[HN Gopher] Creating Isometric RPG Game Backgrounds
___________________________________________________________________
Creating Isometric RPG Game Backgrounds
Author : flimsythoughts
Score : 310 points
Date : 2023-03-01 22:47 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (talesofsyn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (talesofsyn.com)
| 752963e64 wrote:
| [dead]
| epups wrote:
| I think it looks great as a proof-of-concept. The author also
| correctly identifies some of the challenges, of which I think the
| greatest will be consistency. I would explore picking out the
| best examples it generates, or a style from a game you want to
| mimic, and train a Dreambooth model on those.
| mtrycz2 wrote:
| > Creating
|
| Generating is correct.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| Try following the other steps listed in the article. If you
| don't already have those skills you'll be spending a lot of
| time learning and mastering the tools and techniques. Even the
| SD generation steps require a decent knowledge of SD and then a
| lot of grind while you generate dozens or hundreds of images
| and tweak parameters until you get something good.
| paczki wrote:
| Prototyping and concept arting for game assets using stable
| diffusion has been a very enjoyable process for me. Seeing it
| being utilized more for isometric is pretty exciting with the
| sheer amount of iteration you immediately get.
|
| Using img2img with your own rough drafts and seeing what the AI
| can come up with has knocked hours/days off of my process,
| couldn't be happier with these immensely powerful tools. Random
| aside, but AI is very good at making tile-able textures too, it's
| been great.
|
| The video in the blog looks very solid in motion, will be
| interesting to see as you develop better shader techniques on the
| pieces.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| I think this series might need to be updated with the advent of
| controlnet. Everything from pose through normal maps can be
| lifted from existing assets and applied as needed. Can't imagine
| how much more productive the author will be incorporating these
| major improvements.
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| gg game artists
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| More like yw game artists. Check out the sketches the author
| made in order to generate the character model. That's a huge
| time saver if a game artist can just do a few rough sketches
| and then get a ton of reference or raw material to work with.
| The skillset for artists will change a bit, they'll focus more
| on compositing and repainting but they won't be out of a job.
| It'll make them a lot more productive in the end.
| haolez wrote:
| Well, these models were trained on data produced by artists.
| How far can they go into the future on their own?
| shmerl wrote:
| So does it mean benefiting on the work of the artists without
| giving them credit?
| krapp wrote:
| Yes. Not only without giving them credit, but for the most
| part making them unemployable or reducing the value of
| their expertise to subsistence level.
| astrange wrote:
| This has never happened and will never happen. Jevon's
| paradox means they'll get more work.
| krapp wrote:
| The world is full of people who have been rendered
| unemployed or underemployed due to globalization and
| automation. Not only has it happened, it's happening now,
| and it will happen to knowledge workers and creatives.
|
| The increased demand for the work AI can produce _will
| create jobs filled by AI,_ so Jevon 's paradox doesn't
| guarantee anything. If it did, cities like Detroit
| wouldn't be ruins now, as the boom of outsourcing and
| automation in manufacturing would simply have created
| more jobs as demand increased. But it turns out the
| market isn't an infinitely frictionless superfluid and
| the incentives for businesses change - when they can
| create value without human labor at all, they will seek
| to do so in all possible cases.
| astrange wrote:
| Detroit isn't all ruins, they rebuilt it. And it didn't
| get that way because of automation, which increases
| employment in manufacturing.
|
| https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/american-workers-need-
| lots...
| mcbits wrote:
| As long as there is enough randomness to generate novel
| features, and there are still humans in the loop to select
| the ones with desirable mutant features to survive and guide
| the next-generation model's evolution... pretty far.
| postsantum wrote:
| >still humans in the loop to select the ones with desirable
| mutant features
|
| Sounds like a task for Mechanical Turk
| astrange wrote:
| StableDiffusion is almost entirely not trained on "art"
| images. I daresay you could easily produce art assets from a
| model trained entirely on non-artistic images.
| paxys wrote:
| This example perfectly encapsulates the state of generative AI
| art.
|
| You can click a few buttons and instantly get artwork that is
| indistinguishable from stuff made by professional artists for
| top-quality games. Amazing!
|
| The downside is, your game is indistinguishable from every other
| game. Close your eyes and pick out anything in the isometric sci-
| fi/cyberpunk genre from Steam and the result will look exactly
| like this one. Heck you can probably import it directly from
| Unity's asset store without even bothering with Stable Diffusion.
