certain things AI is not really all that good at, and so there will still be a need for artists who work with AI if you can just so happen to be in the right place at the right time.
Of course, if you only do art as a hobby, then none of this makes one blind bit of difference to you unless you want to experiment with the "evil AI" yourself, hehehe.
Thanks for your comment Richard, perhaps in contrast with you I crave a level of validation, not so much (not at all really) in core aspects of myself that I am perfectly happy with but in my 'artistic' endeavours I do appreciate some level of fav validation even though I know it is all vapid and pretty much ephemeral. Having said that the 3d renders are for my personal giggles mostly, but even in a short time on DA I discovered that AI could generate some traffic with the 3D renders getting some spill-over views in the process. Nevertheless, there is some frustration in getting more views and still not getting the favs...
Thanks for your POV Jabba, valid points. The possibilities of integration will probably be lost on the AI 'haters'. Because of my weak GeForce vidcard I quickly discovered the potential of AI scenes/backgrounds. In DS backgrounds are a bit passé nowadays ever since the advent of HDRI but 1) the AI bgs are pretty much unique 2) perhaps there is an AI world of HDRI's that I don't know about?
Sorry SofaCitizen for not doing my homework with regard to previous topics, I hang around in the 'new users' section mostly and scanning fifty or so of subjects in the commons section it looked like many of the subjects were very particularistic and not touching a broader theme like this. I guess I was wrong. I might have the better headline though? The countless tip jars and subscription models on DA annoy me also and I don't think they will generate much, if any, revenue for the bulk of users. It is a likely a sucker trap for getting you to pay for that DA Pro or Pro+ plan (similar marketing devices are active in music industry etc.) If only you would pay more ....
The fact that you can come up with fav worthy AI content on DA even though this is your 2nd day writing half-decent AI prompts forms a stark contrast with the 3D render toil and the miserable 0 (or 1) favs it begets. Still, that toil happens to be quite pleasurable to do and fine-tuning the AI prompts not so much.
the problem is these threads get heated, the same actors join in and they get locked
Its an issue with many topics. postwork used to be the big one.
I personally enjoy discussions about art but admit to reacting to targetted comments too being only human.
The discussion about what is even art itself has always gotten the most contentious posts so we are doomed to shortlived rhreads sadly.
Please don't apologise, I did not mean to imply that you should have seen the other thread(s) on AI - it was more an attempt to highlight the specific points from your post since if this does turn into a general AI thread then it may end up being considered by the mods a duplicate. I probably phrased it poorly since I have a bit of a cold at the moment and so my brain is a bit fuzzy. You do definitely have the better headline :)
I guess we will never know if any of those users actually make any money from their AI art. Hopefully they don't and they'll bored and move on to their next "get rich without doing any work" scheme and the tide will slow so that DeviantArt and such sites might become relevant for a variety of art formats again.
Also, I should say that despite being legally-questionable I am not entirely against AI stuff. As it's already been said, it is here and will not go away. I'm sure that some people would find great joy in coming up with prompts to produce the right kind of picture and that's fine I guess. However, I personally do not believe that it should be possible to profit from that due to the way that most generators are trained. The fact that DA is seemingly encouraging this just means that it's seemingly becoming irrelevant for anything else. Which again is annoying to me as I did give them money for one of the lower teirs as I thought I should support a site I was going to upload images to.
Just like every other thing that is (was) "here to stay" which I don't care for, I was mostly annoyed with it at first (due to the sketchy training), only to become completely indifferent now.
I can't speak for the business side of things and, while I certainly appreciate comments and likes, that someone found it worthwile to take a moment to apprciate my work, it's not something I actively seek. In the end, I'll keep doing what I find fun and simply igonre what I don't.
That would be biting the hand that feeds you.
Simply put, no.
To be frank, I'm like @RichardandTracy. Due to my mental health limitations, I do my own "thing" on deviantArt with Daz3D and Poser before it and if the image generates a comment or a like, that's fine. Regarding AI, I created a scene I liked with a bit of text as a backstory. It's what I refer to as #fiveminuterenders as I don't put a whole lot of time and effort into creating them. But they give me pleasure in seeing something I've thought about made into 3D. Substance from nothingness. While it was rendering, dA prompted me to look at some AI art. So I did. I went onto the Bing Image Creator free image website and tried to recreate the same scene. My text and image took a couple of hours to prep, pose, render and upload. The AI monstrosity took 5 minutes total and generated a whole lot less enjoyment for me.
Check for yourself if you want to see the images.
https://www.deviantart.com/beyondrescue/art/An-AI-picture-engine-regurgitates-a-Daz3D-render-973619966
AI art is here but it's a passing phase in its current state. Once the AI porn fans move on, it'll sit on a workbench as another tool with which to add to art. But it won't replace what we do or create.
