[HN Gopher] Toon3D: Seeing cartoons from a new perspective
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       Toon3D: Seeing cartoons from a new perspective
        
       Author : lnyan
       Score  : 306 points
       Date   : 2024-05-17 13:04 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (toon3d.studio)
 (TXT) w3m dump (toon3d.studio)
        
       | nemomarx wrote:
       | This is very interesting but I feel like the name suggests it's
       | an animation or graphics program more directly? That might be a
       | branding loss
        
       | jsheard wrote:
       | It's... neat? But I'm struggling to think of what the
       | applications of this would actually be. 2D artwork usually
       | doesn't have a consistent 3D space, which they acknowledge, but
       | they don't seem to have overcome that problem in any useful
       | sense. The scenes are barely coherent once they move from one of
       | the originally drawn camera positions.
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | Both Futurama and Family Guy sometimes use 3d rendering for
         | vehicles for example, and render it in a cartoon looking style
         | and composit it with flat 2d animations.
         | 
         | Maybe similar kind of things could be an application of this.
         | 
         | Another possible use-case might be a game development studio
         | developing a license game based on a 2d cartoon, but making the
         | game 3d. They could use this as a tool for visualization while
         | planning and developing, to iterate quickly and to reference
         | how the original 2d could translate into 3d.
        
           | SiempreViernes wrote:
           | Not really? In those examples the hand crafted 3d assets
           | already exist, this thing could at best recreate the 3d
           | geometries the show creators made themselves. That seems
           | useful mainly for cloning someone else's work.
        
             | codetrotter wrote:
             | "Similar kind of thing" meaning for another show that wants
             | to do the same but who have not created the 3d assets yet.
             | 
             | Team of 2d artists draw the desired vehicles for the
             | cartoon from two or three angles. Software like this makes
             | a usable 3d model of it.
        
               | jsheard wrote:
               | If you were making 2D drawings with the intent of turning
               | them into a 3D model then you would draw them to be
               | coherent in 3D in the first place. The whole novelty of
               | the research in the OP is that they're trying to
               | reconstruct drawings that were never intended to make
               | realistic sense in 3D.
               | 
               | Even if AI has a place in the 2D to 3D part of a
               | pipeline, surely you'd still want the 2D artwork be
               | unambigously representative of what the 3D asset should
               | look like, rather than providing self-contradictory input
               | data and praying that the AI can magically make it make
               | sense.
        
               | codetrotter wrote:
               | True. For the second use-case I mentioned it still
               | applies though. Where a studio is making a licensed 3d
               | game based on an existing 2d cartoon.
        
         | jameshart wrote:
         | I could see some value maybe in giving an artist feedback on
         | where the model detects inconsistencies between different
         | viewpoints.
        
           | jsheard wrote:
           | That assumes that consistency between viewpoints is actually
           | desirable - part of the charm of 2D animation is that things
           | can be stylized or exaggerated or simplified in ways that
           | don't come naturally in a 3D workflow, where the "default" is
           | for things to fit together realistically and any deviation
           | from that takes additional effort.
           | 
           | If you _do_ want numerous 2D artworks which share a
           | realistically defined 3D space then that can easily be done
           | by making a very rough 3D scene and then painting over it,
           | you don 't need any AI for that.
        
           | SiempreViernes wrote:
           | If consistency was highly desirable you'd just model the 3d
           | space from the start...
        
         | Waterluvian wrote:
         | I think this is just a device used to demonstrate and advance
         | the technology. I doubt this has a real application in this
         | context given how little work is needed to 3D model these kinds
         | of environments anyways.
        
         | timdiggerm wrote:
         | Maybe you could better construct a 3d model of a demolished
         | landmark from old paintings and photos?
        
         | theultdev wrote:
         | With future advancements you could pump out video games for
         | many series.
         | 
         | While rough, these do look better than some implementations of
         | the artwork for cartoon games.
        
