[HN Gopher] Skybox AI: Use AI to generate 3D worlds
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       Skybox AI: Use AI to generate 3D worlds
        
       Author : gaws
       Score  : 112 points
       Date   : 2023-06-02 15:32 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (skybox.blockadelabs.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (skybox.blockadelabs.com)
        
       | adammarples wrote:
       | Pair this with VR for a fun afternoon
        
       | frabjoused wrote:
       | My optimistic excitement is gradually wavering as I wait onward
       | of 3 minutes for the first image to generate.
        
         | all2 wrote:
         | To be fair, the demo skybox was quite good. If I was a one man
         | studio, I'd be willing to pay for and wait for well made sky
         | boxes.
        
         | c0ldstudy wrote:
         | The progress bar stuck in the end in my case.
        
         | skykooler wrote:
         | It seems to be down now.
        
         | corysama wrote:
         | I seen a demo of related (same?) tech running in real time in
         | VR by gradually updating the map in patches while you ask for
         | changes.
        
         | zackkatz wrote:
         | Mine was stuck until I toggled the "Auto-pan skybox" setting
         | and it appeared.
        
         | ConfusedDog wrote:
         | I gave up waiting after 20 minutes...
        
         | JackFr wrote:
         | I gave up after 7 minutes.
        
         | raincole wrote:
         | It's hugged by HN crowd so maybe tomorrow lol.
        
       | bullen wrote:
       | Complete waste of electricity.
       | 
       | Proportions are out of whack.
       | 
       | You can't use this for anything.
        
       | ilaksh wrote:
       | This is an example of using a simple AI technique (stable
       | diffusion) and really getting the most out of it. It's really
       | just a clever execution and presentation of what is now just
       | about the most commonly deployed type of generative AI.
       | 
       | As opposed to what I am doing, trying to write a whole program
       | from scratch, probably the most complex and difficult to pull off
       | application of AI. It's quite challenging to explain what you
       | want and get a functioning attractive output. Also to run
       | arbitrary backend code I need to deploy VMs which are relatively
       | expensive. People don't seem interested in paying for my website.
       | 
       | So right now I am trying to think of something similar to my
       | original idea but maybe easier to accomplish successfully and
       | with less work for the user.
       | 
       | Maybe if I can finally do a good job with filling web page
       | templates that is what I should start with. Because even if it
       | can synthesize code for some unique requirement, the fact that
       | the web pages it outputs don't look attractive is probably making
       | it hard for people to understand that it's useful.
       | 
       | But basically I think this blockade thing is a good lesson for me
       | if I can find a way to adapt a similar approach to what I have
       | been trying to do.
        
       | floren wrote:
       | One of the sneakiest EULAs I've seen:
       | https://i.imgur.com/bWR8iw2.png
       | 
       | It's titled "What's New At Blockade Labs", a title which
       | continues to display even when you scroll down and find the terms
       | of service below the news... which is presumably why the button
       | is labeled "Confirm"
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | The progress bar is also sneaky. It goes to 95% in about a
         | minute, then stays there.
        
           | ajmurmann wrote:
           | It's based on the algorithm used by the Windows 95 file copy
           | progress bar
        
       | mdorazio wrote:
       | I was hoping someone had found a better way than radiance fields
       | to generate actual 3D models. This is creating 360 panoramic
       | _images_ , which are not "3D" unless I'm missing something. Still
       | impressive tech, though.
        
         | gumballindie wrote:
         | I do it with heightmaps. It can generate human faces, rocks,
         | planets, terrains, all at high detail. There is no need for
         | attempting to generate 3d models for everything, when you can
         | create "blueprints".
        
         | com2kid wrote:
         | If you check out their Discord they have tools in (closed I
         | think) beta that generative full 3d scenes. Lots of _really_
         | cool demos get posted their daily. I 'd actually say that as
         | someone using it purely for panorama generation that I'm in the
         | minority of use cases.
        
         | dorkwood wrote:
         | It looks like the final image is rendered as a cubemap in the
         | shader. Cubes are technically 3D.
        
           | sidewndr46 wrote:
           | is there a way to export it to geometry with textures?
        
             | jdiff wrote:
             | If a cube or sphere are acceptable geometry, sure.
        
         | all2 wrote:
         | It is called "skybox" AI, a reference to sky boxes from video
         | games.
        
         | mefarza123 wrote:
         | I found some papers which propose alternative methods (source:
         | https://MirrorThink.ai):
         | 
         | 1. Point-NeRF: Point-based Neural Radiance Fields - 2022: This
         | paper presents Point-NeRF, a localized neural representation
         | that combines volumetric radiance fields with point clouds to
         | model complex local scene geometry and appearance. It achieves
         | better rendering quality than NeRF and is more efficient in
         | reconstructing complex and large-scale scenes.
         | 
         | 2. TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields - 2022: TensoRF proposes
         | a tensorial radiance field representation that can achieve fast
         | reconstruction and high rendering quality. It is significantly
         | faster than NeRF and many previous methods.
         | 
         | 3. GazeNeRF: 3D-Aware Gaze Redirection with Neural Radiance
         | Fields - 2022: GazeNeRF incorporates 3D awareness with gaze
         | redirection by applying a rotation matrix to the disentangled
         | eyeball feature maps. It represents a static scene with multi-
         | layer perceptrons and maps the 3D positions and viewing
         | directions to a density and radiance for generating novel views
         | with volume rendering.
         | 
         | [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04823
         | 
         | [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.09517
         | 
         | [3] https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.08845
        
           | underanalyzer wrote:
           | @dang this account appears to be low effort ai generated spam
           | presumably to promote MirrorThink.ai (look at the past
           | comments)
           | 
           | Regardless this answer does not responded to the parent
           | comment's question at all since all of these papers are about
           | radiance fields.
        
