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What’s the consensus on the future of this type of 3D tool? Especially for video animation/CGI in movies/tv/ads? Seems like in 10 years AI will basically make

What’s the consensus on the future of this type of 3D tool? Especially for video animation/CGI in movies/tv/ads? Seems like in 10 years AI will basically make it pointless to use a tool like this at least for people working on average projects. What do folks in the industry think? What’s the long term outlook?

HumanOstrich 10mo ago
"AI will make this pointless" is so exhausting.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
simonask 10mo ago
If you don’t work in the industry, you have zero chance of accurately evaluating whether or not, or how, it will be impacted by any new technology. The fact that it “seems easy” is a great flag that it probably isn’t.
- Legend2440 10mo ago
  Industry has no idea how they’re going to be impacted either. Really no one can predict the future.
- NuclearPM 10mo ago
  Zero?
- xu_ituairo 10mo ago
  This seems like an unnecessarily unkind response. The post you're replying to is sharing their opinion and asking what people who are in the industry think about it.
  - simonask 10mo ago
    I think it's both arrogant and ignorant to make assumptions like that.
andrepd 10mo ago
Can there please be one post on this godforsaken website where there is no attempt to shoehorn it into the AI craze?
- yokljo 10mo ago
  Oh you must think you are reading Hacker News, sorry about that, this is actually AI Optimism News.
Razengan 10mo ago
What will AI train on?
- amelius 10mo ago
  3D scans of the real world?
  - jacobgkau 10mo ago
    I don't think the "what will it train on" argument is bullet-proof, but animation and 3D art can encompass so much more than just things that exist in the real world.
  - nkrisc 10mo ago
    Famously, all 3D art is of things only found in the real world.
    - john_minsk 10mo ago
      Real world might be boring, but very useful. Especially for companies that move boxes around, not fantasy characters.
      - jacobgkau 10mo ago
        The topic was about a 3D art tool. What are "companies that move boxes around" using a 3D art tool for?
bena 10mo ago
You build apps for Shopify. You are asking for industry predictions from industry professionals in an industry you know nothing about while assuming a lot about that industry. Why do you think they should do all the heavy lifting for you? You might as well ask ChatGPT what it thinks because it seems you already have an idea of what you want the answer to be.
jacobgkau 10mo ago
As someone who's actually used Blender for small video projects, I'm fairly confident you'll still need this type of tool even with AI assistance doing some of the work in it, especially for at least the next 10 years. AI coding agents didn't make IDEs obsolete. They just added plugins to some existing IDEs and spawned a few new ones.
jamilton 10mo ago
If AI is at the point where it is exactly as capable of your average junior 3D professional in 10 years, it will probably have automated a ton (double digit percentage?) of current jobs such that nothing is safe. There's a lot of complexity, it's fairly long time horizon, it's very visually detailed, it's creative and subjective, and there's not a lot of easily accessible high quality training data. It's like 2D art with more complexity and less training data. Non-AI 2D art and animation tools haven't been made irrelevant yet, and don't look like they will be soon.
- croes 10mo ago
  Not quite. The junior produced also source filed that a senior can enhance. AI gives you the end result that can’t be as easy tinkered with.
cogman10 10mo ago
Directors spend a LOT of effort trying to keep continuity and that's the weakest part of AI. What blender and other CGI software gets for free is continuity. The 3D model does not change without explicitly making it change. Until we get AI which can regenerate the same model from one scene to the next, the use of AI in CGI will be severely limited.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- john_minsk 10mo ago
  That's exactly what I think will happen. 3D is endgame for AI. 3D models are deterministic objects that provide continuity, while AI does non-deterministic abstract generation(thinking) + plans action plan for these 3d models. Recent news on major AI scientists starting "world AI" companies confirm this trend. So 3D soon will become a very important tech even compared to today.
Uehreka 10mo ago
I design projections for independent theatre in Baltimore. I use AI in my workflows where it can help me and won’t compromise on the quality of what I’m making. I frequently use AI to upscale crappy footage, to interpolate frames in existing video (for artistic purposes, never with documentary archival stuff) and very occasionally to create wholesale clips in situations where video models can do what I need. I recently used WAN to generate a looping clip of clouds moving quickly, something that’s difficult to do in CGI and impossible to capture live action. It worked out because I didn’t have specific demands other than what I just said, and I wasn’t asking for anything too obscure. At this point, I expect the quality of local video models (the only kind I’m willing to work with professionally) to go up, but prompt adherence seems like a tough nut to crack, which makes me think it may be a while before we have prosumer models that can replace what I do in Blender.
crq-yml 10mo ago
You will still need the tool but the interface to it may start to change. A lot of the editing functions for 3D art play some role in achieving verisimilitude in the result - that it looks and feels believably like some source reference, in terms of shapes, materials, lights, motion and so on. For the parts of that where what you really want to say is "just configure A to be more like B", prompting and generative approaches can add a lot of value. It will be a great boost to new CG users and allow one person to feel confident in taking on more steps in the pipeline. Every 3D package today resembles an astronaut control panel because there is too much to configure and the actual productions tend to divvy up the work into specialty roles where it can become someone's job to know the way to handle a particular step. However, the actual underlying pipeline can't be shortcut: the consistency built by traditional CG algorithms is the source of the value within CG, and still needs human attention to be directed towards some purpose. So we end up in equilibriums where the budget for a production can still go towards crafting an expensive new look, but the work itself is more targeted - decorating the interior instead of architecting the whole house.