         | wongarsu wrote:
         | A refined version of this could be used to make stereoscopic
         | versions of cartoons.
         | 
         | On the other hand you are probably better off only using the
         | depth prediction and filling any voids in using image
         | generation instead of this mapping process.
        
         | chungy wrote:
         | SpongeBob brazenly violates 3D space rules (I mean, they also
         | have fire underwater...). The writers and artists both draw
         | heavy inspiration from Looney Tunes, where such rules are
         | broken because it's funny to break them.
        
         | xsmasher wrote:
         | The renders it creates are underwhelming, but it seems good at
         | determining the location and angle of the camera.
         | 
         | I could see it being used to create a "scratch track" that
         | human animators animate on top of. An aid to tweening.
        
       | nico wrote:
       | It's fascinating that the generated Gaussian splats look kind of
       | like a dream. Almost like that was the way we generate 3d scenes
       | in our minds
        
       | solardev wrote:
       | It kinda looks like a cartoon version of Microsoft Photosynth?
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynth
        
       | SiempreViernes wrote:
       | The ability to reconstruct a coherent 3d view from a sparse set
       | of photos seems much more useful than for a set of 2d drawings of
       | an entirely imagined space, I don't think 2d artists are cheaper
       | than the 3d artists.
        
         | benrutter wrote:
         | Surely they're 2/3 the price right? I'm basing this on the fact
         | that I'd happily draw 1 dimensional pictures for 1/2 the price
         | of a 2d artist.
        
       | robertclaus wrote:
       | I was surprised by how poorly it reproduces the look from the
       | perspective of specific images. For example, see the magic
       | schoolbus further down. It feels like their algorithm could
       | probably be tuned more in the direction of "trust the images".
        
         | chefandy wrote:
         | A huge part of art is distinguishing between what "feels" right
         | and what would be the case in reality. Even in the spaces I
         | usually work in-- 3D animaton and film-- things in the
         | background or maybe out-of-focus in the foreground or whatever
         | are often distorted and weirdly juxtaposed to make something
         | that looks right even if it wouldn't map to a real-world
         | configuration that makes sense. 2D art is even less tied to
         | real-world representations than that. What we can see in
         | applications like this is how incredible our brains are at
         | conceptually constructing ideas based on relatively abstract
         | representations, and how incredible artists are at operating in
         | the less-defined realms of that space. Maybe a scene seems to
         | have a coherent perspective to the viewer, but the couch and
         | end table in the BG were drawn as they would look shot with a
         | 120mm lens while the foreground is deliberately claustrophobic
         | and drawn like it was shot with a 30mm lens? It could look fine
         | to us because we don't need to reason about the realistic 3D
         | space those characters exist in-- we just need to understand
         | that they're in a space like that because we know what it's
         | like to be in spaces, and how people interact with them-- good
         | art gives us just enough to communicate the core ideas making
         | them the focus of the message, and lets our brains
         | subconsciously make the connections and add all of the context
         | to make a complete 'experience.' Everything is a potential
         | layer of communication to achieve deliberate artistic effect--
         | the type of couch and end table, the often skewed or
         | exaggerated scale and relationships between objects, etc.-- and
         | it often just doesn't have a coherent real-world
         | representation. Beyond that, in any given shot, things are
         | certainly moved around to aid in composition, emphasize certain
         | interactions, etc. etc. etc. If you notice it, then it's a
         | continuity problem. If you don't notice it, then job well done.
         | In the overwhelming majority of cases, nobody notices it, and
         | we just _happen_ to have a world where everything from every
         | angle has really compelling composition.
         | 
         | An algorithm that needs to look at the lines and try to figure
         | out a real-world scenario that correlates to that
         | representation might be trying to create something that could
         | never exist in any coherent form.
        
       | JL-Akrasia wrote:
       | This is so cool!
        
       | JL-Akrasia wrote:
       | Holy crap, can you imagine rewatching your favorite shows from
       | different perspectives?
        
