AI ART GENERATION

AI art has taken over social media recently. With it's immerging fame comes a lot of concerns from artists. People have been asking the question, "Will AI replace artists?"

Honestly, I really dont think it will. To me, it's just another medium of expression. Another tool for artists to add to their pipelines if they choose to. It's incredibly inspiring!

I dove deep into this new world, and have found a bunch of new ways to integrate AI art into my worklflows.

AI ART:

Concept Art

The first use for AI in CG pipelines may be pretty obvious. We have all seen some stunning imagery produced from AI models, but what if we actually used these images to pitch our ideas to clients?

Using AI may help with the hardest part of the process; getting what's in your head into reality. It may also help with artist's who are not skilled in traditional art mediums like painting or drawing.

PROMPT: "a city street covered in graffitti, cyberpunk, urban, grunge, 90's aesthetic, overcast weather, by Eddie Mendoza and Job Menting and Helio Bray, artstation"

Images like these could really be helpful as reference for environment artists. They may even grab some pieces from it to use as textures in their 3D scenes.

AI ART:

Textures

AI generated images can also be used as textures. Though, this process may be a little more involved than concept art. After the image is generated you will need to create Roughness, Specular, Bump, Normal, and Displacement maps to have a more realistic material.

I had a go at a potential pipeline for this.

Disco Diffusion

AI Upscaler

Photoshop/
Substance Alchemist

Cinema 4D

PROMPT: "cyberpunk brick wall with graffitti, square on, urban, grunge, 90's aesthetic, overcast weather, by Eddie Mendoza and Job Menting and Helio Bray, artstation"

All the images I have made were created using Disco Diffusion. It is a Google collab software interface that you can use to modify AI modules that will create images based on a prompt. The imagwes come out blurry and low-res due as a result of faster processing speeds and working on a server based software.

Once you have an image you can then AI upscale it using any AI upsale software of your choice. I really like https://imgupscaler.com/.

Now, with a higher res image, you can then start using Photoshop or Substance alchemist to create your seamless texture. This step requires a little bit of time and art direction, but once complete you will have a set of image textures to use as Texture Maps in your desired 3D suite and render engine.

AI Generated Cyberpunk Material Pack 1 : COMING SOON

AI ART:

3D Projections

Another use for these AI images is for 3D camera projections. You can quickly build 3D assets for your environments through the use of any image or photograph. Lucky for us, if going out into the field to take photographs is impossible we could just use AI generated images.

I developed a possible pipeline for this.

Disco Diffusion

AI Upscaler

Photoshop

Cinema 4D + Octane Baking Camera

PROMPT: "a closeup of a cyberpunk building, tall Brutalist concrete, lots of wires and piping, midday sun godrays, 90's aesthetic, NYC street photography, by Eddie Mendoza and Job Menting and Jared Sobotta, unreal engine, artstation"

FINAL RESULTS

As you can see the AI generated image brings a unique look to your environment. You could use AI to generate whole environments if you wanted to. I only spent a few days developing these pipelines, but if a whole team was to collaborate on a project like this the results would be . . . unlike anything else.

AI ART:

Future Plans

As the years go by, artists will find more and more ways to use AI to enhance their art. For me, I have my own plans on how I want to explore this medium more.

Other uses of AI to explore:

AI generated images as background Matte paintings/ HDRI's

AI generated images on Characters

AI generated videos as 3D materials

AI generated videos/images mixed with Live-action film

AI generated sounds/voices for music production