[HN Gopher] Show HN: Free, Accessible AI Art Generator
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       Show HN: Free, Accessible AI Art Generator
        
       Author : hwayne
       Score  : 79 points
       Date   : 2021-08-09 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (colab.research.google.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (colab.research.google.com)
        
       | minimaxir wrote:
       | See also my notebook (which was released after the OP's notebook
       | and I was not aware of it until after I completed mine) from the
       | same source which focuses on more streamlining and more
       | deterministic output by using icon-based input/target images:
       | https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1wkF67ThUz37T2_oPIuS...
        
         | hwayne wrote:
         | I think we're in a "lightbulb" moment: the tech has gotten good
         | and convenient enough that a lot of people are having the same
         | ideas. I mean, heck, I don't know anything about AI _or_ art
         | and I was still able to make my notebook. There 's also been a
         | bunch of paid solutions submitted to HN, too, as people try to
         | find ways to build products off this.
         | 
         | The great thing is that the space is big and crazy enough that
         | even if a bunch of people independently make something,
         | everything they make will be different in interesting ways. I'm
         | just focusing on making it as simple as possible, to the point
         | where I don't even have an option to have different width and
         | height. I give it maybe a month before someone makes a Colab
         | that blows both of ours out of the water.
         | 
         | (I should really start aggregating the notebooks, so people who
         | enjoyed mine and want to try all the other cool ones can see
         | them all in one place)
        
       | corysama wrote:
       | There's a fairly active community on Reddit playing with this
       | tech https://www.reddit.com/user/corysama/m/gan_art/
        
         | BossingAround wrote:
         | I was just baffled by https://vimeo.com/584985260. This is
         | utterly amazing.
        
         | fpgaminer wrote:
         | This was truly horrifying, thank you:
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/deepdream/comments/olhjbe/demonic_c...
        
           | jcims wrote:
           | This was one of my favorites:
           | 
           | https://twitter.com/trainoferror/status/1412944106372935688?.
           | ..
        
           | Mizza wrote:
           | I ended up making this (NSFW?) one a while back:
           | https://i.imgur.com/TLASiRG.png
           | 
           | I found it really interesting that people discovered that you
           | can get improve quality by including strings like "Blender
           | HD", "Unity Engine", "HD Wallpaper".
        
             | jcims wrote:
             | Try adding 'tattoo'
        
       | hwayne wrote:
       | I've seen a bunch of people share their AI art generators, so I
       | figured I'd get in on the action and share mine. This is based on
       | the notebooks written by AI artists like advadnoun and Katherine
       | Crowson. The difference between those and this is:
       | 
       | - Friendlier UI/UX: I used colab forms and IPython widgets to
       | make it easy to use if you don't know how to program. For
       | example, instead of having people fiddle with sampling vs pooling
       | methods, you can just select "default" or "cumin" flavors.
       | 
       | - Simplified inputs: I stripped out a lot of the power from
       | "artist-oriented" notebooks to make it less scary to first
       | timers. You can still edit the code directly to get the same
       | power, but all that's hidden away.
       | 
       | - "Download all images" and "create a video" buttons for funsies.
       | 
       | People have also been posting commercial AI offerings, like
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28070149. The differences
       | with this are:
       | 
       | - Totally free. This is running off Google's free Colab offering.
       | You just need a Google account.
       | 
       | - No wait times. Colab gives a separate GPU to each user, so
       | there's no queueing or anything.
       | 
       | - A bit more power: if Colab assigns you a large instance (most
       | people are getting large instances, unless you use it for a very
       | long time), you can make images up to 700x700.
       | 
       | - Codes all available if you want to clone it, make your own
       | version, or download it to run locally.
       | 
       | I shared this on Twitter last week and lots of nonprogrammers are
       | able to use it, which tells me that it works pretty well at its
       | intended goals. So far this is my favorite thing anybody's made
       | with it (video, sound):
       | https://twitter.com/PuPunPa/status/1423428815846481924
       | 
       | Also happy to answer any questions people have about AI art in
       | general. I only fell down the rabbit hole last month, and it's a
       | _deep_ rabbit hole, so I can 't promise much, but I really like
       | talking about this stuff and sharing what I've learned. Enjoy!
        