         | jareklupinski wrote:
         | i just want to see Steamed Hams from the perspective of the
         | oven
        
           | henriquecm8 wrote:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvmgdJQi5cA
        
         | bogwog wrote:
         | A VR/AR reproduction of old cartoons where you can explore a
         | coherent 3D space would be cool.
         | 
         | It doesn't seem like the OP comes even close to this though.
        
         | autoexec wrote:
         | Not if it looks anything like this... Honestly I'd be surprised
         | if AI could do it justice. In a shot showing one character
         | talking, panning around to see the other characters that AI
         | pasted into the scene wouldn't be enough. Those characters
         | would also have to be animated and show appropriate
         | attention/reactions to what was being said/going on.
        
       | binary132 wrote:
       | Amazingly weird
        
       | djl0 wrote:
       | A little bit off topic, but related: are there any tools to which
       | you can feed a few photos of a room from various angles and it
       | will generate a floorplan or 3d model like this?
        
         | troymc wrote:
         | Yes, in fact at least one of them got funding from YC:
         | Matterport.
         | 
         | There are many others: Kuula, Cupix, iStaging, EyeSpy360...
         | Real estate companies use them a lot, e.g. to create a virtual
         | tour for prospective buyers.
        
           | djl0 wrote:
           | thank you! very interesting, i'll check those out. do you
           | know of any open source projects?
        
         | me_online wrote:
         | lumalabs dot ai is pretty neat. Takes videos as input but works
         | very well.
        
       | eMerzh wrote:
       | Not sure how related there are, but it looks like it could be
       | used to do https://www.wakatoon.com
        
       | JonathanFly wrote:
       | Creating 3D spaces from inconsistent source images! Super fun
       | idea.
       | 
       | I tried a crude and terrible version of something like this a few
       | years ago, but not just _inconsistent_ spaces without a clear
       | ground truth - purely _abstract non-space_ images which aren 't
       | supposed to represent a 3D space at all. Transform an abstract
       | art painting (Kandinsky or Pollock for example) into a explorable
       | virtual reality space. Obviously there is no 'ground truth' for
       | whatever 'walking around inside a Pollock painting' means - the
       | goal was just to see what happens if you try to do it anyway. The
       | workflow was:
       | 
       | 1. Start From Single Abstract Art Source Image
       | 
       | 2. SinGan to Create Alternative 'viewpoints' of the 'scene'
       | 
       | 3. 3d-photo-inpainting (or Ken Burns, similar project) on
       | original and SinGan'd images (monocular depth mapping, outputs a
       | zoom/rotate/pan video)
       | 
       | 4. Throw 3d-photo-inpainting frames into photogrammetry app (Nerf
       | didn't exist yet) and dial up all the knobs to allow for the
       | maximum amount of errors and inconsistency
       | 
       | 5. Pray the photogrammetry process doesn't explode (9 times out
       | of 10 it crashed after 24 hours, brutal)
       | 
       | I must have posted an example on Twitter but I can't find the
       | right search term to find it. But for example, even 2019 tier
       | depth mapping produced pretty fun videos from abstract art:
       | https://x.com/jonathanfly/status/1174033265524690949 The closest
       | thing I can find is photogrammetry of an NVIDIA GauGAN video (not
       | consistent frame to frame)
       | https://x.com/jonathanfly/status/1258127899401609217
       | 
       | I'm curious if this project can do a better job at the same idea.
       | Maybe I can try this weekend.
        
         | localfirst wrote:
         | What is a technique/library that can take an image of a 3d
         | environment/drawing of a room and detect a rough mesh
         | highlighting ground, walls, barriers ?
        
       | ambyra wrote:
       | I can't think of a great application either. Maybe if you want to
       | map camera movements when converting an animated scene from 2d to
       | 3d. It'd probably be easier just to start from scratch though.
       | Simple polygons with a toon shader would work for simpsons and
       | family guy im sure.
        
