5 ms·

> A competent modeler can make these types of meshes in under 5 minutes. I don't think this general complaint about AI workflows is that useful. Most people a

> A competent modeler can make these types of meshes in under 5 minutes. I don't think this general complaint about AI workflows is that useful. Most people are not a competent <insert job here>. Most people don't know a competent <insert job here> or can't afford to hire one. Even something that takes longer than a professional do at worse quality for many things is better than _nothing_ which is the realistic alternative for most people who would use something like this.

cannonpalms 3y ago
Is the target market really "most people," though? I would say not. The general goal of all of this economic investment is to improve the productivity of labor--that means first and foremost that things need to be useful and practical for those trained to make determinations such as "useful" and "practical."
- taneq 3y ago
  Millions of people generating millions of images (some of them even useful!) using Dall-E and Stable Diffusion would say otherwise. A skilled digital artist could create most of these images in an hour or two, I’d guess… but ‘most people’ certainly could not, and it turns out that these people really want to.
  - reubenmorais 3y ago
    Are those millions of people actually creating something of lasting value, or just playing around with a new toy?
    - Filligree 3y ago
      Is there a problem with the latter?
      - airtonix 3y ago
        [dead]
    - willy_k 3y ago
      A lot, but how many people will start with the latter but find themselves (capable of) doing the former?
    - taneq 3y ago
      They're creating lasting value for themselves. Or don't you think they should be allowed to?
chefandy 3y ago
> I don't think this general complaint about AI workflows is that useful Maybe not to you, but it's useful if you're in these fields professionally, though. The difference between a neat hobbyist toolkit and a professional toolkit has gigantic financial implications, even if the difference is minimal to "most people."
- ajuc 3y ago
  Linux vs Unix. Wikipedia vs Britannica. GCC vs Intel compiler. Good enough free hobby toy beats expansive professional tools given enough hobbysts.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    1. they don't beat them outight. It's simply more accessible. 2. those "hobbyists" in all examples are in fact professionals now. That's why they could scale up.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    First, we're talking about the state of the technology and what it can produce, not the fundamental worthiness of the approach. Right now, it's not up to the task. In the earliest phases of those technologies, they also weren't good enough for for professional use cases. Secondly, the number of hobbyists only matters if you're talking about hobbyists that develop the technology-- not hobbyists that use the technology. Until those tools are good enough, you could have every hobbyist on the planet collectively attempting to make a Disney-quality character model with tools that aren't capable of doing so and it wouldn't get much closer to the requisite result than a single hobbyist doing the same.
  - stuckinhell 3y ago
    Blender is an another good example
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      Blender was a professional tool from the start. The company behind it went insolvent ... and with crowdfunding the source could be freed.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>Most people don't know a competent <insert job here> or can't afford to hire one May be relevant in the long run, but it'll probably be 5+ years before this is commercially available. And it won't be cheap either, so out of the range of said people who can't hire a competent <insert job here> That's why a lot of this stuff is pitched to companies with competent people instead of offered as a general product to download.
- hipadev23 3y ago
  > but it'll probably be 5+ years before this is commercially available I think you should look at the progress of image, text, and video generation over the past 12 months and re-asses your timeline prediction.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Availability =/= viability. I'm sure as we speak some large studios are already leveraging this work or are close to leveraging it. But this stuff trickles down to the public very slowly. Because indies aren't a good audience to sell what is likely an expensive tech that is focused on mid-large scale production.
    - willy_k 3y ago
      Yes but no, none of that really describes current development.
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        perhaps, but I was responding to >Most people are not a competent <insert job here>. Most people don't know a competent <insert job here> or can't afford to hire one. emphasis mine. Affordability doesn't have much to do with capabilities, but it is a strong factor to consider for an indie dev. Devs in fields (games, VFX) that don't traditionally pay well to begin with.
        3y ago

cannonpalms 3y ago

Is the target market really "most people," though? I would say not. The general goal of all of this economic investment is to improve the productivity of labor--that means first and foremost that things need to be useful and practical for those trained to make determinations such as "useful" and "practical."

taneq 3y ago
Millions of people generating millions of images (some of them even useful!) using Dall-E and Stable Diffusion would say otherwise. A skilled digital artist could create most of these images in an hour or two, I’d guess… but ‘most people’ certainly could not, and it turns out that these people really want to.
- reubenmorais 3y ago
  Are those millions of people actually creating something of lasting value, or just playing around with a new toy?
  - Filligree 3y ago
    Is there a problem with the latter?
    - airtonix 3y ago
      [dead]
  - willy_k 3y ago
    A lot, but how many people will start with the latter but find themselves (capable of) doing the former?
  - taneq 3y ago
    They're creating lasting value for themselves. Or don't you think they should be allowed to?

chefandy 3y ago

> I don't think this general complaint about AI workflows is that useful Maybe not to you, but it's useful if you're in these fields professionally, though. The difference between a neat hobbyist toolkit and a professional toolkit has gigantic financial implications, even if the difference is minimal to "most people."

ajuc 3y ago
Linux vs Unix. Wikipedia vs Britannica. GCC vs Intel compiler. Good enough free hobby toy beats expansive professional tools given enough hobbysts.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  1. they don't beat them outight. It's simply more accessible. 2. those "hobbyists" in all examples are in fact professionals now. That's why they could scale up.
- chefandy 3y ago
  First, we're talking about the state of the technology and what it can produce, not the fundamental worthiness of the approach. Right now, it's not up to the task. In the earliest phases of those technologies, they also weren't good enough for for professional use cases. Secondly, the number of hobbyists only matters if you're talking about hobbyists that develop the technology-- not hobbyists that use the technology. Until those tools are good enough, you could have every hobbyist on the planet collectively attempting to make a Disney-quality character model with tools that aren't capable of doing so and it wouldn't get much closer to the requisite result than a single hobbyist doing the same.
- stuckinhell 3y ago
  Blender is an another good example
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    Blender was a professional tool from the start. The company behind it went insolvent ... and with crowdfunding the source could be freed.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

>Most people don't know a competent <insert job here> or can't afford to hire one May be relevant in the long run, but it'll probably be 5+ years before this is commercially available. And it won't be cheap either, so out of the range of said people who can't hire a competent <insert job here> That's why a lot of this stuff is pitched to companies with competent people instead of offered as a general product to download.

hipadev23 3y ago
> but it'll probably be 5+ years before this is commercially available I think you should look at the progress of image, text, and video generation over the past 12 months and re-asses your timeline prediction.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Availability =/= viability. I'm sure as we speak some large studios are already leveraging this work or are close to leveraging it. But this stuff trickles down to the public very slowly. Because indies aren't a good audience to sell what is likely an expensive tech that is focused on mid-large scale production.
  - willy_k 3y ago
    Yes but no, none of that really describes current development.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      perhaps, but I was responding to >Most people are not a competent <insert job here>. Most people don't know a competent <insert job here> or can't afford to hire one. emphasis mine. Affordability doesn't have much to do with capabilities, but it is a strong factor to consider for an indie dev. Devs in fields (games, VFX) that don't traditionally pay well to begin with.
      - 3y ago