HumanOstrich 10mo ago

"AI will make this pointless" is so exhausting.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

simonask 10mo ago

If you don’t work in the industry, you have zero chance of accurately evaluating whether or not, or how, it will be impacted by any new technology. The fact that it “seems easy” is a great flag that it probably isn’t.

Legend2440 10mo ago
Industry has no idea how they’re going to be impacted either. Really no one can predict the future.
NuclearPM 10mo ago
Zero?
xu_ituairo 10mo ago
This seems like an unnecessarily unkind response. The post you're replying to is sharing their opinion and asking what people who are in the industry think about it.
- simonask 10mo ago
  I think it's both arrogant and ignorant to make assumptions like that.

andrepd 10mo ago

Can there please be one post on this godforsaken website where there is no attempt to shoehorn it into the AI craze?

yokljo 10mo ago
Oh you must think you are reading Hacker News, sorry about that, this is actually AI Optimism News.

Razengan 10mo ago

What will AI train on?

amelius 10mo ago
3D scans of the real world?
- jacobgkau 10mo ago
  I don't think the "what will it train on" argument is bullet-proof, but animation and 3D art can encompass so much more than just things that exist in the real world.
- nkrisc 10mo ago
  Famously, all 3D art is of things only found in the real world.
  - john_minsk 10mo ago
    Real world might be boring, but very useful. Especially for companies that move boxes around, not fantasy characters.
    - jacobgkau 10mo ago
      The topic was about a 3D art tool. What are "companies that move boxes around" using a 3D art tool for?

bena 10mo ago

You build apps for Shopify. You are asking for industry predictions from industry professionals in an industry you know nothing about while assuming a lot about that industry. Why do you think they should do all the heavy lifting for you? You might as well ask ChatGPT what it thinks because it seems you already have an idea of what you want the answer to be.

jacobgkau 10mo ago

As someone who's actually used Blender for small video projects, I'm fairly confident you'll still need this type of tool even with AI assistance doing some of the work in it, especially for at least the next 10 years. AI coding agents didn't make IDEs obsolete. They just added plugins to some existing IDEs and spawned a few new ones.

jamilton 10mo ago

If AI is at the point where it is exactly as capable of your average junior 3D professional in 10 years, it will probably have automated a ton (double digit percentage?) of current jobs such that nothing is safe. There's a lot of complexity, it's fairly long time horizon, it's very visually detailed, it's creative and subjective, and there's not a lot of easily accessible high quality training data. It's like 2D art with more complexity and less training data. Non-AI 2D art and animation tools haven't been made irrelevant yet, and don't look like they will be soon.

croes 10mo ago
Not quite. The junior produced also source filed that a senior can enhance. AI gives you the end result that can’t be as easy tinkered with.

cogman10 10mo ago

Directors spend a LOT of effort trying to keep continuity and that's the weakest part of AI. What blender and other CGI software gets for free is continuity. The 3D model does not change without explicitly making it change. Until we get AI which can regenerate the same model from one scene to the next, the use of AI in CGI will be severely limited.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
john_minsk 10mo ago
That's exactly what I think will happen. 3D is endgame for AI. 3D models are deterministic objects that provide continuity, while AI does non-deterministic abstract generation(thinking) + plans action plan for these 3d models. Recent news on major AI scientists starting "world AI" companies confirm this trend. So 3D soon will become a very important tech even compared to today.

Uehreka 10mo ago

I design projections for independent theatre in Baltimore. I use AI in my workflows where it can help me and won’t compromise on the quality of what I’m making. I frequently use AI to upscale crappy footage, to interpolate frames in existing video (for artistic purposes, never with documentary archival stuff) and very occasionally to create wholesale clips in situations where video models can do what I need. I recently used WAN to generate a looping clip of clouds moving quickly, something that’s difficult to do in CGI and impossible to capture live action. It worked out because I didn’t have specific demands other than what I just said, and I wasn’t asking for anything too obscure. At this point, I expect the quality of local video models (the only kind I’m willing to work with professionally) to go up, but prompt adherence seems like a tough nut to crack, which makes me think it may be a while before we have prosumer models that can replace what I do in Blender.

crq-yml 10mo ago

You will still need the tool but the interface to it may start to change. A lot of the editing functions for 3D art play some role in achieving verisimilitude in the result - that it looks and feels believably like some source reference, in terms of shapes, materials, lights, motion and so on. For the parts of that where what you really want to say is "just configure A to be more like B", prompting and generative approaches can add a lot of value. It will be a great boost to new CG users and allow one person to feel confident in taking on more steps in the pipeline. Every 3D package today resembles an astronaut control panel because there is too much to configure and the actual productions tend to divvy up the work into specialty roles where it can become someone's job to know the way to handle a particular step. However, the actual underlying pipeline can't be shortcut: the consistency built by traditional CG algorithms is the source of the value within CG, and still needs human attention to be directed towards some purpose. So we end up in equilibriums where the budget for a production can still go towards crafting an expensive new look, but the work itself is more targeted - decorating the interior instead of architecting the whole house.