         | toddmorey wrote:
         | I don't think it will ever catch fire in animation studio
         | workflows. I can't see it beating the current process of
         | applying toon rendering to 3D geometry. Though it may help
         | renderers add variation to the output in a way that's more
         | authentic and less random.
         | 
         | I'm wondering if it's at all useful in understanding /
         | improving AI's ability to infer semantic meaning from even real
         | images in a variety of scenarios? Like the ability to re-
         | interpret an interpreted construction (drawing) of a scene.
         | 
         | One area of application may be helping machines better
         | understand hand drawn human input?
        
           | mikepurvis wrote:
           | "the current process of applying toon rendering to 3D
           | geometry"
           | 
           | Is this widespread? My sense is that most mainstream TV
           | animation that isn't obviously CGI is still drawn in 2D, with
           | 3D work if used at all being relegated to backgrounds and the
           | like.
        
         | chefandy wrote:
         | I'm sure some marketer has an email chain open with a developer
         | asking if they can use it to help advertise bigger houses to
         | TikTok users who film at home, or something like that. Or maybe
         | advertise luxury products to people who are in large homes.
        
       | throw4847285 wrote:
       | If you showed the Spirited Away one to Miyazaki, he would
       | probably call it an insult to life itself.
        
         | helloplanets wrote:
         | For those wondering, this is a reference to an older video:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ0K3lWKRc
         | 
         | So, not hyperbole.
        
           | whamlastxmas wrote:
           | Miyazaki famously not a very kind person, especially to his
           | son
        
           | araes wrote:
           | Not pointed at @helloplanets, just need to note that he
           | responded that way because it was an abomination. And they're
           | all stockholm syndrome about the situation, "we can use AI to
           | make grotesque monsters that feel no pain. All we want to do
           | is make a machine that replaces human drawing." With this
           | weird implied feeling he was supposed to congratulate them.
           | 
           | Quoting Miyazaki, which was not especially harsh given they
           | showed him a naked mutant zombie crawling across the ground
           | using it's head and arm as legs while constantly trying to
           | arch it's butt toward the camera.
           | 
           | > Every morning, not recent days, but I see my friend who has
           | a disability.
           | 
           | > It's so hard for him just to do a high five (waves hand
           | showing difficulty)
           | 
           | > His arm with stiff muscle reaching out to my hand
           | (demonstrates body stiffness)
           | 
           | > Now thinking of him, I can't watch this stuff and find it
           | interesting
           | 
           | > Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is, or
           | whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted.
           | 
           | > If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead
           | and do it
           | 
           | > I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my
           | work at all
           | 
           | > I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.
           | 
           | (room sits in silence awkwardly)
        
             | SebastianKra wrote:
             | Many YouTube comments seem to have understood this clip as
             | a dismissal of AI in general. And, regardless of whether
             | thats accurate, I disagree with this standpoint. It's not
             | easy to defend this particular example. But seeing how
             | Rainworld uses synthetic animation to simulate an alien,
             | yet somehow familiar ecosystem, makes me excited for whats
             | next.
             | 
             | From a Review by Matthewmatosis [1]:
             | 
             | > Not long after setting out, I found myself staying in a
             | quiet place, just moving Slugcat around various obstacles
             | as smoothly as I could. [...] What was happening on screen
             | looked like an animal testing its limits so as to build
             | survival skills. It was then that I knew that this system
             | was a resounding success.
             | 
             | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Un2L5tF1w
        
       | James_K wrote:
       | This web page uses over 1.6 gigabytes of RAM.
        
         | frizzlebox wrote:
         | That might explain why it consistently kills Firefox Focus on
         | my phone.
        
       | chungus wrote:
       | I imagine Spongebob episodes converted to this 3D format, and
       | watching them with VR goggles, like you're there.
        
         | owenpalmer wrote:
         | I love this
        
         | dvngnt_ wrote:
         | you mean like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msI5VFPMmSE
        
       | monitron wrote:
       | It's interesting that they used the Planet Express building from
       | Futurama as one of their examples of 3D-inconsistency, because
       | I'm pretty sure the exteriors are in fact computer-generated from
       | a 3D model. Watch the show and you can see the establishing shots
       | usually involve a smooth complex camera move around the building.
        
