10 ms·

Show HN: NightCafe Creator – Create art from a text prompt using VQGAN+CLIP

39 points by GusRuss89 5y ago

math0ne 5y ago
Really cool, if there are just two terms is is basically two images combined? existential dread simulator: https://nightcafe-studio.imgix.net/jobs/GFM872ChxPF4Xeb2jTiC/GFM872ChxPF4Xeb2jTiC.png?auto=format&fit=max&w=640 https://nightcafe-studio.imgix.net/jobs/GFM872ChxPF4Xeb2jTiC... graffiti sunset: https://nightcafe-studio.imgix.net/jobs/MJfXTM5rFdNqHcR5xBRG/MJfXTM5rFdNqHcR5xBRG.png?auto=format&fit=max&w=640 https://nightcafe-studio.imgix.net/jobs/MJfXTM5rFdNqHcR5xBRG...
- GusRuss89 5y ago
  It's not, but I can see why the "Graffiti sunset" would make you think that. It does seem to be two different images combined. I won't claim to have a good knowledge of the inner workings, but basically CLIP will give a score for how well the image matches your prompt, and that's used as a loss function for the GAN. On the Colab notebooks you can specify multiple prompts with different weights, in which case I assume it has multiple loss functions that it's trying to optimise for. I'm more of a web app guy than a deep tech guy. Some of what I wrote can probably be corrected by someone with a better knowledge of the ML.
- kaoD 5y ago
  At least in Google Collab I found longer prompts to work better. E.g. instead of "graffiti sunset" you might get better results with "a sunset painted in the style of graffiti" or similar.
GusRuss89 5y ago
I've been working on NightCafe for a few years now and have submitted to Show HN in the past, but since VQGAN+CLIP is a new technology and, to my knowledge, no-one else has built an app around it yet, I thought I'd submit again! Advantages over using Google Colab: - It's >2x faster (runs on NVIDIA RTX A5000 GPUs). E.g. 800 iterations at 600x600px in 8 mins vs 19 mins on Colab. - Can do higher resolution (894x894px > 700x700px). - Run multiple jobs in parallel. - Works from any device. - Obviously it's much easier to use for anyone non-technical. - It's easy to "evolve" creations. I.e. tweak the prompt, increase the resolution, and/or just run them for longer. - You don't need to keep the tab open to see the result. It's free for basic use, but does cost money for extended use. Unfortunately I don't have the same access to GPUs as Google does. Try it out. Would love to get the thoughts of the HN community!
protogenes 5y ago
Cool! There are at least 2 more VQGAN + CLIP systems: - makeai.art (also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28070149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28070149) - https://NeuralBlender.com https://NeuralBlender.com
- GusRuss89 5y ago
  I hadn't seen either of these. Thanks! Looks like they're both new apps, so they've done well to get everything up and running so quickly! I already had a lot of the groundwork laid for NightCafe Creator, so it was much easier for me to get this done. There's a lot involved, especially if you're going to charge for use (which is a must if you expect to have any sort of volume in the long run).
  - protogenes 5y ago
    Indeed - your UI/UX and credit system look very nice.
    - GusRuss89 5y ago
      Thanks
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  These are cool. I wish it was possible to move beyond Colab for generative type ML as the UX is horrible and there is no practical way to use them on mobile. Unfortunately it seems to be a problem of who has the hardware and who doesn't. Hopefully as time passes it will be easier to host these kinds of services, and not have to feel hopeless after the next AI Dungeon-type corporate implosion.
  - GusRuss89 5y ago
    Yep, NightCafe has struggled for years with the expense of running algorithms on GPUs. It started out free, but as soon as you start to get any kind of volume, costs balloon. I almost gave up on NightCafe when I was trying to make money from selling prints to people. Then, one user generated 3,000 creations in a week, which cost him nothing and me $300. I decided to spend the weekend implementing a credit system to prevent abuse, and was surprised to find that more people were willing to pay for credits than I expected. It's still not much and I've had to spend a lot of effort on reducing costs in various ways just to be able to break even. But I love working on this app and have high hopes that _one day_ it will become profitable enough for me to work on it full time.
nickdrewe 5y ago
Looking through the recent and top creations, it seems that including specific artistic styles or moods in the prompt produces more recognisable results. Do you have any other tips for crafting the prompt?
- GusRuss89 5y ago
  You're right, adding modifier keywords like "impasto" or "cubist" have a big effect. There are also some powerful community-discovered keywords that have a huge impact on your results, like "Trending on Artstation" and "Unreal Engine". My best tips for good results - use a phrase describing objects you'd commonly see in pictures and art, like "House on a hill" or "Futuristic city", add some modifiers, then start with the smallest resolution and runtime. Try a few variations of phrase and modifiers, and see what looks promising. Then pick the best one(s) and use the "Evolve" button to run them for longer and increase the resolution.
  - protogenes 5y ago
    How is your experience with re-seeding images to the system going from small resolution to a larger one? When I tried it, results were not as good as starting a high res image from scratch.
    - GusRuss89 5y ago
      Interesting. For me it's worked out well, but it would be worth doing a proper comparison. I'll add that to my to-do list.
tru342 5y ago
Very interesting: https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/cUwB4R6ShJnqg8mBlFcw https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/cUwB4R6ShJnqg8mBlF...
- GusRuss89 5y ago
  I ran it a bit longer for you - https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/2MGvqi6ZBZ3mZSFB66uu https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/2MGvqi6ZBZ3mZSFB66...
  - tru342 5y ago
    Thank you OP, that seems quite peculier.
mattway 5y ago
