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godelski • 01/22/2025 • 1 reply • view on HN

Ops ran out of edit time when I was posting my last two

  Prompt: A hawk flying in the sky
    PNG: https://0x0.st/8Hkw.png
         https://0x0.st/8Hkx.png
         https://0x0.st/8Hk3.png
    Note: This looks like it would need more work. I tried a few birds and generic too. They all seem to have similar form. 
  Prompt: A hawk with the head of a dragon flying in the sky and holding a snake
    PNG: https://0x0.st/8HkE.png
         https://0x0.st/8Hk6.png
         https://0x0.st/8HkI.png
         https://0x0.st/8Hkl.png
    Note: This one really isn't great. Just a normal hawk head. Not how a bird holds a snake either...
This last one is really key for judging where the tech is at btw. Most of the generations are assets you could download freely from the internet and you could probably get better ones by some artist on fiver or something. But the last example is more our realistic use case. Something that is relatively reasonable, probably not in the set of easy to download assets, and might be something someone wants. It isn't too crazy of an ask given Chimera and how similar a dragon is to a bird in the first place, this should be on the "easier" end. I'm sure you could prompt engineer your way into it but then we have to have the discussion of what costs more a prompt engineer or an artist? And do you need a prompt engineer who can repair models? Because these look like they need repairs.

This can make it hard to really tell if there's progress or not. It is really easy to make compelling images in a paper and beat benchmarks while not actually creating a something that is __or will become__ a usable product. All the little details matter. Little errors quickly compound... That said, I do much more on generative imagery than generative 3d objects so grain of salt here.

Keep in mind: generative models (of any kind) are incredibly difficult to evaluate. Always keep that in mind. You really only have a good idea after you've generated hundreds or thousands of samples yourself and are able to look at a lot with high scrutiny.

Replies

BigJono • 01/22/2025

Yeah, this is absolutely light years off being useful in production.

People just see fancy demos and start crapping on about the future, but just look at stable diffusion. It's been around for how long, and what serious professional game developers are using it as a core part of their workflow? Maybe some concept artists? But consistent style is such an important thing for any half decent game and these generative tools shit the bed on consistency in a way that's difficult to paper over.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about game design and experimenting with SD/Flux, and the only thing I think I could even get close to production that I couldn't before is maybe an MTG style card game where gameplay is far more important than graphics, and flashy nice looking static artwork is far more important than consistency. That's a fucking small niche, and I don't see a lot of paths to generalisation.

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