To Sébastien Deguy and Christophe Soum for the concept and original implementation of Substance Engine, and to Sylvain Paris and Nicolas Wirrmann for the design and engineering of Substance Designer.
Adobe Substance 3D Designer provides artists with a flexible and efficient procedural workflow for designing complex textures. Its sophisticated and art-directable pattern generators, intuitive design, and renderer-agnostic architecture have led to widespread adoption in motion picture visual effects and animation.
1992 Pink Floyd laser light show in Dubuque, IA—you are back. 😅
Through this AI DJ project, we have been exploring the future of DJ performance with AI. At first, we tried to make an AI-based music selection system as an AI DJ. In the second iteration, we utilized a few AI models on stage to generate real-time symbolic music (i.e., MIDI). In the performance, a human DJ (Tokui) controlled various parameters of the generative AI models and drum machines. This time, we aim to advance one step further and deploy AI models to generate audio on stage in near real-time. Everything you hear during the performance will be pure AI-generation (no synthesizer, no drum machine).
In this performance, Emergent Rhythm, the human DJ will become an AJ or “AI Jockey” instead of a Disk Jockey, and he is expected to tame and ride the AI-generated audio stream in real-time. The distinctive characteristics of AI-based audio generation and “morphing” will provide a unique and even otherworldly sonic experience for the audience.
Introducing the new DigitalFUTURES course of free AI tutorials.
Several of the top AI designers in the world are coming together to offer the world’s first free, comprehensive course in AI for designers. This course starts off at an introductory level and gets progressively more advanced. 18 Feb, Introductory Session 10.00 am EST, 4.00 pm CET, 11.00 pm China What is AI? What are Midjourney, DALL•E, Stable Diffusion, etc.? What is GPT3? What is ChatGPT? And how are they revolutionizing design?
I’m still digging out (of email, Slack, and photos, but thankfully no longer of literal snow) following last weekend’s amazing photo adventure in Ely, NV. I need to try processing more footage via the amazing Luma app, but for now here’s a cool 3D version of the Nevada Northern Railway‘s water tower, made simply by orbiting it with my drone & uploading the footage:
Check out this craziness (which you can try online) from Google researchers, who write, “We introduce Piano Genie, an intelligent controller that maps 8-button input to a full 88-key piano in real time”:
Paul Trillo used Runway’s new Gen-1 experimental model to create a Cubist Simpsons intro:
“The Simpsons” but make it an experimental cubist stop motion. Felt right given long tradition of reanimating the Simpsons intro. Created with the spellbindingly addictive #Gen1 AI video generator from @runwayml — still early days but step in the future if #animation#ai#aiartpic.twitter.com/XZLgGpBLCw
It’s been quiet here for a few days as my 13-year-old budding photographer son Henry & I were off at the Nevada Northern Railway’s Winter Steam Photo Weekend Spectacular. We had a staggeringly good time, and now my poor MacBook is liquefying under the weight of processing our visual haul. 🤪 I plan to share more images & observations soon from the experience (which was somehow the first photo workshop, or even proper photo class, I’ve taken!). Meanwhile, here’s a little Insta gallery of Lego Henry in action:
Check out this new generative stylization model. I’m intrigued by the idea of using simple primitives (think dollhouse furniture) to guide synthesis & stylization (e.g. of the buildings shown briefly here).
Today, Generative AI takes its next big step forward.
Introducing Gen-1: a new AI model that uses language and images to generate new videos out of existing ones.
Photographer Dan Marcolina has been pushing the limits of digital creation for many years, and on Feb. 9 at 11am Eastern time, he’s scheduled to present a lecture. You can register here & check out details below:
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Dan will demonstrate how to use an AI workflow to create dynamic, personalized imagery using your own photos. Additional information on Augmented Reality and thoughts from Dan’s 35-year design career will also be presented.
What attendees will learn:
Tips from Dan’s book iPhone Obsessed, revealing how to best shoot and process photos on your cell for use in the AI re-imagination process SEE THE BOOK
The AI photo re-creation workflow with tips and tricks to get started quickly, showing how a single source image can be crafted to create new meaning.
The post process of upscaling, clean-up, post manipulation and color correction to obtain a gallery ready image.
As a bonus he will show a little of how he did the augmented reality aspect of the show.
Anyone interested in image creation, photography, illustration, painting, storytelling, design or who is curious about AI/AR and the future of photography will gain valuable insights from the presentation.
Unleash the power of photogrammetry in Adobe Substance 3D Sampler 4.0 with the new 3D Capture tool! Create accurate and detailed 3D models of real-world objects with ease. Simply drag and drop a series of photos into Sampler and let it automatically extract the subject from its background and generate a 3D textured model. It’s a fast and handy way to create 3D assets for your next project.