         | jsheard wrote:
         | Yeah, Futurama used composited 3D elements from the very first
         | episode in 1999. The vehicles are nearly always 3D.
        
         | manifoldgeo wrote:
         | Agreed, most or all shots of the Planet Express building and
         | Planet Express ship are 3D renderings, even in the original
         | first few seasons. Beyond that, even some shots of Bender in
         | Space are 3D renderings, especially in cases where a complex
         | and continuous shift in perspective is required.
         | 
         | Non-photo-realistic (NPR) 3D art goes back a surprisingly long
         | way in animations. I rewatched the 1988 Disney cartoon "Oliver
         | and Company" recently, and I was surprised to see that the cars
         | and buildings were "cel-shaded" 3D models. I assumed that the
         | movie had been remastered, but when I looked it up, I found out
         | that it was the first Disney movie ever to make heavy use of
         | CGI[0] and that what I was seeing was in the original. The page
         | I found says:
         | 
         | "This was the first Disney movie to make heavy use of computer
         | animation. CGI effects were used for making the skyscrapers,
         | the cars, trains, Fagin's scooter-cart and the climactic Subway
         | chase. It was also the first Disney film to have a department
         | created specifically for computer animation."
         | 
         | References ----------
         | 
         | 0: https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Oliver_%26_Company
        
           | a1o wrote:
           | Found a pretty cool wireframe video of Oliver and Company.
           | 
           | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mix9rStOqoI
           | 
           | Now I am curious to watch it
        
           | Eduard wrote:
           | > "This was the first Disney movie to make heavy use of
           | computer animation. [...]"
           | 
           | Tron came out 1982, six years before Oliver & Company.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron
        
             | RF_Savage wrote:
             | And large amounts of the "computer" graphics in Tron are
             | hand drawn.
        
               | croes wrote:
               | Still lots of CGI.
        
             | interroboink wrote:
             | I guess it depends on the definition of "heavy use." I know
             | in Tron a few scenes were CG, and there were a few CG+live-
             | action bits, but the majority was filmed on normal physical
             | sets in high-contrast, then painstakingly hand-processed[1]
             | to add the neon "glow".
             | 
             | [1] https://filmschoolrejects.com/tron-costumes-glowing-
             | effect/ Thanks legions of Taiwanese animators (:
        
               | croes wrote:
               | From your link: >The 1982 Disney movie is privy to a
               | remarkable number of firsts: the first feature-length
               | film to combine CGI and live-action; the first talking
               | and moving CGI character; the first film to combine a CGI
               | character and a live-action one; the first fully CGI
               | backgrounds... The list goes on and on.
               | 
               | Sounds pretty heavy to me.
        
               | croes wrote:
               | And the film OP mentioned Oliver & Company:
               | 
               | >Eleven minutes of the film used "computer-assisted
               | imagery" such as the skyscrapers, the taxi cabs, trains,
               | Fagin's scooter-cart, and the climactic subway chase
               | 
               | I think Tron wins in terms of CGI
        
             | nicklecompte wrote:
             | But Disney _financed and distributed_ Tron. It wasn 't made
             | by a Disney Studio, and most of the animation was
             | outsourced to a Taiwanese studio because Disney wouldn't
             | lend any of their own talent. So I think it's fair to say
             | that Oliver & Company is the first Disney-made film to use
             | CGI.
        
               | mrob wrote:
               | The Great Mouse Detective (1986) was earlier and the
               | ending sequence is CG (printed out and traced onto cels
               | so traditional 2D characters could be drawn on top).
        
               | nicklecompte wrote:
               | That's a good point. What's funny is that "The Great
               | Mouse Detective" was actually the film I was thinking of
               | this whole time - I believe the ending sequence took
               | place in Big Ben, and it looks quite good by 2024
               | standards. But I forgot the name of the movie and assumed
               | it was "Oliver & Company" because Oliver is a plausible
               | name for an English mouse :)
        
             | loloquwowndueo wrote:
             | Probably meant "Disney animated feature".
        
