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I know this tech is terrifying to actual 3D artist who don’t want be a “prompt engineer”, but as someone who has never used Blender, I think its cool that I can

I know this tech is terrifying to actual 3D artist who don’t want be a “prompt engineer”, but as someone who has never used Blender, I think its cool that I can create something using tools like this and use them in my projects, ex background animation on a website hero section.

Tanoc 3y ago
This is terrifying to us, but not in the way you think. Tools like this place selective pressure so that increasingly only the best of the best get paid to make stuff, and their stuff influences the data sets in the future. The rest of us get forced out simply due to cost unless we're doing it as a hobby. Some artists know all too well their limits, and those that do are the most vulnerable to things like this, because these learning machines use the ever higher ceiling of human ability to determine the floor of their ability. You can't go back to the funky weird pasta men of Stable Diffusion's 2021 iteration as the default for example, but someone who started painting in 2002 might still have the same level of skill now as they did in 2010. Text was paralleled first. Then sound was paralleled next. And now image is being paralleled. It will be on level with highest percentile of human ability just as text and sound were before it. Game devs and comic artists are already replacing texture and background artists with AI generated images, just as they used AI to create hundreds of thousands of lines of fluff dialogue before then.
whitemary 3y ago
Have you used it yet? Was it actually that easy? I can't wait to try.
jeron 3y ago
As someone who had tried my hand at Blender and failed miserably/given up years ago, I am so excited to use this to make up for my Blender skill deficiency
pazimzadeh 3y ago
Isn’t being a good boss kind of like being a good prompt engineer?
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  If so, then this means the good boss will soon no longer need employees, as the LLMs will deliver better results faster and cheaper.
  - juvvel 3y ago
    Who will buy the bosses' shit if everyone is unemployed and can't afford it? Companies can't stay afloat by just buying from each other.
    - singularity2001 3y ago
      GPTs with access to budget
      - juvvel 3y ago
        So any and all commerce just becomes a different form of stock trading? I doubt it. People will still need and want tangible things.
        TeMPOraL 3y ago
        > People will still need and want tangible things. And that matters to who, and why, exactly? Once enough of the economy is automated, there's hardly a reason for it to keep humans in the loop. It can just run in a circle, serving itself. Humans, meanwhile, will just have to barter for scraps amongst themselves.
        juvvel 3y ago
        If we truly live in a world where those in power seek to eliminate all other (non-powerful) humans from the equation, then maybe that's our real problem. For the record, I don't actually believe this is the case. Some people might work toward this goal but I doubt that most powerful people would voluntarily want to give up their influence over the masses. Which is what they'd do if they leave them to fend for themselves while the bots run their businesses. At some point, when you have enough money already, you don't actually seek more money, you seek more influence, and money is just the vehicle. ETA: btw, if a truly autonomous money-making machine is invented, that's just going to cause inflation, making it all worthless.
warent 3y ago
I don't think this is "terrifying" to 3D artists any more than github copilot is terrying to us haha, I'm not sure why we engineers have this tendency of imagining every other industry as being populated by superstitious peasants from the dark ages who fear new tools. In my experience the vast majority of people are excited about GPT including artists.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  I think it's because if you're not in that particular industry you have a super simplified model of what the person does - something like "writing code" as the only activity a developer does. You don't understand the difficulties and problems that people in the profession face, which I think is also why so many developers are convinced they can replace/"disrupt" other people's jobs with software.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  I don't know, maybe I am one of those "superstitious peasants from the dark ages who fear new tools", but I'm increasingly terrified of GPT-4 and future iterations of it as applied to the industry I work with (i.e. software). It does seem to threaten to suddenly eliminate all the interesting parts of the job, a good chunk of openings, and to significantly reduce salaries for the openings that remain - all at the same time, and rather suddenly.
  - kaashif 3y ago
    In the past, when tools that significantly increased developer productivity emerged, like higher level languages (C, Java, Python), better IDEs, or better access to help (e.g. StackOverflow), the demand for more software has outpaced any decrease in demand for developers due to productivity improvements. I'm not saying I know that's going to continue forever, but it might. If the cost to produce software goes down, the demand for software will increase. That's what has always happened, but maybe this time is different. Everyone always thinks this time is different though, it's good to be skeptical of thoughts like that. My take is that if you stay on the cutting edge and get good at using all kinds of tools with max productivity, you'll probably end up as the tractor driver rather than as an unemployed ox.
