[bigbassroller]

I know this tech is terrifying to actual 3D artist who don’t want be a “prompt engineer”, but as someone who has never used Blender, I think its cool that I can create something using tools like this and use them in my projects, ex background animation on a website hero section.

[warent]

I don't think this is "terrifying" to 3D artists any more than github copilot is terrying to us haha, I'm not sure why we engineers have this tendency of imagining every other industry as being populated by superstitious peasants from the dark ages who fear new tools.

In my experience the vast majority of people are excited about GPT including artists.

[TeMPOraL]

I don't know, maybe I am one of those "superstitious peasants from the dark ages who fear new tools", but I'm increasingly terrified of GPT-4 and future iterations of it as applied to the industry I work with (i.e. software). It does seem to threaten to suddenly eliminate all the interesting parts of the job, a good chunk of openings, and to significantly reduce salaries for the openings that remain - all at the same time, and rather suddenly.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I think it's because if you're not in that particular industry you have a super simplified model of what the person does - something like "writing code" as the only activity a developer does.

You don't understand the difficulties and problems that people in the profession face, which I think is also why so many developers are convinced they can replace/"disrupt" other people's jobs with software.

[antibasilisk]

>I don't think this is "terrifying" to 3D artists any more than github copilot is terrying to us haha

It sounds more like you're just seriously underestimating the direction GitHub Copilot is headed.

[Naga]

I was speaking recently to a graphic artist who is terrified of Stable Diffusion and the like. I mentioned that these tools can augment their ability to do work instead of just replacing, but their point is that they are a graphic artist because they like doing the things that the AI will be replacing. Being a prompt engineer wasn't really the reason they studied and learned to become an artist. To me, that is a completely reasonable way to feel.

[anonzzzies]

Just leaving this here;

https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/121lhfq/i_lost_eve...

Edit; I see it was discussed indeed on HN yesterday. I have already seen tons more of these in my circles and not only 3d/artists.

[adelie]

my main issue is the people making hiring and budget decisions aren't 3D artists, they're managers. my work might be objectively better than GPT's, but is that going to matter when my boss compares the cost difference and decides GPT is 'good enough'?

[notatoad]

i'm guessing the parent comment is in reference to this link from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35308498

[Thorentis]

It just raises the bar so that 3D artists who are only capable of reproducing the same boring things they saw in YouTube tutorials are no longer considered proficient.

The more I think about this trend, the more I think it might be good.

Bootcamp devs are no longer good enough for junior roles since a GPT could replace them. Digital media people who learnt via YouTube and have no real talent are no longer skilled enough. Writers who can only churn out mediocre blog spam are now jobless.

This seems like it might be a net benefit.

[kypro]

This isn't how it will play out though. At first chess AIs got enough to beat unskilled players. They they were good enough to beat intermediate players. Then they challenged the grandmasters. Today no human, no matter how long they practise or how hard they train will ever get close to beating an AI at chess.

Your assumption that this raises the bar for human 3D artists is correct today, but it won't be long before human 3D artists are seen as much slower and less competent than AI artists, and there will be no going back.

[smilespray]

How do you get senior people when juniors no longer have careers?

[acapybara]

I don't really care how or where someone learned something, so long as they learned it well and can apply it.

My experience in the software industry (20 years now) showed me that the best ones were the ones who got into it out of genuine interest. They tended to write software as a hobby.

There was no shortage of CS grads who couldn't be nearly as productive.

The self-taught ones, or the ones with genuine interest who also completed a degree program were the best.

I wouldn't discriminate against "boot camp coders" or people who learn things from YouTube.

There's a lot of people who live in a different world where an expensive college/university education is not an option.

[ksrm]

It is good when people lose their jobs, actually!

[antibasilisk]

>It just raises the bar so that 3D artists who are only capable of reproducing the same boring things they saw in YouTube tutorials are no longer considered proficient.

That is of course, until GPT-6 surpasses them.

[boppo1]

I use blender a lot. I know what the api can do. I'm not terrified. Getting anything significant done will still take real work/knowledge because the number of potential 'parameters' of what you can do/make requires that you have the language to describe what you want. Having the posession of that language and knowing how to use blender is a very positive correlation.

