A.I. generated models

Thai1On

Slave to my route
Listing to the radio this week I heard a story about A.I. generated art. Turns out that there are now a number of these “bots” creating original art from images found on the internet. Of course, many artists are upset by the fact that their work is being used to help the machine generate original art in a matter of seconds. For fun I went online to try out some of the free sites and I was impressed at the quality of the free stuff and can only imagine what the pay sites could come up with it.


This got me wondering if the same is true with 3D? Turns out there are companies out there doing it now and this brings me to my point and question. What if in the near future a company makes something like Blender that can use pictures or even better blueprints to generate 3d models for Trainz? I can see it being much like Photoshop, but in the hands of an artist much like Steve Lerro over at K&L Trainz where his locomotives are works of art or Jointed Rail and their spectacular diesels; the program could cut the time down to a fraction of what it takes now. Imagine having an A.I. knockout a locomotive, rolling stock, or scenery item in a matter of minutes and then have these artists finish the textures, the content would go through the roof.


So, my tech-savvy friends is this just wishful thinking or a brave and scary new world?

Dave

 
Hi Dave,

Had much the same thoughts. AI is a field expanding at hypersonic speed and there are a lot of people and companies employing or trying to use it in
their own environments. CHATGPT is on everyones lips, or is that the AI speaking with full lipsync and any voice or language?
I immediately had grandiose ideas about fully automated animated little commuters queueing up to catch train, bus, aircraft having conversations in multiple languages. As the approach announcement blares out from the platform tannoys, the commuters look up anxiously as they strain to hear if it refers to their train. Has there been a delay due to a herd of cows straying onto the line, or have the train drivers/engineers gone on strike? Silly me I can look it up on the Internet, if I can get a connection.
Endless possibilities in the Trains eco-system; a tool to speed up codewriting, or a more mundane task of providing 50 language versions of config text; how about controlling the approaches to a mainline terminus using voice commands. Ah! one can dream, like how fast a certain Thai might have run if he had known an angry cloud of asian hornets might change his life forever. I digress.

Actually I signed in to GPT-3 and asked it (AI generated person) what it knew about Gout (Yeah I have severe case), cures, medication, side effects, interactions, natural based supplements and dieting. all this in a relaxing chair while I ate Chicken Curry pie. The answers were quite comprehensive, with a cautionary to discuss with your doctor before doing anything unilaterally. I had spents weeks searching the internet, and I recognized some that was identical to various extracts I had located in my search. It did correct any mispellings I made.

Ho! let's point it at Trainz. Not quite as helpfull. It turns out that it knew about TRS19 but not TRS22 or HD Terrain. In fact it's database cutoff was in 2021. Presumably this was when they started working on GPT-4 and/or ChatGBT. Fast moving field of endeavour.

So my friend, while you are sipping your favourite beverage, I'm advised not to drink alcohol; eat red meat, and only go for Omega-3 oily fish. When I retired at age 65 I was looking forward to my new freedom, and in so short a time so much has happened. Now at 87 years "young" I wonder if I can make it to the corner store without falling over. Oh well, maybe all the pharmaceutals will get their come-uppance and we will be able to 3D print our medication at home without a real doctor charging for his/her consult.

Ian
 
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Very interesting. A possible dilemma for developers i.e. start to prepare and embrace this or hedge against it and attempt lock out such importation of products .... which may be impossible in the long run.

Pete
 
Quite right, both Unity and Unreal engine development is at least in part funded by sales of 3D content to be used in their engines. If that market dries up due to this sort of technology then it would have a impact on their business model.
 


Not sure which one I used, but about 9 years ago, I did a test with software by taking 20 pictures of a model train, uploaded them into the program. After waiting for processing, it created a static 3D model, which I was able to import, without color or animation, as something that resembled a stone statue of a F-unit. I haven't really been too interested in it since.
 
Not sure which one I used, but about 9 years ago, I did a test with software by taking 20 pictures of a model train, uploaded them into the program. After waiting for processing, it created a static 3D model, which I was able to import, without color or animation, as something that resembled a stone statue of a F-unit. I haven't really been too interested in it since.

There are other programs on the market that do the same thing. I looked at one and the process was, to put it bluntly, annoying. As you said, all that was generated was a mesh object with the base texture, white plastic, which then required texturing. You'd think that the modeling program would import the images and place them in the proper locations on the mesh too.

There are also 3d cameras and scanners too that will do the same thing. The object, aka a model train is scanned in. The mesh is generated and imported into a 3d program where it's optimized and textured. The process isn't as clean cut as it sounds and the subsequent 3d models require a substantial amount of clean up afterwards. One of the issues I've seen, no I don't have the setup; a friend of mine does, is the huge number of polygons generated by the models, which makes them unsuitable for our use and he still had to place the textures on the models anyway.

What might be more useful is procedurally generated assets for let's say generating a city or suburbs. We put into a picklist the buildings we want to use for an area and then draw the roads down. When we select the roads, the utility traces the roads and places the houses along the invisible path. Using a preview and the ability to adjust the offset, we could set the distance from the roads to the houses so that they're not all sitting right along the sidewalk. The issue I see with this is that not all buildings face the same direction when placed due to their orientation when originally modeled.
 
Oh yes, it is very possible that useful 3d models will soon be generated by a machine ... but I doubt very much that this machine enjoys making the model, and going through all the stages of creation, solving details, imagining forms, applying textures, testing and reforming things...
Some of us like to model more, others like to make Routes, imagine if someone created another application to automate the creation of routes, in just a couple of hours? Where would the playful part be, which after all is the primary issue?
Is it the effect of "I want everything right now"? About to retire , I am more and more convinced that I am on the right path for me ... and still looking forward to Trainzing for a long time ...
 
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