I have to wonder - is anyone working on using generative AI to create 3d models for games? Presumably they are but I'm surprised I've not seen more about it because that's a huge use case for this sort of tech. I only tinker with game development for fun but I can see the value in, e.g., having an app that can generate various kinds of models using these feature sliders. Combine that with style transfer to copy an aesthetic from one model to another and that could cut down on the asset creation time for video games considerably.
And movies. Every Pixar movie uses variants of the same faces which aren't really all that variable in their models so it really does seem like a character playing different roles. Would love to see this sort of work combined with the character pipeline such that not only could you generate a new 'face' you could generate the full expression pipeline as well so that the character can be brought to life.
Creative directors and other Artists in video games (my experience) tend to like to 'stamp' the visuals of a game with a certain aesthetic, from their own inspiration. Generating 3D models (offline, not in game) would be a great start, but in the end it's only a 'rough' draft and will likely go through the same amount of work to get to a final 'approved' visual state.
Unlikely in the near future, highly probable in the longer term. Imagine writing a script (movie) and having the AI generate the characters ... storytelling to a new level.
> I have to wonder - is anyone working on using generative AI to create 3d models for games?
It's not AI, but MakeHuman[1] has parametric features for human meshes[2], and you can hit "Random". It also has sliders for age and gender parameters. I last used it a while ago, I'm sure I'm underselling it.
This approach doesn't work very well because simple linear morphs don't account for all the correlations and multidimensional variations of an actual human body shape, resulting in similar or unrealistic body shapes. It's like nudging a face in a photo editor. Different characters in Daz Studio are still hand-crafted in a separate 3D modeling software, and just adjusted with the morphs.
I have heard of video game companies experimenting with GANs for texture synthesis. I don’t see why you couldn’t also try to do some simple 3D modeling, although that may be a much harder problem.
I have no specific info on this, but I can only imagine a lot of work being done here, none of which will be made public until it is close to release and the marketing benefits of showing it outweigh tipping off their competitors.