[greenknight]

Imagine being able to sketch out the outline of what you are after, then say hey blender model it up. Thats what it will get to.

You have a beach, and you want a jetty, just grease pencil approximately where you want it and go Hey thats a jetty build it. and if its not quite right, generate me 50 different versions and ill pick the best.

[raincole]

> I know this tech is terrifying to actual 3D artist who don’t want be a “prompt engineer”

My predication: in the next 5~10 years, most artists won't be "prompt engineers". Instead they'll focus on fix small details on AI-generated art.

It's still kinda sad tho, because it's usually the most tedious and boring part of the process. Now AI is taking the fun part and leaving the unfun part to humans.

[ibejoeb]

Yeah, but it's kinda like making business software. Most working people need to do boring work to sustain their lifestyles.

I hope that these task-specific implementations of AI can reduce the tedium in these fields, like the way PCs did. Certainly, this advancement is leading to the ability for practically anyone to program a computer, in the general sense. Things will shift, but there will be opportunities to exploit those abilities for personal gain.

[cyrialize]

This is exactly what this post from Reddit posted to HN [0] was complaining about.

I think many people hear and see these complaints and think that people are being luddites or being afraid of losing their job. People should be looking at it for what it is - someone complaining that their entire job is changing into something they no longer enjoy.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35308498

[Tanoc]

This is terrifying to us, but not in the way you think. Tools like this place selective pressure so that increasingly only the best of the best get paid to make stuff, and their stuff influences the data sets in the future. The rest of us get forced out simply due to cost unless we're doing it as a hobby. Some artists know all too well their limits, and those that do are the most vulnerable to things like this, because these learning machines use the ever higher ceiling of human ability to determine the floor of their ability. You can't go back to the funky weird pasta men of Stable Diffusion's 2021 iteration as the default for example, but someone who started painting in 2002 might still have the same level of skill now as they did in 2010.

Text was paralleled first. Then sound was paralleled next. And now image is being paralleled. It will be on level with highest percentile of human ability just as text and sound were before it. Game devs and comic artists are already replacing texture and background artists with AI generated images, just as they used AI to create hundreds of thousands of lines of fluff dialogue before then.

[pazimzadeh]

Isn’t being a good boss kind of like being a good prompt engineer?

[TeMPOraL]

If so, then this means the good boss will soon no longer need employees, as the LLMs will deliver better results faster and cheaper.

[DrewADesign]

Most people aren't worried about being a prompt engineer-- they're worried about being a Doordash driver if it turns out that one prompt engineer can replace many professional, well-paid people in their industry. That's pretty rational.

[TeMPOraL]

> being a Doordash driver

If that job will even be available. The other day my sister sent me a photo of a little food delivery robot she spotted on the streets[0], and mind you, we're not living in Silicon Valley, but in Poland.

--

[0] - https://www.deliverycouple.com/ - based on the markings on that robot, its these people.

[anonzzzies]

There is not much to prompt engineer; the obvious trivial thing that is already happening and will make the glorious job of prompt ‘engineer’ completely redundant is AI doing the ‘engineering’ for you. One person (or AI in the future; this is already possible now for humans and gpt though) that the AI has been trained to ‘know’ and work with will blurb things into a mic and the AI will instruct millions of brains to whatever the ‘boss’ wants, translating his mumbling into actionable user and system prompts. There won’t be prompt ‘engineers’ for long.

[tekknik]

Self driving cars and drones are pretty close, door dash driver won’t be an option much longer either.

[elif]

I asked my friend (renowned vfx artist) what he thought about AI in his field and he mentioned some niche cases where it was useful for blending models with film etc, but overall seemed uninterested.

He offered the explanation that so much of their time is consumed with nit picking through purely aesthetic decisions that AI would not be capable of the artistic reasoning required to produce work that could even get to the "pass or reject" stage.

[jeron]

As someone who had tried my hand at Blender and failed miserably/given up years ago, I am so excited to use this to make up for my Blender skill deficiency

[whitemary]

Have you used it yet? Was it actually that easy? I can't wait to try.