           | justsomehnguy wrote:
           | The Rescuers Down Under comes to mind as the one close (1990)
           | 
           | https://youtu.be/P5hHV2torG0?t=126
           | 
           | https://youtu.be/sGxLWXtt6EQ?t=73
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rescuers_Down_Under
        
         | Jarmsy wrote:
         | Indeed many animated shows that don't look 3d animated have a
         | 3d model somewhere in their pipeline these days. Even if
         | there's not a digital 3d model, there might be a physical model
         | of the main locations in the studio for animators to refer to.
        
         | zoeysmithe wrote:
         | Isn't a lot of 3D in shows and games "faked" to look good to
         | the viewer?
         | 
         | I remember seeing this blog write up on what 3D animators do to
         | make things look acceptable. Like make a character 9 feet tall
         | because when the camera panned them, they looked too short at
         | their "real" in-system height. Or archway doors that are huge
         | but at the perspective shot, look "normal" to us. Or having a
         | short character stand on an out-of-scene blue box to make them
         | having a conversation with a tall character not look silly due
         | to an extreme height difference? Or a hallway that in real life
         | would be 1,000 feet long but looks about 100 in-world because
         | of how the camera passes past it, and how each door on that
         | 1,000 foot hallway is 18 feet high, etc.
         | 
         | I wonder if shows like Futurama used those tricks as well, so
         | when you sort of re-create the 3D space the animators were
         | working in by reverse engineering like this, then you see the
         | giant doors and 9 foot people and non-Euclidian hallways, etc.
         | Just because it looks smooth as the camera passes it, doesn't
         | mean that actual 3D model makes sense at other perspectives.
        
           | Tallain wrote:
           | I don't have a ton of experience in this realm but from what
           | I've seen it does happen a lot -- looking good is often
           | better than being right. A great example of this is the way
           | they tilted the models for Zelda's A Link Between Worlds[0].
           | Basically everything in the world is tilted back so it looks
           | better for the camera angle, which is designed to mimic the
           | feel of A Link to the Past.
           | 
           | [0]: https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/11/20/t
           | he-t...
        
           | Natsu wrote:
           | I saw some video on A Difficult Game About Climbing a while
           | back. The things they did to make the guy appear to grip the
           | rocks and suck normally make the hands utterly bizarre when
           | seen from the side.
        
       | westedcrean wrote:
       | I'm not a historian, but I remember a tour guide in Forum Romanum
       | mentioned that current state of knowledge about how buildings and
       | parts of cities looked like stems from their depictions on coins
       | that period. Perhaps it could be used for that?
        
         | mikepurvis wrote:
         | That'd be a small enough sample size that it would make sense
         | to just have a human agonize over it.
         | 
         | I feel like this type of thing best applies in the kind of
         | domain they're already in-- TV shows with hundreds of hours of
         | content that a machine can comb through looking for reference
         | images to synthesize into these models.
        
       | mattfrommars wrote:
       | In the past after I got Quest 2 and started to dive into the
       | world photogrammetry. I went into the entire pipeline into
       | building a 3D *model* from photos of an object taken from
       | different angle. Pipeline involved using MeshRoom and few other
       | software to clean up mesh and port it into Unity.
       | 
       | In the end (from my superficial) understanding, the problem with
       | porting anything into VR (say in Unity in which you can walk
       | around an object) is the important of creating a clean mesh. The
       | 3D model that tools such as OP (I haven't dived deep into it yet)
       | is these are point cloud in 3D space. They do not generate a 3D
       | mesh.
       | 
       | Going from memory from tools I came across during my research,
       | there is tools like this
       | https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/getting-started-with-nvidi...,
       | again, this does not generate a mesh. I think it is just a video
       | and not something you can simply walk around in VR.
       | 
       | My low key motivation was to make a clone/model like what
       | Matterport and sell it to real estate companies. Major gap in my
       | understanding - the cause of me to loose steam is - I was not
       | sure how are they able to automate the step to generate clean
       | mesh from bunch of photos from a camera. To me, this is the most
       | labor intensive part. Later, I heard there are ML model that is
       | able to do this very step, I have no idea on this tho.
        