The text to image results look pretty awesome, but I feel like they all have a "neural net" quality to them. Whilst the style transer results come out more unique. Do you think it would become possible to combine the two techniques? Eg. Generate me a pic of this text, but in this images style?
- GusRuss89 5y ago
  The Colab notebooks actually have a "target image" parameter. I haven't added it to NightCafe Creator yet, and haven't even experimented much with it on Colab, but it's definitely on my to-do list. However, adding keywords like "watercolour painting", "van gogh painting" etc goes a long way to getting more precise results. One big difference between style transfer and GAN art is that style transfer never changes the shape of things. E.g. you can't put in a woman's face and a cubist painting and get out a rearranged version of the face (as cubists do). It will have all the hallmarks of cubism, but it's still recognisable as the original photo. With GAN art though, you can put that photo in as a start image, say "Cubist painting of a woman's face", and the GAN will actually rearrange the face like a cubist would.
- wraptile 5y ago
  > but I feel like they all have a "neural net" quality to them it is getting significantly better though! The first AI art generators were just dreams now we're getting decent stuff as long as you stick to nature concepts. Here's one I got for: "a starry, dark night sky over vast plains of desert" https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/70lx2Il45nK1rmcE1DTP https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/70lx2Il45nK1rmcE1D... it's definitely getting there!
mkishi 5y ago
I've been meaning to experiment with GAN art for a while now, but never managed to actually study or run any notebooks. I saw NightCafe Creator mentioned in another thread earlier today, and it made it too easy not to try a few prompts. Very neat first experience! https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/EqWtT6LUB3WwVd3T56VT https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/EqWtT6LUB3WwVd3T56... https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/iH0oqPjpo4oEHvxwlBwE https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/iH0oqPjpo4oEHvxwlB... Does it support the pipes and weights I saw mentioned in a few notebooks, eg. "motorbike:75 | bicycle:25 | car:0"?
- GusRuss89 5y ago
  It doesn't support that yet, but it will soon. I will build an interface for it rather than a prompt syntax. My target audience is a bit less technical than the average Google Colab user.
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wraptile 5y ago
My first one turned out to be pretty great! https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/70lx2Il45nK1rmcE1DTP https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/70lx2Il45nK1rmcE1D... I've been playing around with AI art generators for a while now and they are always great fun. Though it weirdly motivates to do some painting or creating of my own as if I need to compete with it. I think AI generators as inspiration tools is a very interesting use-case that I'd like to see more of! As a side note, have any people bought any of the prints?
- GusRuss89 5y ago
  That's a good one! Most of my regular users are artists who either use it for inspiration or use it to mix into their digital art. (NightCafe has been around for a while as a style transfer app). It's rare that people buy prints. Most money comes from people buying credits.
  - ackbar03 5y ago
    Is this profitable for you? Do the economics of it work out? I'm somewhat involved in similar apps and I know the computation required, even for just inference, can be quite expensive.
    - GusRuss89 5y ago
      It's not very profitable, about a 10% margin after doing a lot of work to get costs down and sales up.
TekMol 5y ago
Interesting to see an art creator based around buying credits. Do you use Shopify for the order processing?
- GusRuss89 5y ago
  Yes I do, it's a bit of a hangover from the original business model of buying prints. Stripe would potentially be better for credits.
  - TekMol 5y ago
    Cool. I never used Shopify. Didn't know you can use them to sell digital goods. Do you have to integrate your own payment or do they handle it all for you? Do they collect the money from users and then send it to you once per month? Do they handle the tricky parts like dealing with VAT per country?
    - GusRuss89 5y ago
      I basically use the API to create a checkout specific to the user's order, then listen to the webhook to fulfill the credits. Gateways are Shopify and PayPal. Shopify payments are in my bank account in a couple of days.
      - TekMol 5y ago
        What does "Gateways are Shopify and PayPal" mean? Do you need a PayPal account and dabble with their API to set up this type of solution? Or is a Shopfiy account enough?
        GusRuss89 5y ago
        Shopify lets you choose which payment options you'll let customers check out with. Examples are Stripe, PayPal, Shopify Payments, Google Pay, etc. A Shopify account is enough to get started, you won't need to dabble with any APIs. However, if you're wanting to sell digital products, it may not be the best option for you. I've had to do a bit of extra work to get it to work for my situation.
IMAYousaf 5y ago
This is what I prompted it. Actually very surprised with the results. Conceptually it did a good job: https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/JxN2V4LL2mTozEoPLVl9 https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/JxN2V4LL2mTozEoPLV... Prompt: a large robot is fighting another large robot with a scenic background over the water 8k resolution
- GusRuss89 5y ago
  That one turned out well!
- wyldfire 5y ago
  Those are indeed robots. what about a more explicit cultural reference to point in a different direction? Gundam, Voltron, Jaeger/Kaiju.
wyldfire 5y ago
"Well, that's just like, your opinion, man" https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/mkjqWgDr9xw2wz3h3UeX https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/mkjqWgDr9xw2wz3h3U...
- GusRuss89 5y ago
  Ran it a bit longer for you - https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/OAG7LUkRVNHunrsiGDuq https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/OAG7LUkRVNHunrsiGD...