With all respect and sympathy for those who work hard to create art - any art - with either monetization or the external validation of "likes" as major driving goals, I come from a different perspective and am effectively immune from being interested in AI, except as a specific tool for certain limited tasks.
I'm writing a million-word book that no one else has ever, or will ever, read, so validation is not a thing for me. I'm human and sure, I like "likes" when I post things here in the Daz gallery, but ultimately, I don't need an external audience for any of my art. I am aware that there are also AI text generators that can write books for me - but what's the point? I write because I am driven to write. Maybe an AI-generated book would be better than what I write. It would certainly be easier and faster. But it wouldn't serve the purpose of why I write to begin with.
My attempts to create art with Daz are just an outgrowth of that need to write - an attempt to visualize my stories. Given a sufficient skillset, Daz allows me to create, myself, that which exists in my imagination. For me, at least, that IS the point and at this time, AI does not serve that purpose.
Just my two cents ...
A very valid point - although it wouldn't be the first instance of something cannibalising itself for short-term profits :(
As someone who does play around with it, no, especially not in the near future. While ai is great for a momentary idea or something not serious, it really seems to struggle with a lot of complex concepts. The outputs are unpredictable, and are far more difficult to adjust to what you had in your head compared to 3d or other ways of making art.
There are lawsuits yet to come over the art used to train the AI artist.. afterwards.. who knows? Perhaps the AI companies will have to commision/license works, styles, and likeness from artists.
Thinking about other industries, originality and quality are often sought after over fast copies.. Good luck with your 3D star!
AI is not just art generators and large language models you know
DLSS for DAZ Studio 5 would be nice
Hey y'all, old school photographer here (meaning i know film photography extremely well).
Throughout history, whatever the new medium to work with is, often it is met with derision and not accepted by traditional artists. One example is photography. It is hard to get artists in other media to consider photography an art form. I will admit that the 'point-and-shoot' variety of photos may not be very artistic. But when you use specialized equipment and you do the amazing things that are possible in the darkroom it can definitely become an art form where a single finished image took dozens of hours to accomplish.
So, I can see that AI will be an art form ... especially the well done end of things. But it is it's own type of media and in competitions should be regarded as such. As far as monetary / income issues ... the market will have it's ups and downs and otehr types of artists will be dragged along for awhile. Sad but true.
Welp Adobe in November is gunna start chraging for Generative AI use in photoshop, credits and what not.
VR is gunna be the next big thing. yeah right been saying that for 30 years LOL (I wear glasses/bi-focals, your not stickin 1" screens infront of my eyeballs)
NFT is gunna be the next big thing. uh huh. <<eats more popcorn>> How much dem monkeys worth now?
There is always someone pushing the next big thing, AI is the topic of the day. Ultimately artists will make art, in whatever medium they choose for thier artistic expresion.
AI is just a tool, doesn't make me a better artist, just adds a tool in the toolbox. I'm not paying someone to make art, that's my job/hobby LOL
The US Copyright office has continually denied granting copyrights to AI generated art. The office denied a copyright for the AI piece that won a prize in an art show. A federal judge recently upheld their decision in August. You have to be more creative than just typing key words into AI generators.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/ai-works-not-copyrightable-studios-1235570316/
You can copyright the words you wrote for a prompt, but not the actual image produced. You need a human hand in production, and doesn't even take that much to cover the requirement, but you cannot use AI generation alone. Like some have said, it can used like a tool. The problem we often get is that AI generators are the only tool used, and they can replace basically every tool you ever used before.
Then you have all the different lawsuits ongoing about the data these AI generators were built on. These lawsuits could kill AI more than anything else. If you remove copyrighted data from the AI generators...they will be terrible. So they absolutely need that data to be usable. Most AI generators are online. Stable Diffusion can be run locally, but its paid service is online.
AI generators are a key point with the current strike in Hollywood. Writers don't want to be replaced with AI trained on their previous works. Actors have concerns about their voices and faces being used.
So while the genie might be out of the bottle, but that genie isn't a lawyer, and they cannot wish these legal issues away, no matter how many prompts they use.
There are a lot of legal tangles to be figured out before it gets anywhere. Sure, you might find some people getting clicks on the websites that allow AI generated images, but most of those people are not making money off those clicks. Also, none of the art stands out from others because they all look the same. Stable Diffusion can be run locally, and thus if they remove copyrighted data from it, there will still be versions in the wild with the old data. However, usage will be limited. With all the potential restrictions around the data and lack of copyright, it will limit AI mostly to deep fakes and pornography. Those things will always exist no matter what. People have been editing photos with famous people for decades, that's nothing new.
Those that have the resources can train their models, but being limited on the data they can use, that means only large IP holders can really do training with large data sets.
So does it kill the 3d artist? We have to wait for the courts to decide. It also depends on what kind of 3d you do.
