6 ms·

Now that we have genAI...

gwervc 3y ago
... human-made resources are still needed. Besides the questionable quality of AI art that doesn't address all needs, it's purely and simply forbidden within games published on Steam.
- uxp8u61q 3y ago
  How would valve even know that an icon is AI-generated?
  - Marazan 3y ago
    FAFO
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Uncanny valley is in a different place for almost everyone; I've seen proud posters in real life where the eyes didn't match, but also I've shown a friend a Stable Diffusion picture I thought was perfect and yet he knew instantly (and without me telling him) that it was GenAI, because to him all GenAI images look "dead" in a hard to describe way.
    - uxp8u61q 3y ago
      We're talking about small SVG icons. There's no "uncanny valley" to speak of. I chose a random icon on the website to make a test. I generated the following image with dall-e and vectorized it in a couple of clicks in illustrator. https://i.imgur.com/dXWR0Zf.png https://i.imgur.com/dXWR0Zf.png Compare it with https://game-icons.net/1x1/delapouite/skimmer-hat.html https://game-icons.net/1x1/delapouite/skimmer-hat.html Can you honestly tell that one is AI-generated and the other isn't? They're obviously of a very different style, but that's simply because that's what I chose out of the 4 options dall-e offered me.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        > We're talking about small SVG icons. There's no "uncanny valley" to speak of. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean others can't. And if they see AI where they don't want it, or even incorrectly think they do, oh boy can people hate it. > Can you honestly tell that one is AI-generated and the other isn't? Weirdly, the one on imgur does look AI generated to me, and I can't tell you why. Possibly just because I asked a Dall•E and SD for a bit of woodcut style art a while back and the meme is stuck in my mind, possibly something deeper.
haolez 3y ago
I've been disappointed with DALL-E and others for small images such as icons and avatars. It will probably improve, but I wasn't satisfied with the results of my attempts so far.
Zuiii 3y ago
All the ones I saw generate icons with weird artifacts. I don't think we're there yet.
chefandy 3y ago
Indeed, you can make an icon system with gen AI, but you can't make a good one. It generally sucks at consistency and fine details-- two of the most important factors when designing a visual language for an interface. Ultimately, Gen AI icons are just like any other generative images for serious work-- they take care of the easiest (and most enjoyable) 90%, but the final 10% is usually harder and more annoying to tackle than if it had been made by a competent human. Maybe if you really need symbolic placeholders or for a low-usage hobby project? "The details are not the details. They make the design." --Charles Eames
- Lerc 3y ago
  While I agree with this in general, I think there's a place for AI in conjunction with icon sets like these. Control nets give you the ability to manually design the meaningful details and AI fill the remainder.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    As someone who works in the space and uses these tools, I've not seen any output without significant manual modification that was production quality, and I've only heard developers or non-designer AI-enthusiasts say otherwise. I know people who are about as close to AI->Prod pipeline as you can feasibly get right now in games, but there's still a whole lot of Adobe in that process, even for chintzy mobile games. Not to sound arrogant, but developers judging whether or not an icon system is sufficient for its intended purpose is like a designer judging whether or not a codebase is technically solid for a given use case. People who don't produce work like this at a professional level love these tools because they abstract away most of the finer-grained decisions that artists and designers must make when producing images. But without that granular control, even with all the tweaking and inpainting and whatever else you can muster up, that AI is still making more choices about what goes into that composition than the prompter, and mitigating that is often more hassle than it's worth. Text-based AI tools just don't have the consistency or the specificity required for commercial art, and maybe never will. There's just a really big conceptual disconnect.
    - deleted 3y ago
cableshaft 3y ago
genAI is still not allowed everywhere. I entered a game contest just a couple of weeks ago that explicitly forbade it. In general the board game industry leaders (and many consumers) are not very receptive to genAI at this point. Probably still many years before it starts becoming a bit more accepted.
pjmlp 3y ago
Plenty of artists will need to find an alternative job, and the programmers aren't far away from getting the boot as well, when GenAI will product binaries ready to play.