39 points by GusRuss89 5y ago

Really cool, if there are just two terms is is basically two images combined? existential dread simulator: https://nightcafe-studio.imgix.net/jobs/GFM872ChxPF4Xeb2jTiC/GFM872ChxPF4Xeb2jTiC.png?auto=format&fit=max&w=640 https://nightcafe-studio.imgix.net/jobs/GFM872ChxPF4Xeb2jTiC... graffiti sunset: https://nightcafe-studio.imgix.net/jobs/MJfXTM5rFdNqHcR5xBRG/MJfXTM5rFdNqHcR5xBRG.png?auto=format&fit=max&w=640 https://nightcafe-studio.imgix.net/jobs/MJfXTM5rFdNqHcR5xBRG...

GusRuss89 5y ago
It's not, but I can see why the "Graffiti sunset" would make you think that. It does seem to be two different images combined. I won't claim to have a good knowledge of the inner workings, but basically CLIP will give a score for how well the image matches your prompt, and that's used as a loss function for the GAN. On the Colab notebooks you can specify multiple prompts with different weights, in which case I assume it has multiple loss functions that it's trying to optimise for. I'm more of a web app guy than a deep tech guy. Some of what I wrote can probably be corrected by someone with a better knowledge of the ML.
kaoD 5y ago
At least in Google Collab I found longer prompts to work better. E.g. instead of "graffiti sunset" you might get better results with "a sunset painted in the style of graffiti" or similar.

