Can AI replace 3d artists
To better answer this question, its imperative that we ask our self, if you had to make a short movie, would you hire an AI for concept art or a real artist, and when you get to the stage of modeling would you hire a 3d modeler or an AI generator like Nvidia Get 3d.
If you hire a human 3d modeler at what stage or what would make you use AI if money was not an issue but time was, what about if money was an issue but time was not or what if time and money was an issue, would you still make the same decission.
Today Meta just released MetaAi that can make videos out of text prompts, sofar the AI’s that we have seen where image generators, while stable diffusion can be used to make a video, currently it does not support text to video directly as MetaAi and there is a lack of consistency in rendering between frames.
An artists job is to produce imagery, that can either be digital or on a physical paper, we are yet to see physical scupts made by AI, but 3d printing is a close contender.
Creating a good digital render starts with the modeling process in a 3d application like blender or Maya, today Nvidia promises to ease that stage or remove it completely by using a sort of text to model AI tool, the Nvidia Get 3d.
Trained using only 2D images, NVIDIA GET3D generates 3D shapes with high-fidelity textures and complex geometric details. These 3D objects are created in the same format used by popular graphics software applications, allowing users to immediately import their shapes into 3D renderers and game engines for further editing.
though the models currently look lowpoly, imagine a few years down the road. modeling is one of the most time consuming stage of a production timeline, and time to a studio is money, on average the monthly salary of a 3d artist doing modeling work is $2000, to model a collection of models as seen in the above image, it can take the artist about 2 – 4 month of work at the same quality, that would cost the studio $4000 – $8000.
it takes the AI about 5 minutes to produce the same amount of work, at that rate the studio is saving almost all the $8000 minus what ever they have to pay Nvidia for the previllage of using the AI which i reckon would be less than $1000 a month.
For other types of work, the process starts with creating concept art, which are impressions or ideas on what a shot may look like, this has always been a work of human concept artists, who have mastered the art of putting the imagination of an art director and writters on to a canvas. This skill takes years and a lot of money subscribing to software packages like photoshop, buying digital brushes and doing 100s of artists impressions for the art director to choose what they want.
today the process that required hiring professional artists to do can now be done by the story writer before even pitching the idea to a studio like Netflix, now with the power of AI tools like Midjourney or Dall-e, the story writter can create there own artist impressions in a matter of seconds and include them in the pressentation, sidelining a number of concept artists.
While Ai is likely going to replace alot of jobs in the art industry its also likely going to create a bunch of new ones, what is yet to be known is the ratio of jobs lost to jobs created as a result of AI.