Thorentis 3y ago
It just raises the bar so that 3D artists who are only capable of reproducing the same boring things they saw in YouTube tutorials are no longer considered proficient. The more I think about this trend, the more I think it might be good. Bootcamp devs are no longer good enough for junior roles since a GPT could replace them. Digital media people who learnt via YouTube and have no real talent are no longer skilled enough. Writers who can only churn out mediocre blog spam are now jobless. This seems like it might be a net benefit.
- smilespray 3y ago
  How do you get senior people when juniors no longer have careers?
  - gaganyaan 3y ago
    Junior software developers will still have careers, they'll just have to learn a slightly different skillset that involves more reviewing of code, like a senior developer already does. Before sometime hits merge, they need to understand if the code meets all requirements, and it doesn't really matter who or what wrote the code in the PR.
    - noisy_boy 3y ago
      They will be reviewing the unit test written by TestGPT for the code written by CodeGPT.
      - adaxx 3y ago
        [flagged]
        adaxx 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - adaxx 3y ago
boppo1 3y ago
I use blender a lot. I know what the api can do. I'm not terrified. Getting anything significant done will still take real work/knowledge because the number of potential 'parameters' of what you can do/make requires that you have the language to describe what you want. Having the posession of that language and knowing how to use blender is a very positive correlation.
- greenknight 3y ago
  Imagine being able to sketch out the outline of what you are after, then say hey blender model it up. Thats what it will get to. You have a beach, and you want a jetty, just grease pencil approximately where you want it and go Hey thats a jetty build it. and if its not quite right, generate me 50 different versions and ill pick the best.
DrewADesign 3y ago
Most people aren't worried about being a prompt engineer-- they're worried about being a Doordash driver if it turns out that one prompt engineer can replace many professional, well-paid people in their industry. That's pretty rational.
- tekknik 3y ago
  Self driving cars and drones are pretty close, door dash driver won’t be an option much longer either.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > being a Doordash driver If that job will even be available. The other day my sister sent me a photo of a little food delivery robot she spotted on the streets[0], and mind you, we're not living in Silicon Valley, but in Poland. -- [0] - https://www.deliverycouple.com/ https://www.deliverycouple.com/ - based on the markings on that robot, its these people.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  There is not much to prompt engineer; the obvious trivial thing that is already happening and will make the glorious job of prompt ‘engineer’ completely redundant is AI doing the ‘engineering’ for you. One person (or AI in the future; this is already possible now for humans and gpt though) that the AI has been trained to ‘know’ and work with will blurb things into a mic and the AI will instruct millions of brains to whatever the ‘boss’ wants, translating his mumbling into actionable user and system prompts. There won’t be prompt ‘engineers’ for long.
  - DrewADesign 3y ago
    I think you drastically underestimate the intellectual component of other people's work behind the tools they use to perform it.
    - tekknik 3y ago
      In some industries sure, in many others it’s just mindless repetition. The argument is that AI is to free up their time so they can do more important things. Regardless, less demand means less wages across the board. Those that are intelectuales capable of doing more will look to the higher paying jobs once AI automates theirs away.
raincole 3y ago
> I know this tech is terrifying to actual 3D artist who don’t want be a “prompt engineer” My predication: in the next 5~10 years, most artists won't be "prompt engineers". Instead they'll focus on fix small details on AI-generated art. It's still kinda sad tho, because it's usually the most tedious and boring part of the process. Now AI is taking the fun part and leaving the unfun part to humans.
- ibejoeb 3y ago
  Yeah, but it's kinda like making business software. Most working people need to do boring work to sustain their lifestyles. I hope that these task-specific implementations of AI can reduce the tedium in these fields, like the way PCs did. Certainly, this advancement is leading to the ability for practically anyone to program a computer, in the general sense. Things will shift, but there will be opportunities to exploit those abilities for personal gain.
- cyrialize 3y ago
  This is exactly what this post from Reddit posted to HN [0] was complaining about. I think many people hear and see these complaints and think that people are being luddites or being afraid of losing their job. People should be looking at it for what it is - someone complaining that their entire job is changing into something they no longer enjoy. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35308498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35308498
elif 3y ago
I asked my friend (renowned vfx artist) what he thought about AI in his field and he mentioned some niche cases where it was useful for blending models with film etc, but overall seemed uninterested. He offered the explanation that so much of their time is consumed with nit picking through purely aesthetic decisions that AI would not be capable of the artistic reasoning required to produce work that could even get to the "pass or reject" stage.