GusRuss89 5y ago

I've been working on NightCafe for a few years now and have submitted to Show HN in the past, but since VQGAN+CLIP is a new technology and, to my knowledge, no-one else has built an app around it yet, I thought I'd submit again! Advantages over using Google Colab: - It's >2x faster (runs on NVIDIA RTX A5000 GPUs). E.g. 800 iterations at 600x600px in 8 mins vs 19 mins on Colab. - Can do higher resolution (894x894px > 700x700px). - Run multiple jobs in parallel. - Works from any device. - Obviously it's much easier to use for anyone non-technical. - It's easy to "evolve" creations. I.e. tweak the prompt, increase the resolution, and/or just run them for longer. - You don't need to keep the tab open to see the result. It's free for basic use, but does cost money for extended use. Unfortunately I don't have the same access to GPUs as Google does. Try it out. Would love to get the thoughts of the HN community!

protogenes 5y ago

Cool! There are at least 2 more VQGAN + CLIP systems: - makeai.art (also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28070149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28070149) - https://NeuralBlender.com https://NeuralBlender.com

GusRuss89 5y ago
I hadn't seen either of these. Thanks! Looks like they're both new apps, so they've done well to get everything up and running so quickly! I already had a lot of the groundwork laid for NightCafe Creator, so it was much easier for me to get this done. There's a lot involved, especially if you're going to charge for use (which is a must if you expect to have any sort of volume in the long run).
- protogenes 5y ago
  Indeed - your UI/UX and credit system look very nice.
  - GusRuss89 5y ago
    Thanks
nonbirithm 5y ago
These are cool. I wish it was possible to move beyond Colab for generative type ML as the UX is horrible and there is no practical way to use them on mobile. Unfortunately it seems to be a problem of who has the hardware and who doesn't. Hopefully as time passes it will be easier to host these kinds of services, and not have to feel hopeless after the next AI Dungeon-type corporate implosion.
- GusRuss89 5y ago
  Yep, NightCafe has struggled for years with the expense of running algorithms on GPUs. It started out free, but as soon as you start to get any kind of volume, costs balloon. I almost gave up on NightCafe when I was trying to make money from selling prints to people. Then, one user generated 3,000 creations in a week, which cost him nothing and me $300. I decided to spend the weekend implementing a credit system to prevent abuse, and was surprised to find that more people were willing to pay for credits than I expected. It's still not much and I've had to spend a lot of effort on reducing costs in various ways just to be able to break even. But I love working on this app and have high hopes that _one day_ it will become profitable enough for me to work on it full time.

nickdrewe 5y ago

Looking through the recent and top creations, it seems that including specific artistic styles or moods in the prompt produces more recognisable results. Do you have any other tips for crafting the prompt?

GusRuss89 5y ago
You're right, adding modifier keywords like "impasto" or "cubist" have a big effect. There are also some powerful community-discovered keywords that have a huge impact on your results, like "Trending on Artstation" and "Unreal Engine". My best tips for good results - use a phrase describing objects you'd commonly see in pictures and art, like "House on a hill" or "Futuristic city", add some modifiers, then start with the smallest resolution and runtime. Try a few variations of phrase and modifiers, and see what looks promising. Then pick the best one(s) and use the "Evolve" button to run them for longer and increase the resolution.
- protogenes 5y ago
  How is your experience with re-seeding images to the system going from small resolution to a larger one? When I tried it, results were not as good as starting a high res image from scratch.
  - GusRuss89 5y ago
    Interesting. For me it's worked out well, but it would be worth doing a proper comparison. I'll add that to my to-do list.

tru342 5y ago

Very interesting: https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/cUwB4R6ShJnqg8mBlFcw https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/cUwB4R6ShJnqg8mBlF...

GusRuss89 5y ago
I ran it a bit longer for you - https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/2MGvqi6ZBZ3mZSFB66uu https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/2MGvqi6ZBZ3mZSFB66...
- tru342 5y ago
  Thank you OP, that seems quite peculier.

mattway 5y ago

The text to image results look pretty awesome, but I feel like they all have a "neural net" quality to them. Whilst the style transer results come out more unique. Do you think it would become possible to combine the two techniques? Eg. Generate me a pic of this text, but in this images style?

GusRuss89 5y ago
The Colab notebooks actually have a "target image" parameter. I haven't added it to NightCafe Creator yet, and haven't even experimented much with it on Colab, but it's definitely on my to-do list. However, adding keywords like "watercolour painting", "van gogh painting" etc goes a long way to getting more precise results. One big difference between style transfer and GAN art is that style transfer never changes the shape of things. E.g. you can't put in a woman's face and a cubist painting and get out a rearranged version of the face (as cubists do). It will have all the hallmarks of cubism, but it's still recognisable as the original photo. With GAN art though, you can put that photo in as a start image, say "Cubist painting of a woman's face", and the GAN will actually rearrange the face like a cubist would.
wraptile 5y ago
> but I feel like they all have a "neural net" quality to them it is getting significantly better though! The first AI art generators were just dreams now we're getting decent stuff as long as you stick to nature concepts. Here's one I got for: "a starry, dark night sky over vast plains of desert" https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/70lx2Il45nK1rmcE1DTP https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/70lx2Il45nK1rmcE1D... it's definitely getting there!