         | minimaxir wrote:
         | > A bit more power: if Colab assigns you a large instance (most
         | people are getting large instances, unless you use it for a
         | very long time), you can make images up to 700x700.
         | 
         | Technically you just need a GPU with 16GB VRAM to create larger
         | images, which is every GPU Colab can give except the K80 (which
         | has 12GB VRAM, but still can do 600x600)
         | 
         | Your Notebook code appears to do to a VRAM check via nvidia-
         | smi, not an instance size check.
        
           | Mizza wrote:
           | Does anybody know of the best practice for creating large
           | images (ex 3840x2160) on a single GPU (ex a 2080/3080)? I
           | played with stitching some years ago when all of this stuff
           | was still in its infancy, but wasn't super thrilled with the
           | results as I ended up with seams, now I'm wondering if a
           | common practice has emerged as the techniques have evolved.
        
             | minimaxir wrote:
             | Create an image normally and do 2x/4x image super-
             | resolution.
             | 
             | Hey, if you're already working with AI-generated art, using
             | another AI isn't unreasonable.
        
             | hwayne wrote:
             | What you could try doing is use a notebook that lets you
             | start with an initial image [1], chunk that image, and
             | generate a an image for each chunk. It wouldn't be unified,
             | but it could come out interesting.
             | 
             | To make bigger images, I'm currently making composites out
             | of multiple smaller prompts, like gradients or chessboards.
        
               | hwayne wrote:
               | Hot dang I forgot to actually add in the link and now
               | it's too late to edit so here it is
               | 
               | [1] https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1wkF67ThUz37T
               | 2_oPIuS...
        
       | usmannk wrote:
       | I know HN has special rules for formatting certain URLs. Like
       | Twitter links get the username added on and apparently
       | research.google.com gets a subdomain (Or maybe all of Google?).
       | 
       | Turns out this link is actually from colab, a repository of user-
       | generated content hosted at colab.research.google.com.
       | 
       | @dang: if it isn't too unwieldy, maybe colab links could have the
       | 'colab' part added on too? The way it is now led me to think the
       | link led to an official Google Research publication/project.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | mattkevan wrote:
       | I've been utterly obsessed with the VQGAN notebooks since they
       | came out and had a ton of fun.
       | 
       | It's amazing how much difference choosing the right prompts can
       | make - trending on artstation, by James Gurney (even James Gurney
       | himself got in on it), unreal engine, volumetric lighting etc.
       | 
       | No hyperbole in that this is one of the biggest things to happen
       | in digital art, probably since Photoshop.
       | 
       | Check out some of my creations:
       | https://twitter.com/unltd_dream_co/
        
       | kyrra wrote:
       | I was playing around with this with some friends and I have to
       | say that anything involving animals of any kind in the generation
       | leads to really weird results. I haven't tried other AI art
       | programs, so I don't know of this is sort of expected, but
       | definitely interesting.
        
         | hwayne wrote:
         | Same thing with trees. It definitely seems to struggle more
         | with individual objects you'd expect to see in lots of photos.
         | It's really good at locations, though.
         | 
         | (Some of that might also be what I hardcoded. Most notebooks
         | give a lot more flexibility in the art you produced, I
         | simplified things dramatically for accessibility purposes)
        
       | kamilszybalski wrote:
       | Looks like a neat NFT generator.
        
       | cubano wrote:
       | Am I a total idiot as I am completely unable to get any output
       | from this?
       | 
       | I mean, I spent about 5 minutes reading the various inputs and
       | trying to modify them, yet I am baffled as what to do to actually
       | see, or even know what's going on, what the system is producing.
       | 
       | Very frustrating.
        
         | hwayne wrote:
         | Ping me on twitter or email? Both should be in the colab
         | notebook.
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-09 23:00 UTC)