|
| There's the broader question of - what is AI adding that will
| appeal to people wanting to buy your game, and the answer to that
| is still probably nothing.
| paczki wrote:
| I feel like asking "What is AI adding that will appeal to
| people wanting to buy your game" can be said about a majority
| of games with or without AI. It's possibly also the wrong
| question, AI isn't necessarily adding anything special but it
| IS enabling much more powerful tooling for the creation of
| games.
|
| The prototyping power and getting a general feel for how you'd
| like your design to be is only going to get stronger, utilizing
| these tools as a solo dev is going to be (and already is) such
| a gamechanger.
|
| People like OP are also putting in the extra work that I'd
| argue is significantly more than just pressing some buttons and
| getting some results, though I do concede the next era of low
| effort asset-flip style of games is going to flood the market
| soon enough.
| ticviking wrote:
| My concern is we're going to see the loss of creativity akin
| to what we see when directors us existing film scores as
| "dummy scores" to help establish mood.
| professoretc wrote:
| > when directors us existing film scores as "dummy scores"
| to help establish mood.
|
| Which then means that when the actual score for that film
| needs to be written, it pretty much has to sound like the
| dummy score, because all the scenes were filmed to match
| the dummy score.
| eviks wrote:
| > The downside is, your game is indistinguishable from every
| other game
|
| There is not such a consistency in "every other game", neither
| is there only a single one AI style, so that can't happen
| either, you'll be able to distinguish if the designer wanted
| such a distinction
|
| > what is AI adding that will appeal to people wanting to buy
| your game, and the answer to that is still probably nothing.
|
| This one is also easy: price reduction, that's pretty appealing
| the_af wrote:
| Price reduction (within reason) is absolutely NOT how I pick
| games. It's not my primary concern at all.
| fooker wrote:
| You are missing an important point. It significantly lowers the
| barrier to make a game, if you have a good idea.
| paxys wrote:
| Like I said, you can get an entire game world (maps, artwork,
| backgrounds, character sprites, weapons, vehicles, animation,
| sound effects, music) by clicking a few buttons in the Unity
| asset library. The barrier to entry for making a generic
| cookie-cutter game that a thousand people have made before is
| already nonexistent.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| No you can't. They'll be from different people and use
| mutually incompatible shaders. And in the case of unity,
| mutually incompatible renderer plugin versions ..
| kaibee wrote:
| > Heck you can probably import it directly from Unity's
| asset store without even bothering with Stable Diffusion.
|
| Try actually doing this though and it'll look like an
| absolute mess. You'll end up without any sort of cohesive
| art style and you'll have random variations in quality
| level. The thing about this AI generated stuff is that what
| it lacks in 'peak talent' it more than makes up for it in
| being able to actually produce something cohesive.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > You'll end up without any sort of cohesive art style
| and you'll have random variations in quality level.
|
| Oh look: exactly the result with AI tools.
|
| Did you miss the point where the author went through
| multiple variations, had to construct intricate prompts
| and do quite a lot of manual work for the end result to
| be half-decent?
| ticviking wrote:
| And you're missing the point that that large effort was
| less effort than other ways to get a prompt working
| liuliu wrote:
| Agreed. The power of SD is actually in its diverse styles.
| You should be able to aim at any specific style in latent
| space and get it. This is in contrast with Midjourney,
| which heavily favors sci-fi modern style.
| aenvoker wrote:
| With either tech, this thread is a very cynical take. If
| you give generic prompts, you get generic results. Want
| something personal, get personal and you will get
| personal results out of the AI.
|
| The barrier to creation has been lowered. But, when you
| can create anything, you still have to dig to figure out
| what you actually want.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _that is indistinguishable from stuff made by professional
| artists_
|
| Er - no, absolutely not. The moment I found myself in front of
| the screenshots I immediately noticed the very heavy patterns
| of NN-based generated graphic. Chiefly the distinctively
| smudged shapes - like 3D Google Maps as opposed to their
| earlier photographic aerial view.
| Kiro wrote:
| That's the most exaggerated "er - no, absolutely not" I've
| seen. This is definitely indistinguishable for the vast
| majority of people.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _indistinguishable for the vast majority of people_
|
| It would be a very worrisome indicator if more than a
| minority of people were unable to detect monstruosities -
| one eye above one below, one smaller one bigger, one normal
| one vacuous, one pupil round one merging with the
| eyelashes...
|
| The poster wrote <<professional artists>>, and they are
| supposed to produce Quality. That thing that, when spread,
| helps educated perception recognize lower quality and odd
| outputs.