Last month Paul Trillo shared some wild visualizations he made by walking around Michelangelo’s David, then synthesizing 3D NeRF data. Now he’s upped the ante with captures from the Louvre:
NeRFs of the Louvre made from a handful of short iPhone videos shot during a location scout last month. Each shot reimagined over a month later. The impossibilities are endless. More to come…
I got my professional start at AGENCY.COM, a big dotcom-era startup co-founded by creative whirlwind Kyle Shannon. Kyle has been exploring AI imaging like mad, and recently he’s organized an AI Artists Salon that anyone is welcome to join in person (Denver) or online:
The AI Artists Salon is a collaborative group of creatively-minded people and we welcome anyone curious about the tsunami of inspiring generative technologies already rocking our our world. See Community Links & Resources.
On Tuesday evening I had the chance to present some ideas & progress that has inspired me—nothing confidential about Adobe work, of course, but hopefully illuminating nonetheless. If you’re interested, check it out (and pro tip: if you set playback to 1.5x speed or higher, I sound a lot sharper & funnier!).
Here’s an example made from a quick capture I did of my friend (nothing special, but amazing what one can get simply by walking in a circle while recording video):
As luck (?) would have it, the commercial dropped on the third anniversary of my former teammate Jon Barron & collaborators bringing NeRFs into existence:
Three years ago today, the project that eventually became NeRF started working (positional encoding was the missing piece that got us from "hmm" to "wow"). Here's a snippet of that email thread between Matt Tancik, @_pratul_, @BenMildenhall, and me. Happy birthday NeRF! pic.twitter.com/UtuQpWsOt4
Thank God for the vibrant developer community—esp. Adobe vet Christian Cantrell (who somehow finds time to rev his plugin while serving as VP of product for Stability.ai):
“HEY MAN, you ever drop acid?? No? Well I do, and it looks *just like this*!!” — an excitable Googler when someone wallpapered a big meeting room in giant DeepDream renderings
In a similar vein, have fun tripping balls with AI, courtesy of Remi Molettee:
The company has announced a new mode for their Canvas painting app that turns simple brushstrokes into 360 environment maps for use in 3D apps or Omniverse. Check out this quick preview:
“I strongly believe that animation skills are going to be the next big thing in UI design,” says designer Michal Malewicz. Check out his full set of predictions for the year ahead:
The ongoing California storms have beaten the hell out of beloved little communities like Capitola, where the pier & cute seaside bungalows have gotten trashed. I found this effort by local artist Brighton Denevan rather moving:
In the wake of the recent devastating storm damage to businesses in Capitola Village, local artist Brighton Denevan spent a few hours Friday on Capitola Beach sculpting the word “persevere” repeatedly in the sand to highlight a message of resilience and toughness that is a hallmark of our community. “The idea came spontaneously a few hours before low tide,” Denevan said. “After seeing all the destruction, it seemed like the right message for the moment.” Denevan has been drawing on paper since the age of 5 and picked up the rake and went out to the beach canvas in 2020 and each year I’ve done more projects. Last year, he created more than 200 works in the sand locally and across the globe.
Check out these gloriously detailed renderings from Markos Kay. I just wish the pacing were a little more chill so I could stare longer at each composition!
Kay has focused on the intersection of art and science in his practice, utilizing digital tools to visualize biological or primordial phenomena. “aBiogenesis” focuses a microscopic lens on imagined protocells, vesicles, and primordial foam that twists and oscillates in various forms.
The artist has prints available for sale in his shop, and you can find more work on his website and Behance.
My teammate CJ Gammon has released a handy new Chrome extension that lets you select any image, then use it as the seed for new image generation. Check it out:
In this beautiful work from Paul Trillo & co., AI extends—instead of replaces—human creativity & effort:
Here’s a peek behind the scenes:
This project would have never existed without the use of AI. A variety of tools were used from #dalle2 and #stablediffusion to generate the background assets Automatic1111 #img2img and @runwayml to process the video along with @AdobeAE to create the camera moves and transitions pic.twitter.com/FwqwWto966
1. Take reference photo (you can use any photo – e.g. your real house, it doesn’t have to be dollhouse furniture) 2. Set up Stable Diffusion Depth-to-Image (google “Install Stable Diffusion Depth to Image YouTube”) 3. Upload your photo and then type in your prompts to remix the image
We recommend starting with simple prompts, and then progressively adding extra adjectives to get the desired look and feel. Using this method, @justinlv generated hundreds of options, and then we went through and cherrypicked our favorites for this video
Heh—I can’t quite say why I found this quick demo from developer & illustrator Marc Edwards both gripping & slightly nerve-racking, but his accuracy is amazing:
Hey friends—Happy New Year! I hope you’ve been able to get a little restful downtime, as I’ve done. I thought it’d be nice to ease back into things with these lovely titles from For All Mankind, which I’ve belatedly started watching & which I’m quite enjoying. The work is by Imaginary Forces, whom I’ve admired ever since seeing founder Kyle Cooper speak in the 90’s:
From the creators:
Lines deviate and converge in a graphic, tactile world that pays homage to the past while hinting at the “what if?” future explored throughout the series. Like the show logo itself, these lines weave and merge to create stylised representations of human exploration—badges, almost— ultimately reminding us of the common thread we share.