Tanoc 3y ago

This is terrifying to us, but not in the way you think. Tools like this place selective pressure so that increasingly only the best of the best get paid to make stuff, and their stuff influences the data sets in the future. The rest of us get forced out simply due to cost unless we're doing it as a hobby. Some artists know all too well their limits, and those that do are the most vulnerable to things like this, because these learning machines use the ever higher ceiling of human ability to determine the floor of their ability. You can't go back to the funky weird pasta men of Stable Diffusion's 2021 iteration as the default for example, but someone who started painting in 2002 might still have the same level of skill now as they did in 2010. Text was paralleled first. Then sound was paralleled next. And now image is being paralleled. It will be on level with highest percentile of human ability just as text and sound were before it. Game devs and comic artists are already replacing texture and background artists with AI generated images, just as they used AI to create hundreds of thousands of lines of fluff dialogue before then.

whitemary 3y ago

Have you used it yet? Was it actually that easy? I can't wait to try.

jeron 3y ago

As someone who had tried my hand at Blender and failed miserably/given up years ago, I am so excited to use this to make up for my Blender skill deficiency

pazimzadeh 3y ago

Isn’t being a good boss kind of like being a good prompt engineer?

TeMPOraL 3y ago
If so, then this means the good boss will soon no longer need employees, as the LLMs will deliver better results faster and cheaper.
- juvvel 3y ago
  Who will buy the bosses' shit if everyone is unemployed and can't afford it? Companies can't stay afloat by just buying from each other.
  - singularity2001 3y ago
    GPTs with access to budget
    - juvvel 3y ago
      So any and all commerce just becomes a different form of stock trading? I doubt it. People will still need and want tangible things.
      - TeMPOraL 3y ago
        > People will still need and want tangible things. And that matters to who, and why, exactly? Once enough of the economy is automated, there's hardly a reason for it to keep humans in the loop. It can just run in a circle, serving itself. Humans, meanwhile, will just have to barter for scraps amongst themselves.
        juvvel 3y ago
        If we truly live in a world where those in power seek to eliminate all other (non-powerful) humans from the equation, then maybe that's our real problem. For the record, I don't actually believe this is the case. Some people might work toward this goal but I doubt that most powerful people would voluntarily want to give up their influence over the masses. Which is what they'd do if they leave them to fend for themselves while the bots run their businesses. At some point, when you have enough money already, you don't actually seek more money, you seek more influence, and money is just the vehicle. ETA: btw, if a truly autonomous money-making machine is invented, that's just going to cause inflation, making it all worthless.

warent 3y ago

I don't think this is "terrifying" to 3D artists any more than github copilot is terrying to us haha, I'm not sure why we engineers have this tendency of imagining every other industry as being populated by superstitious peasants from the dark ages who fear new tools. In my experience the vast majority of people are excited about GPT including artists.

SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
I think it's because if you're not in that particular industry you have a super simplified model of what the person does - something like "writing code" as the only activity a developer does. You don't understand the difficulties and problems that people in the profession face, which I think is also why so many developers are convinced they can replace/"disrupt" other people's jobs with software.
TeMPOraL 3y ago
I don't know, maybe I am one of those "superstitious peasants from the dark ages who fear new tools", but I'm increasingly terrified of GPT-4 and future iterations of it as applied to the industry I work with (i.e. software). It does seem to threaten to suddenly eliminate all the interesting parts of the job, a good chunk of openings, and to significantly reduce salaries for the openings that remain - all at the same time, and rather suddenly.
- kaashif 3y ago
  In the past, when tools that significantly increased developer productivity emerged, like higher level languages (C, Java, Python), better IDEs, or better access to help (e.g. StackOverflow), the demand for more software has outpaced any decrease in demand for developers due to productivity improvements. I'm not saying I know that's going to continue forever, but it might. If the cost to produce software goes down, the demand for software will increase. That's what has always happened, but maybe this time is different. Everyone always thinks this time is different though, it's good to be skeptical of thoughts like that. My take is that if you stay on the cutting edge and get good at using all kinds of tools with max productivity, you'll probably end up as the tractor driver rather than as an unemployed ox.