         | aaronblohowiak wrote:
         | Like shrink wrap in rhino?
        
         | owenpalmer wrote:
         | Perhaps using Unreal + nanite + PCVR would be a better option?
         | Nanite can handle highly complex meshes and algorithmically
         | simplify them in realtime. Basically a highly advanced LOD
         | system. Not sure what limitations are but it's worth a try.
         | Also I highly recommend using Reality Capture for
         | photogrammetry. The pricing is super cheap and you pay per
         | scan.
        
         | foota wrote:
         | NeRFs are sort of last year's technology. The latest hype is
         | about gaussian splats.
         | 
         | My understanding is that essentially these technologies take
         | some images as input, and then train a model, where the model
         | is learning the best way to render the imagines into a model in
         | some sense. I think for gaussian splats, it represents images
         | as sort of "blobs" in space, and each image has the same set of
         | blobs that have to be used from some perspective to render the
         | image, hence by positioning the splats such that each image is
         | rendered correctly, you can reproduce the scene.
         | 
         | This training is currently very expensive and has to be done
         | for each model, but produces an output that can be explored in
         | real time.
         | 
         | I think the photogrammetry approaches used by matterport et all
         | are older and require much higher quality input data, whereas
         | the newer approaches can work with much less and lower quality
         | data.
        
       | deadbabe wrote:
       | Will be awesome when we can watch old cartoon shows in VR and
       | look all around the world.
        
       | orthoxerox wrote:
       | I see they didn't even try Peppa Pig.
        
       | thebeardisred wrote:
       | Thank you HN for showing me enough papers on "Gaussian Splating"
       | that I was about to pick it out as the method visually from the
       | examples.
        
       | selimnairb wrote:
       | Cool, but why? Structure from motion has applications in the real
       | world, but this use case doesn't seem to be that compelling to
       | me.
        
       | 1-6 wrote:
       | It's hallucinating a bit. There are new things put in that
       | weren't there in the previuos frame.
        
       | seattle_spring wrote:
       | Kiiiiind of disappointed to not see the alley from King of the
       | Hill, I tell you h'what.
        
       | nicklecompte wrote:
       | I am amazed they didn't seem to talk to any 3D animators before
       | writing this. Because this is just plain wrong:
       | 
       | > The hand-drawn images are usually faithful representations of
       | the world, but only in a qualitative sense, since it is difficult
       | for humans to draw multiple perspectives of an object or scene 3D
       | consistently. Nevertheless, people can easily perceive 3D scenes
       | from inconsistent inputs!
       | 
       | It is difficult for human artists to maintain perfect geometrical
       | consistency. But that is NOT why 2D animation of 3D scenes is
       | geometrically inconsistent! The reason is that artists stylize 3D
       | scenes to emphasize things for specific artistic reasons. This is
       | especially true for something surreal like SpongeBob. But even
       | King of the Hill has stylized "living room perspectives,"
       | "kitchen perspectives," etc. The artists are trying to make
       | things look good, not realistic. And they aren't trying to make
       | humans reconstruct a perfect 3D image - they are trying to evoke
       | our 3D _imaginations._ It 's a very different thing.
       | 
       | Pixar and other high-quality 3D animation studios intentionally
       | distort the real geometry of their scenes for cinematic effect: a
       | small child viewed from an adult's perspective might be rendered
       | with a freakishly long neck and stubby little torso, because the
       | animators are intentionally exaggerating visual foreshortening to
       | emphasize the emotional effect of a wee little child. A realistic
       | perspective would be simply boring. These techniques are all over
       | the place in Pixar movies - it's why their films look so good
       | compared to cheaper studios, who really are just moving a virtual
       | camera around a Euclidean 3D space.
       | 
       | I don't want to comment on the technical details. But it really
       | seems like the authors missed the artistic mark.
        