I’m not sure what to say about “The first rap fully written and sung by an AI with the voice of Snoop Dogg,” except that now I really want the ability to drop in collaborations by other well known voices—e.g. Christopher Walken.
Maybe someone can now lip-sync it with the faces of YoDogg & friends:
The marketers at Heinz had a little fun noticing that an AI image-making app (DALL•E, I’m guessing) tended to interpret requests for “ketchup” in the style of Heinz’s iconic bottle. Check it out:
Whether or not you’re celebrating Christmas, I hope that you’re having a restful day & keeping warm with family & friends. Enjoy a couple of tidbits from the Nacks—including some Lego stop motion…
The whole community of creators, including toolmakers, continues to feel its way forward in the fast-moving world of AI-enabled image generation. For reference, here are some of the statements I’ve been seeing:
“Kickstarter must, and will always be, on the side of creative work and the humans behind that work. We’re here to help creative work thrive.”
Key questions they’ll ask include “Is a project copying or mimicking an artist’s work?” and “Does a project exploit a particular community or put anyone at risk of harm?”
From 3dtotal Publishing:
“3dtotal has four fundamental goals. One of them is to support and help the artistic community, so we cannot support AI art tools as we feel they hurt this community.”
“We oppose the commercial use of Artificially manufactured images and will not allow AI into our annual competitions at all levels.”
“AI was trained using copyrighted images. We will oppose any attempts to weaken copyright protections, as that is the cornerstone of the illustration community.”
This stuff—creating 3D neural models from simple video captures—continues to blow my mind. First up is Paul Trillo visiting the David:
Finally got to see Michaelangelo's David in Florence and rather than just take a photo like normal person, I spent 20 minutes walking around it capturing every angle looking like an insane person. It's hard to look cool when making a #NeRF but damn it looks cool later @LumaLabsAIpic.twitter.com/sLGJ2CKCJy
Obsessive (in a good way) photographer & animator Brett Foxwell has gathered & sequenced thousands of individual leaves into a mesmerizing sequence:
This is the complete leaf sequence used in the accompanying short film LeafPresser. While collecting leaves, I conceived that the leaf shape every single plant type I could find would fit somewhere into a continuous animated sequence of leaves if that sequence were expansive enough. If I didn’t have the perfect shape, it meant I just had to collect more leaves.
Numerous apps are promising pure text-to-geometry synthesis, as Luma AI shows here:
✨ Introducing Imagine 3D: a new way to create 3D with text! Our mission is to build the next generation of 3D and Imagine will be a big part of it. Today Imagine is in early access and as we improve we will bring it to everyone https://t.co/VIdilw7kpapic.twitter.com/v6Yi0mwZsY
On a more immediately applicable front, though, artists are finding ways to create 3D (or at least “two-and-a-half-D”) imagery right from the output of apps like Midjourney. Here’s a quick demo using Blender:
In a semi-related vein, I used CapCut to animate a tongue-in-cheek self portrait from my friend Bilawal:
Creative Reality Studio from D-ID (the folks behind the MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia tech that blew up a couple of years ago) can generate faces & scripts, then animate them. I find the results… interesting?
I believe strongly that creative tools must honor the wishes & rights of creative people. Hopefully that sounds thuddingly obvious, but it’s been less obvious how to get to a better state than the one we now inhabit, where a lot of folks are (quite reasonably, IMHO) up in arms about AI models having been trained on their work, without their consent. People broadly agree that we need solutions, but getting to them—especially via big companies—hasn’t been quick.
Thus it’s great to see folks like Mat Dryhurst & Holly Herndon driving things forward, working with Stability.ai and others to define opt-out/-in tools & get buy-in from model trainers. Check out the news:
It’s wild to look back & realize that I’ve spent roughly a third of my life at this special place, making amazing friends & even meeting my future wife (and future coworker!) on a customer visit. I feel like I should have more profundity to offer, and maybe I will soon, but at the moment I just feel grateful—including for the banger of a party the company threw last week in SF.
Here’s a fun little homage to history, made now via Photoshop 1.0. (I still kinda wish I hadn’t been talked into donating my boxed copy of 1.0 to the Smithsonian! The ‘Dobe giveth…)
Raise your hand if you’re a Day 1.0 @Photoshop fan 🙋♀️
Nostalgia brought to you by TikTok’s wes45678 to celebrate Adobe’s 40th anniversary! pic.twitter.com/Y8QEtcJawf
Artist & musician Ben Morin has been making some impressive pop-culture mashups, turning well-known characters into babies (using, I believe, Midjourney to combine a reference image with a prompt). Check out the results.