Thorentis 3y ago

It just raises the bar so that 3D artists who are only capable of reproducing the same boring things they saw in YouTube tutorials are no longer considered proficient. The more I think about this trend, the more I think it might be good. Bootcamp devs are no longer good enough for junior roles since a GPT could replace them. Digital media people who learnt via YouTube and have no real talent are no longer skilled enough. Writers who can only churn out mediocre blog spam are now jobless. This seems like it might be a net benefit.

smilespray 3y ago
How do you get senior people when juniors no longer have careers?
- gaganyaan 3y ago
  Junior software developers will still have careers, they'll just have to learn a slightly different skillset that involves more reviewing of code, like a senior developer already does. Before sometime hits merge, they need to understand if the code meets all requirements, and it doesn't really matter who or what wrote the code in the PR.
  - noisy_boy 3y ago
    They will be reviewing the unit test written by TestGPT for the code written by CodeGPT.
    - adaxx 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - adaxx 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - adaxx 3y ago

boppo1 3y ago

I use blender a lot. I know what the api can do. I'm not terrified. Getting anything significant done will still take real work/knowledge because the number of potential 'parameters' of what you can do/make requires that you have the language to describe what you want. Having the posession of that language and knowing how to use blender is a very positive correlation.

greenknight 3y ago
Imagine being able to sketch out the outline of what you are after, then say hey blender model it up. Thats what it will get to. You have a beach, and you want a jetty, just grease pencil approximately where you want it and go Hey thats a jetty build it. and if its not quite right, generate me 50 different versions and ill pick the best.

DrewADesign 3y ago

Most people aren't worried about being a prompt engineer-- they're worried about being a Doordash driver if it turns out that one prompt engineer can replace many professional, well-paid people in their industry. That's pretty rational.

tekknik 3y ago
Self driving cars and drones are pretty close, door dash driver won’t be an option much longer either.
TeMPOraL 3y ago
> being a Doordash driver If that job will even be available. The other day my sister sent me a photo of a little food delivery robot she spotted on the streets[0], and mind you, we're not living in Silicon Valley, but in Poland. -- [0] - https://www.deliverycouple.com/ https://www.deliverycouple.com/ - based on the markings on that robot, its these people.
anonzzzies 3y ago
There is not much to prompt engineer; the obvious trivial thing that is already happening and will make the glorious job of prompt ‘engineer’ completely redundant is AI doing the ‘engineering’ for you. One person (or AI in the future; this is already possible now for humans and gpt though) that the AI has been trained to ‘know’ and work with will blurb things into a mic and the AI will instruct millions of brains to whatever the ‘boss’ wants, translating his mumbling into actionable user and system prompts. There won’t be prompt ‘engineers’ for long.
- DrewADesign 3y ago
  I think you drastically underestimate the intellectual component of other people's work behind the tools they use to perform it.
  - tekknik 3y ago
    In some industries sure, in many others it’s just mindless repetition. The argument is that AI is to free up their time so they can do more important things. Regardless, less demand means less wages across the board. Those that are intelectuales capable of doing more will look to the higher paying jobs once AI automates theirs away.

raincole 3y ago

> I know this tech is terrifying to actual 3D artist who don’t want be a “prompt engineer” My predication: in the next 5~10 years, most artists won't be "prompt engineers". Instead they'll focus on fix small details on AI-generated art. It's still kinda sad tho, because it's usually the most tedious and boring part of the process. Now AI is taking the fun part and leaving the unfun part to humans.

ibejoeb 3y ago
Yeah, but it's kinda like making business software. Most working people need to do boring work to sustain their lifestyles. I hope that these task-specific implementations of AI can reduce the tedium in these fields, like the way PCs did. Certainly, this advancement is leading to the ability for practically anyone to program a computer, in the general sense. Things will shift, but there will be opportunities to exploit those abilities for personal gain.
cyrialize 3y ago
This is exactly what this post from Reddit posted to HN [0] was complaining about. I think many people hear and see these complaints and think that people are being luddites or being afraid of losing their job. People should be looking at it for what it is - someone complaining that their entire job is changing into something they no longer enjoy. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35308498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35308498

elif 3y ago

I asked my friend (renowned vfx artist) what he thought about AI in his field and he mentioned some niche cases where it was useful for blending models with film etc, but overall seemed uninterested. He offered the explanation that so much of their time is consumed with nit picking through purely aesthetic decisions that AI would not be capable of the artistic reasoning required to produce work that could even get to the "pass or reject" stage.