AI isn't a fad like that stupid nft stuff is, AI is embeded in a lot of software now, programs that don't use AI acceleration to offer features are at a severe disadvantage.The broadening scope of AI's usefulness isn't even close to being clear at this point but unlike NFT's it's here to stay as a focal point in many daily routines and with advances will only creep into more and more parts of our lives.
I had a previous debate on this forum about whether what I do with DAZ Studio could be called "art" (my opinion was that I am no artist, I am a hobbyist). Part of that discussion was about whether the "art" is published or seen by others. Almost none of my output from this hobby is ever seen by another soul. It is purely for my own enjoyment. I create stories with pictures and DAZ Studio and its content are a means to that end. If I could ustilise AI in a predictable manner to achieve similar ends, I would doubtless do so. I am not concerned about my artistic integrity because I'm still in that mindset that says to me that I am not producing art, I'm just enjoying a hobby.
TBH, I almost always delete a project once it is complete and I have viewed it a few times. Inevitably I will see things I could have done better and so it is on to the next project. For me it is like reading novels - I get to the end of one and I'm itching to start another but I never go back to the one I've just finished. I've seen a lot of hyperbole about AI and I suspect that most of it is OTT but it is like any other new technology - it will benefit us in some ways and be a threat to us in others. If we can channel human creativity through AI then I'm excited to see the results. If it takes away from that very human creativity then I'm glad I'm old and will not be subject to such an artificial future.
I recently went here. Mosaics Fine Art Festival - St. Charles, MO - Celebrating 25 years in St. Charles, Missouri (stcharlesmosaics.org). Last weekend. About a mile and a half of booths. What surprised me was artists selling AI art. I was taken aback. My wife picked up and interesting pice of Stained glass we are going to hang in a widow. I picked up a bourbon, and a leaf fell in while discussing an oil-on-canvas. Leaf made art in my glass of bourbon.
...AI when employed for improving "under the bonnet" processes like anti aliasing, noise reduction and the like is great. If it can help increase render performance all the better/
I would greatly welcome a process that would allow mw to render a scene at display screen size, then take it into a 2D programme to "blow it up to say a 24" x 32" image for fine art printing with no imperceptible loss of detail or tendency to "pixelate".
As to using AI to generate art from scratch for say gallery display or sale, that is where I have very mixed feelings I rarely go to DA anymore to browse through the daily submissions because such a large percentage seems to be AI generated. I usually liked seeing what other were doing not just with 3D but Photography and the traditional media like painting and drawing. I also like to see how other 3D artists handle various issues of scene building lighting and such. and sometimes as inspiration to jumpstart my artistic muse when it is at a standstill. AI generated art doesn't do that for me.
t feel a bit let down when I click on a thumbnail for what looks like a piece that took a lot of creative energy, time and effort to produce only to find it was done by just entering a sting of words into an AI App and letting the algorithm do all the thinking and "heavy lifting". I almost wish there was an option to filter such submissions out (like the "mature" filter) based on the tags and terms in description (I even brought that up it in a comment on the forums there).
LoL Considering your deviantart example (very interesting!), how many, not knowing the backstory, would prefer the laborious 'glue fountain' 3d render over the rough & ready AI 'regurgitation'? Very few, I am guessing... As a fellow renderer I hasten to add that the subtle posing of the character in the original is not lost on me (and the water ripples etc.) but the AI picture I would think, could actually be used on a book's back cover (or inside the cover: about the author) without too many people thinking anything about it. Obviously I catch myself introducing 'utility' into this equation and that could be frowned upon by many (although I don't think many 3d renderers would subscribe to the 'l'art pour l'art" concept), but I have come to discover that "utility" is an important facet for me and it is hard to accept my 3d renders will have virtually none of that (but still provide a fair amount of pleasure making them).
Very recognizable. How did they do that!? Oh, never mind, it's just words, perhaps even words mostly from a AI render by somebody else. On top of that the AI prompts do not handle intelligent requests very well, you have to dumb down and use the AI's idiomatic vernacular to get anywhere
Thanks for that POV. Not my beeswax really but don't 'hide your light under a bushel', your renders definitely show a holistic sensibility and observational acuity; perhaps you should take a crack at getting a short story published to get things going!?
That was very informative outrider42, thx!
You can't get more "derivative" than AI I'd think, would be a tour de force to flip that into a strength. As for AI prompting, it is painting with words, but unfortunately in a very limited language; imagination will get you nowhere if it doesn't follow 'the script'. Anyways, always nice to have you chip in WendyLuvsCatz, I am trying to check out all your YT channels, I have already discovered you are pretty creative pushing the 3d/AI envelope!
This is a good analysis of the current situation.
I was at an event at a design showroom in Beverly Hills and was talking to a woman about AI and Midjourney and next thing I know she had created some abstract art with AI and paid someone to put the image on some kind of big plexiglass and now it is up as art in that same showroom listed for thousands of dollars and she is now an artist.