       | MarcScott wrote:
       | Why would you have a site with a whole load of videos on it, with
       | all of them set to autoplay and constantly loop? I was watching a
       | video on my second screen, and it stutters each time I try to
       | visit the site.
        
         | wingmanjd wrote:
         | Is this a Chrome thing? My Firefox on Windows doesn't autoplay
         | the videos for me.
        
           | HelloMcFly wrote:
           | No autoplay in Edge for me, but I definitely have Media
           | Autoplay set to "Block".
        
       | bhouston wrote:
       | It is a good idea, but the results are quite bad. It barely works
       | in their demos, tons of artifacts everywhere.
        
       | foota wrote:
       | It's kind of amazing that they're able to take drawing of a scene
       | someone imagined and then create (bad) 3d models. Imagine if in
       | the future an artist could sketch a couple of images from a scene
       | and then get an accurate 3D model?
       | 
       | Or if a 2D artist could sketch a couple of poses and
       | automatically get a well structured 3D model and textures?
       | 
       | I think there's been a lot of concern in the industry about the
       | impact AI and similar tools will have on artists, but it seems
       | like it's possible to imagine a future where machine learning
       | based systems work more directly with an artist rather than
       | rendering based on language etc.,
       | 
       | I don't know how I feel about all the moral arguments about AI
       | training etc.,. I think to me more concerning is how it could
       | impact people more so than how it was trained. Even if a
       | perfectly "ethically" trained model learned to produce perfect
       | art and artists became a niche field, I think it could still be a
       | bad outcome for civilization as a whole because I think there's
       | value in humans producing art, and in having a society where it's
       | (at least somewhat) of a sustainable field.
       | 
       | Otoh, I think it's amazing that people can produce the kinds of
       | images using image models, so I'm not sure. Ideally we'd be able
       | to support people in what they want without needing their to be a
       | market for it, but the world's not ready for that.
        
       | surfingdino wrote:
       | It's cool. It might be useful as a 3d camera movement
       | visualisation tool in pre-production. As a tool for recreating
       | old cartoons in 3D it'll produce results as desirable as those
       | ghastly coloured versions of old bw movies.
        
       | localfirst wrote:
       | Trying to use this but stuck after exporting from the labeler
       | (guessing that is close source), lots of questions:
       | 
       | What do I do with this data exactly? Not really following the
       | instructions from README
       | 
       | Do I need a hefty GPU to run this? Doesn't say anything about
       | hardware.
       | 
       | What am I going to get as a result? Will it generate a 3d model
       | or "point clouds" ?
       | 
       | Do I need multiple inputs (from different angles) through the
       | labeler?
       | 
       | What is the depth estimator being used here (this im most
       | interested in especially its able to detect ground from multiple
       | angles) ?
       | 
       | Guess I'm just really lost here but super eager to use this. We
       | do have a real world application to use this.
        
       | pcrh wrote:
       | I'm not a graphic artist, and appreciate how the illustrator's
       | art involves many creative tricks of representation to convey
       | complex meanings.
       | 
       | However, the "messy" reconstructions of 3D space seen in these
       | videos did make me think of the recent hype over LLMs.
       | 
       | That is, the representations have a clear link to the "truth" or
       | "facts" of the underlying material, but are in no way accurate
       | enough to be considered useful as source material for further
       | use.
        
       | iainmerrick wrote:
       | I don't like to bring unrealistic expectations to this sort of
       | thing, but even so, all the examples look pretty bad. Am I
       | missing something?
       | 
       | In addition to all the noise and haze -- so the intermediate
       | frames wouldn't be usable alongside the originals -- the start
       | and end points of each element hardly ever connect up. Each wall,
       | door, etc flies vaguely towards its destination, but fades out
       | just as the "same" element fades in at its final position a few
       | feet away.
       | 
       | It's a lovely idea, though, and it would be great to see an
       | actually working version.
        
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