         | jahewson wrote:
         | Check out https://nerf.studio it can do some mind-bending
         | stuff.
        
           | underanalyzer wrote:
           | while nerf.studio is impressive, the parent comment is asking
           | about radiance field free methods. NeRF stands for Neural
           | Radiance Fields and all of the algorithms in that repo use
           | radiance fields
        
       | jfisher4024 wrote:
       | Can someone please use this to improve the skyboxes in the KOTOR
       | games? Please and thank you.
        
       | TaylorAlexander wrote:
       | I love a good redwood forest bath, so I generated this:
       | https://skybox.blockadelabs.com/d4a5d5f9050670414b99a76b6d68...
        
       | KMiNT21 wrote:
       | It would be nice if it generate Oculus(Meta) Quest Home
       | environment :)
       | 
       | Anyway, still wait for someone to make real 3D scenes generator
       | (so we can import to UE5).
        
       | com2kid wrote:
       | Skybox Labs makes really great backgrounds, although if you ask
       | it to add people it will try and generate AI monstrosities!
       | 
       | Being able to take the same scene and just change the time of day
       | is really cool, my generative storytelling demonstration site[1]
       | uses that feature to show the passage of time.
       | 
       | My largest wish is that generation wasn't so slow. I get their
       | main use case is actually generating 3d environments that can be
       | navigated around (and their Discord has some cool examples of
       | early adopters using it for just that!) but I just need fast
       | generation of panoramas!
       | 
       | Really what it comes down to is that OpenAI and their obscene
       | levels of funding have made everyone used to AIs that give
       | results almost instantly, but smaller scrappier startups cannot
       | afford to buy a large % of the world's GPU supply.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.generativestorytelling.ai
        
       | ricksunny wrote:
       | Is this Skybox also related?
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35619119 Is 'Skybox' a term
       | of art in 3D graphics or is it polluted namespace?
        
         | Lukas_Skywalker wrote:
         | Skyboxes are used in 3D games. They are usually made of images
         | plastered to the inside of a cube that is larger than the game
         | area, with the player at the center. It makes the game area
         | appear larger than it really is, because clouds, mountains and
         | buildings appear far away.
        
         | jamilton wrote:
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skybox_(video_games)
         | 
         | It's the term for the image used for the sky in a 3D
         | environment.
        
       | zackkatz wrote:
       | I gave it this prompt, which I didn't spend any time refining,
       | and it came up with a world that does a pretty good job of
       | matching it.
       | 
       | > A world made of very strong rock that has lots of rain. The
       | rain contains acid, which wears the rock down. There is lots of
       | soil, but it s in very thin layers because the world is
       | relatively new.
       | 
       | https://skybox.blockadelabs.com/215b2684ceac6daac1958d020e24...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | technothrasher wrote:
         | I prompted it "small heavily forested islands in rough seas"
         | and it gave me one large forested land area in snow, with a
         | bunch of rocky treeless islands in calm water. <shrug>
        
         | all2 wrote:
         | My prompt was simpler and the results are pretty cool. It
         | didn't get "sky as the ground", though.
         | 
         | https://skybox.blockadelabs.com/c0e1e883df8d91a50f8e30180d73...
        
       | ravenstine wrote:
       | Neat scenery, but seems incapable of much specificity.
        
       | stevebmark wrote:
       | Serious question: How is this tool free? Are they burning money
       | making it publicly accessible? Or something else? Every other AI
       | gen tool I've seen is pay-per-use.
        
         | squarefoot wrote:
         | They're investing their own money to make it famous enough so
         | that in some time it can be turned as a pay per use service.
         | Pretty normal to me.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | madrox wrote:
       | This is very cool, which is why I'm so annoyed by the onboarding
       | modals. Don't take away focus from what the user is currently
       | messing with to show them a wall of text. Use tooltips.
        
       | raincole wrote:
       | It's cool, but I think if it accepts image prompts it would be
       | 1000x more useful.
       | 
       | In other words, I'd like to turn my existing images into 3D
       | skyboxes.
        
         | brucethemoose2 wrote:
         | You can interrogate your image here and copy the text:
         | https://huggingface.co/spaces/pharma/CLIP-Interrogator
         | 
         | But theoretically the devs could easily add a more "direct"
         | pipeline with better results. There is a HF diffusers function
         | for encoding input images like they are text prompts.
        
           | raincole wrote:
           | I'm familiar with interrogation, and image -> interrogation
           | -> t2i will usually generate a completely different image
           | that the original (and it should!), unlike i2i.
        
             | brucethemoose2 wrote:
             | Well there is interrogate, there is i2i, and then there is
             | something in between. You encode the image directly into
             | latent space vectors, and it applies the general "style" of
             | the input, much closer than a text prompt would.
             | 
             | I think this is called pix2pix or style transfer.
        
       | hyuuu wrote:
       | this + oculus = you can play god
        
         | KMiNT21 wrote:
         | Hm... Should try. I generated with depth=on. Interesting...
         | BTW, do we need some external tool which can work with depth-
         | file for an image?
        
       | semicognitive wrote:
       | Love this, we already covered it a couple weeks ago on AI Daily.
       | 
       | https://www.aidailypod.com/p/creativity-unleashed-blockade-l...
        
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       (page generated 2023-06-02 23:02 UTC)