Art projects and discussions using various tools, including both 2D and 3D tools.
Over the past year or so I’ve noticed that AI is increasingly being used to create thumbnails for YouTube videos. These thumbnails are outlandish in many ways, presumably to attract views to the videos. Let’s start by looking at channels that preview new tools. Here are some of the thumbnails that I’ve seen recently:
Here are some of the examples that I created with Local AI.
Looks like fake forestry tools are pretty easy to make.
Continue reading “AI Creating Fake YouTube Thumbnails”Note: While the Banner for this post, and the images were created by AI, the text was created, for better or worse solely by me.
As you may have, I’ve been watching the progress of AI to generate images and even videos for a couple of years now. I’ve not been interested in “signing up” for one of the services since it is pretty clear that it will run into a lot of money to do anything serious. However, I have a couple of extra computers with GPUs so I thought it would be time to try to run AI image generation locally.
I took a look at ComfyUI. It looks way too complex. While I’m familiar with the concept of connecting the boxes – from texture creation in Blender among other places – I’d rather just check some boxes and paste in a prompt.
After some looking around I found Pinokio.
Continue reading “Run AI Locally”
I keep tripping across this flawed thinking in the Marvel Universe. And with the new movie coming out recently, maybe it’s time to remind us of the flaws. I’m not rushing out to the movie. I’ll see it when it comes to Netflix. But, as far as I can tell, Thanos is an idiot with no math or astronomy skills. Here are some of the reasons I say this:
If you HALVE the population of any critter in a constrained environment – and apparently Thanos’ “snap” halved the population of all critters in the universe, according to this account – then it doesn’t really take that long for the population to recover. Most populations follow a Leaning “S” curve, this is because growth slows as resources are depleted. So, if the population is suddenly reduced by half, it will make a sudden jump in growth rate to compensate and if the resources available are the same, it will recover to the same level. So snapping only has a short term effect. And I’m not even talking about the Avengers returning from the Phantom Zone or wherever they went. But then what?
I’m beginning to believe that Game Studios – The Developers of the Games – are incompatible with Wall Street goals and expectations. In other words, Art is Incompatible with Greed. I think recent events are bearing this out.
Continue reading “Game Studios Incompatible with Wall Street”
DesignSpark Mechanical is an Easy to Use CAD tool. I’ve done a few hours research over the past few days to figure out a quick to use FREE CAD tool that can be used to draw wood working projects and dimension them to produce drawings for building home projects.
As you may know from my site, I’m a long time user of 3D Art software including 3DSMax and Carrara. But these are expensive. Even Carrara costs more than $250.
I’ve looked at FreeCAD, Blender and a host of others. But the idea is to find something free that’s as easy to get going as possible and allows you to produce drawings with dimensions. There is no doubt that FreeCAD, and Blender can do this, but FreeCAD is quirky – at least for me – and Blender has a very high initial learning curve and no dimension tool built in. There may be plug-ins for that, but that is more learning curve.
I like to decorate for the Holidays, but I’m a lazy decorator. I’d like to have a single yard ornament to put up before Halloween and remove after new years. I’ve designed the perfect thing. You might call it one of several things and you might make it in various ways.
Continue reading “TurPunkenClaus – For the Lazy Holiday Decorator”
James Cameron’s vision of Pandora caused me to think in new ways about what it is to have a sustainable culture. Clearly the Na’vi culture is completely sustainable, and in many ways very advanced. Here are some perspectives on the history of our planet and my take on some of the ideas in Avatar. Continue reading “Perspective on Avatar, the Movie”
Update: Fixed in a new release of the Exporter. A working version of the scene is here.
Fails in Firefox 3.0.12 and 3.5.2. Website reported as a failed site.
Using Max 2009 on Vista x86, SP1, I created and exported a simple scene with a knot, 3 lights and a camera.
Here is the scene on this website.
The model does not play in Firefox 3.0.13, either from the file system or from this website.
It does play in MS IE 8 both from the file system or from the website.
The samples on the hypercosm website play in both MSIE 8 and Firefox 3.
Checkout the new release.
It’s posted in the forum here.
Two fixes:
wwv
Windy Weather 