| imtringued wrote:
| I am still confused by the building without a roof. What
| exactly is inside of it that I am supposed to see?
| imtringued wrote:
| What? I got the exact opposite impression. What I took away is
| that you can press the button and you will get something to
| look at, but the moment you actually need a seamless and
| coherent artist driven scene a lot of the work will still need
| human artists who are now merely painting with a very complex
| brush.
| impalallama wrote:
| Your comment sticks with me because the art generated here does
| look very ai generated (the lack of any consistency between
| something basic like a building window sticks out) and I
| disagree it's indistinguishable from professional artists.
|
| That said it reminds me quite stingingly of the work of manga
| artist Tsutomu Nihe whose works is quite literally about
| characters going through infinitely large Lovecraft-esq
| superstructures generated by machines
|
| https://kagi.com/images?q=tsutomu+nihei+architecture
| asynchronous wrote:
| I've seen similar techniques applied with 2D sprites to great
| impact, especially for someone terrible at drawing sprite art.
|
| On another note once SD can output blender files with somewhat
| correctly modeled 3D files solo game design could get much more
| accessible.
| Aerroon wrote:
| I think animation is a bigger problem. If you have 2D artwork
| then creating reasonable 3D models off of that is something
| that you can reasonably learn to do. But animating that model
| is much harder (or learning to).
| aschearer wrote:
| Based on the skeptical comments I was expecting to be
| disappointed but this is really incredible! Great write-up, too.
| Thanks for sharing.
|
| This approach may not scale or deliver "good enough" results or
| whatever right now, but it blows my mind that one person can do
| everything outlined in this and the follow up post on characters.
| Incredible efficiency gains and this technology came out less
| than a year ago!
| rkagerer wrote:
| Thank you to everyone who still works on isometric and 2D games.
| I hated it when my favorite titles like Civ went to cheesy 3D
| interfaces with assets that are indistinguishable until you're
| zoomed in so close its useless as a map.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| It's literally a greybox, with minor surface detail/texture. Not
| the most impressive demonstration. Any level designer could whip
| that up in a single afternoon...
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| Sure, I'll just hire a level designer on my $0 side project
| budget.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Most software engineers couldn't
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I've proof of concept-ed the same workflow and it just doesn't
| hold up in practice. Even so, there are some benefits that truly
| do help a solo dev.
|
| It's actually easier to de-bake yourself than use SD-derived
| assets. What I mean is that img2depth is severely lacking at the
| moment. The geometry it produces it unsuitable for compositing
| with other game assets. You'll notice compositing was avoided in
| the demo.
|
| As such it's easier to just block out geometry in Blender, and
| either project image as textures to it or repaint them by hand
| using diffusion output as a reference (or both if you're into
| that kind of thing). Even so, that's still incredibly useful.
|
| One of the most common things holding back a solo dev are art
| assets. I might not be able to create concept art, models, and
| textures ex novo, but I can pretty easily block out some
| geometry, repaint textures, and throw in some basic lighting.
|
| Looking forward, ideally img2depth+normal+diffuse+lighting would
| be a thing, but until that's something it's easier to take SD
| output as advice and suggestion than tangible assets and that's
| still worth a lot.
| smaddox wrote:
| If you're creating the normal maps yourself, perhaps you would
| benefit from generating the image from that using
| https://github.com/lllyasviel/ControlNet#controlnet-with-nor...
| danielbln wrote:
| CN is a total game changer for generative image models, it
| solves so many things that were problematic before (proper
| depth, pose, sensible text and much more). This along with
| LoRa[0] and other improvements from the SD community really
| turn this into a super capable toolchain.
|
| [0] https://github.com/cloneofsimo/lora
| cwkoss wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing. Define the paths and objects
| in the space, then 'extrude' the graphics from that.
| herval wrote:
| ControlNet is where it's at - the depth model can completely
| reskin an image [1] with a bit of prompting, and you can
| compose them (multiple controlnets feeding on each other)
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/herval/status/1631113661207945217/photo/...
| bbminner wrote:
| There's also MaskSketch from Google that will be presented at
| the upcoming CVPR https://github.com/google-
| research/masksketch
| transitivebs wrote:
| I love coming across a great blog like this an realizing it was
| built using two of my open source repos:
|
| - https://github.com/transitive-bullshit/nextjs-notion-starter...
|
| - https://github.com/NotionX/react-notion-x
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-03-02 23:03 UTC)