Runchat AI rendering

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personally no, I do not. If I use a tool by pushing it, vs use a tool by programming a toolpath and letting the robot cut it out, I still controlled the tool to my specification to create my vision.

But…It’s interesting this point…

Early in my career in 3d I had an utter pineapple of a manager at Fisher-Price (lets call him Ken…because that was his name, and… f that guy, he sucked… )

he took me into a conference room, closed the door and told me “3d modeling is going to ruin your career, you need to be in the shop carving foam by hand like the other designers”

This was somewhere in about 1998 and 3d stuff was still very fringe at Mattel…

I left that meeting and had a conversation with one of the lead designers, a delightful guy named Craig who was the best hand made modeler Fp had ever had. I asked him to do a showdown with me… man vs machine. He readily agreed assuming he’d wipe the floor with me, and he looooved showing up the newbs…

We both started on a Friday, and by 4 pm that day I had 3d modeled and sent parts to the cnc and gone home. He stayed all weekend and left sometime late Sunday night.

I came in Monday picked up my parts from the cnc shop and blew the remaining dust off as I walked to his desk to show him.. He was in his office still sanding the last few details on his parts.

Now, we can argue about him being a better designer and so on, (he was actually…he was really really good)

But…my parts hung just fine with his parts. and objectively they were both production quality and would have easily entered the production pipeline for Mattel at the time.

The upside, may parts could go straight to engineering, straight to tooling and straight to production.

his would have had to be scanned, reverse engineered, remade from scratch in 3d, and only then could they begin to enter the pipeline.

In the context of that specific contest ..I won.

It was the mark of a massive turning point for Mattel, where I was tapped to help write the global digital best practices for Mattel, and begin one of the biggest training programs in FP history to get all of our designers working in 3d.

I went from the guy who was “failing” because of 3d, to the guy who’s job it was to teach everyone 3d with that one project. (ironically, in the long term enabling the career I have here now)

not once in the entire process did anyone ever raise the point… “but he used a machine to make this part”

Which begs the question I keep asking, If the design is yours.. and the result is what you envisioned… who cares what process you used to get there?

check out the hot rod wagon video thread in the galley as an example. No part of that scene do I feel disassociated with. I had that vision for the image, with those materials, with that lighting. I could have created the same thing in keyshot or cycles, but it would have taken much longer and a lot of fiddling.

All I’m saying is…Don’t get hung up on the term “Ai”

look at all of this stuff simply as a new design tool, and figure out what these tools can do for you to make you better at your job.

For instance, have you seen the new vizcom image to 3d or Meshy image to 3d tools? Insane stuff…

Huge potential to make you own work better there if you can figure out how to creatively apply it.

It’s like fire was just invented here… Seems silly to me to fight for the right to stay cold.

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The challenge with using AI rendering for client work is that it fills in the gaps and makes assumptions based on the material it has been trained on and by how prescriptive you are with the input and prompt.

As someone who wants to use these tools to advance my own work, I do find myself asking: “Is this really mine?” when it adds yet-to-be-imagined details. Sometimes these details happen to be advantageous to the design and I have wondered: “Why didn’t I think of that first?”. I see this as tapping into the aggregate of documented human knowledge and if I choose to being it to life, it’s mine, and all of ours, together. I don’t believe there’s anything truly new under the sun because our thoughts and design thinking are itself an aggregate of our education and training, even when it comes directly from our own noodle.

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Yes a very important point and we will all soon find out if AI hive mind leads to a coordinated, provided for joy or loss of the individual struggle of creativity that is humanity’s quest for meaning. “In the beginning God created….”

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agreed…very much enjoying the show and it’s sparked many spirited debates around our dinner table

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I think overall, I am prepared that this is a battle (not the thread, AI in culture) I must lose.

But I love watching artistry in the making. I have a very limited experience, but seeing the glass blowers on Murano, the Morgan Cars assembly line, people hand assembling engines for Formula 1 cars; they are experiences I don’t forget. They really did have people behind them that cared about their work.

I understand that there is no point in sitting and struggling with a process, adding numbers in your head if you have a calculator. But such activities I think form part of the human condition; appreciate and enjoy the journey, not just the render. Again, something that differentiates us from nearly all other species.

I am quite sure that the Greeks would have just 3D printed the Parthenon given the chance. But years later, thousands of years later; we still stand in awe of the process to build it; because we can connect with the process, the hardship.

In years to come, I can’t see someone standing next to a 200 year old AI printed sculpture and thinking about the people. The machinery sure, RTX cards are absolute monsters, and quite a wonder to use compared to… well anything many moons ago. But I am afraid that the people will be secondary. The people serve no purpose other than as mildly variable optimisation sub-routines that call on a database. In effect, we become the only variable in something that is perfectly common, perfectly reproducible, and otherwise has absolutely nothing interesting about it.

I enjoy the fact that so much positive communication and learning has to happen to extract knowledge from others; it helps provide a purpose, and something to pass to the next generation with a twist, something distinctly unique that has taken time to nurture.

But instead, we will have “I want to do what that man did!“. “Okay, here you go; sorted!“. “Oh!“. Next…

As I said, I know I will lose, I have to lose. But I hope future generations have someone left to aspire to, that isn’t called Nvidia RTX A90000 Pro, drawing endlessly on the central limit theorem.

Thanks for keeping the thread open!

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I don’t disagree with any of this and very much share a very deep appreciation of artisans and crafts people.

watching a coach builder make a beautiful body panel sculpted from scratch is a thing of beauty, that is their art and craft, and I am allllll for it.

for me personally, I’d love to build a custom car using Rhino and one of these…

The Robot overlords can be benevolent when we work with them…

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All this talk about how AI is the product of all its input amuses me as the posters bemoan the loss of individual creativity.

A painter (like the “true artist” types) are not solo artists. What they do is a collaborative endeavor. Someone made the canvas or board they paint. Those have a definite impact on the results. And then there is the paint, painters don’t make paint, but without the input of those who do, it would be tough to paint anything. Need I mention the folks who make brushes? Or easels? Or spatulae?

This “Ohhh, I am this great artisan who creates whatever it is I create, out of thin air” is pure nonsense.

BTW, I have seen the term “soul” mentioned. . . anyone care to give a go at defining what that is, precisely? Good luck with that. Each and every one of us has our definition of what that might be.

Ok, so the next time we are all busily getting all full of ourselves for creating something in Rhino, just remember, the number of people required for us to be able to do that is absolutely staggering. Without them, we would not be creative.

Maybe the last true “artist” painted on cave walls. . . . .

An artist is someone who has an idea, and then uses a myriad of tools to bring the idea to fruition.

AI isn’t, as someone mentioned, sentient. In fact, since it is NOT sentient, it is NOT intelligent. That AI terminology is marketing bunk. AI will not be thinking and creating the next great work of art. It can’t.

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thanks for your inputs, I am really enjoying this conversation. A lot of interesting thoughts and perspectives coming out here.

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“We have become the travel agents of the design world, and we all know how that story ended.”

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As these AI data centers increase expect to see more stories like this.

Amazon Data centers increase cases of cancer and miscarriages.

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so true

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Ugh: insert some bad words about AI boring mumbling noises*

Anyone remembers NFTs?

Ai has its uses compared so it’s not entirely useless but the interesting thing will be what is left of it once silicone valley moves on to the next big thing

Let’s be honest here it’s over hyped and the value it brings is not enough to sustain it.

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fwiw- more fun is to be had by adjusting the image with Lightroom…

lemans image-2
lemans image-21408×736 142 KB

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