... human-made resources are still needed. Besides the questionable quality of AI art that doesn't address all needs, it's purely and simply forbidden within games published on Steam.

uxp8u61q 3y ago
How would valve even know that an icon is AI-generated?
- Marazan 3y ago
  FAFO
- ben_w 3y ago
  Uncanny valley is in a different place for almost everyone; I've seen proud posters in real life where the eyes didn't match, but also I've shown a friend a Stable Diffusion picture I thought was perfect and yet he knew instantly (and without me telling him) that it was GenAI, because to him all GenAI images look "dead" in a hard to describe way.
  - uxp8u61q 3y ago
    We're talking about small SVG icons. There's no "uncanny valley" to speak of. I chose a random icon on the website to make a test. I generated the following image with dall-e and vectorized it in a couple of clicks in illustrator. https://i.imgur.com/dXWR0Zf.png https://i.imgur.com/dXWR0Zf.png Compare it with https://game-icons.net/1x1/delapouite/skimmer-hat.html https://game-icons.net/1x1/delapouite/skimmer-hat.html Can you honestly tell that one is AI-generated and the other isn't? They're obviously of a very different style, but that's simply because that's what I chose out of the 4 options dall-e offered me.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > We're talking about small SVG icons. There's no "uncanny valley" to speak of. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean others can't. And if they see AI where they don't want it, or even incorrectly think they do, oh boy can people hate it. > Can you honestly tell that one is AI-generated and the other isn't? Weirdly, the one on imgur does look AI generated to me, and I can't tell you why. Possibly just because I asked a Dall•E and SD for a bit of woodcut style art a while back and the meme is stuck in my mind, possibly something deeper.

haolez 3y ago

I've been disappointed with DALL-E and others for small images such as icons and avatars. It will probably improve, but I wasn't satisfied with the results of my attempts so far.

Zuiii 3y ago

All the ones I saw generate icons with weird artifacts. I don't think we're there yet.

chefandy 3y ago

Indeed, you can make an icon system with gen AI, but you can't make a good one. It generally sucks at consistency and fine details-- two of the most important factors when designing a visual language for an interface. Ultimately, Gen AI icons are just like any other generative images for serious work-- they take care of the easiest (and most enjoyable) 90%, but the final 10% is usually harder and more annoying to tackle than if it had been made by a competent human. Maybe if you really need symbolic placeholders or for a low-usage hobby project? "The details are not the details. They make the design." --Charles Eames

Lerc 3y ago
While I agree with this in general, I think there's a place for AI in conjunction with icon sets like these. Control nets give you the ability to manually design the meaningful details and AI fill the remainder.
- chefandy 3y ago
  As someone who works in the space and uses these tools, I've not seen any output without significant manual modification that was production quality, and I've only heard developers or non-designer AI-enthusiasts say otherwise. I know people who are about as close to AI->Prod pipeline as you can feasibly get right now in games, but there's still a whole lot of Adobe in that process, even for chintzy mobile games. Not to sound arrogant, but developers judging whether or not an icon system is sufficient for its intended purpose is like a designer judging whether or not a codebase is technically solid for a given use case. People who don't produce work like this at a professional level love these tools because they abstract away most of the finer-grained decisions that artists and designers must make when producing images. But without that granular control, even with all the tweaking and inpainting and whatever else you can muster up, that AI is still making more choices about what goes into that composition than the prompter, and mitigating that is often more hassle than it's worth. Text-based AI tools just don't have the consistency or the specificity required for commercial art, and maybe never will. There's just a really big conceptual disconnect.
  - deleted 3y ago

cableshaft 3y ago

genAI is still not allowed everywhere. I entered a game contest just a couple of weeks ago that explicitly forbade it. In general the board game industry leaders (and many consumers) are not very receptive to genAI at this point. Probably still many years before it starts becoming a bit more accepted.

pjmlp 3y ago

Plenty of artists will need to find an alternative job, and the programmers aren't far away from getting the boot as well, when GenAI will product binaries ready to play.