mkishi 5y ago

I've been meaning to experiment with GAN art for a while now, but never managed to actually study or run any notebooks. I saw NightCafe Creator mentioned in another thread earlier today, and it made it too easy not to try a few prompts. Very neat first experience! https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/EqWtT6LUB3WwVd3T56VT https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/EqWtT6LUB3WwVd3T56... https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/iH0oqPjpo4oEHvxwlBwE https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/iH0oqPjpo4oEHvxwlB... Does it support the pipes and weights I saw mentioned in a few notebooks, eg. "motorbike:75 | bicycle:25 | car:0"?

GusRuss89 5y ago
It doesn't support that yet, but it will soon. I will build an interface for it rather than a prompt syntax. My target audience is a bit less technical than the average Google Colab user.

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wraptile 5y ago

My first one turned out to be pretty great! https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/70lx2Il45nK1rmcE1DTP https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/70lx2Il45nK1rmcE1D... I've been playing around with AI art generators for a while now and they are always great fun. Though it weirdly motivates to do some painting or creating of my own as if I need to compete with it. I think AI generators as inspiration tools is a very interesting use-case that I'd like to see more of! As a side note, have any people bought any of the prints?

GusRuss89 5y ago
That's a good one! Most of my regular users are artists who either use it for inspiration or use it to mix into their digital art. (NightCafe has been around for a while as a style transfer app). It's rare that people buy prints. Most money comes from people buying credits.
- ackbar03 5y ago
  Is this profitable for you? Do the economics of it work out? I'm somewhat involved in similar apps and I know the computation required, even for just inference, can be quite expensive.
  - GusRuss89 5y ago
    It's not very profitable, about a 10% margin after doing a lot of work to get costs down and sales up.

TekMol 5y ago

Interesting to see an art creator based around buying credits. Do you use Shopify for the order processing?

GusRuss89 5y ago
Yes I do, it's a bit of a hangover from the original business model of buying prints. Stripe would potentially be better for credits.
- TekMol 5y ago
  Cool. I never used Shopify. Didn't know you can use them to sell digital goods. Do you have to integrate your own payment or do they handle it all for you? Do they collect the money from users and then send it to you once per month? Do they handle the tricky parts like dealing with VAT per country?
  - GusRuss89 5y ago
    I basically use the API to create a checkout specific to the user's order, then listen to the webhook to fulfill the credits. Gateways are Shopify and PayPal. Shopify payments are in my bank account in a couple of days.
    - TekMol 5y ago
      What does "Gateways are Shopify and PayPal" mean? Do you need a PayPal account and dabble with their API to set up this type of solution? Or is a Shopfiy account enough?
      - GusRuss89 5y ago
        Shopify lets you choose which payment options you'll let customers check out with. Examples are Stripe, PayPal, Shopify Payments, Google Pay, etc. A Shopify account is enough to get started, you won't need to dabble with any APIs. However, if you're wanting to sell digital products, it may not be the best option for you. I've had to do a bit of extra work to get it to work for my situation.

IMAYousaf 5y ago

This is what I prompted it. Actually very surprised with the results. Conceptually it did a good job: https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/JxN2V4LL2mTozEoPLVl9 https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/JxN2V4LL2mTozEoPLV... Prompt: a large robot is fighting another large robot with a scenic background over the water 8k resolution

GusRuss89 5y ago
That one turned out well!
wyldfire 5y ago
Those are indeed robots. what about a more explicit cultural reference to point in a different direction? Gundam, Voltron, Jaeger/Kaiju.

wyldfire 5y ago

"Well, that's just like, your opinion, man" https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/mkjqWgDr9xw2wz3h3UeX https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/mkjqWgDr9xw2wz3h3U...

GusRuss89 5y ago
Ran it a bit longer for you - https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/OAG7LUkRVNHunrsiGDuq https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/OAG7LUkRVNHunrsiGD...