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Google Stadia uses Style Transfer ML to change video game art in real time

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Re: Google Stadia uses Style Transfer ML to change video game art in real time

#41
I've seen a number of these impressive looking demos..for example: https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/3/18121198/ai-generated-vid...

Impressive sense of realism in level of detail variety..show the potential...BUT consistency, sharpness and realism of object boundaries would not survive close inspection.

Re: Google Stadia uses Style Transfer ML to change video game art in real time

#43
post #3

To me this was the least interesting part of the Stadia reveal. State share was the real innovation imo. Would any serious game studio use style transfer ml to actually replace their visual artists? Didn't seem like the quality was there. That said, it is an awesome PoC. Just not something I see being practically applicable.

Actually, I wonder if there's potential in something like this for accessibility purposes. If you have one of the many variations of color-blindness, for instance, could such a restyling be helpful? Could other neurological disabilities be similarly aided by dynamically restyling visuals?

Re: Google Stadia uses Style Transfer ML to change video game art in real time

#44
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would any serious game studio use style transfer ml to actually replace their visual artists? No, a serious (AAA) studio would not. OTOH, the platform might intend to support producers that aren't AAA studios, and whose limited pre-release resources are focussed on gameplay more than art assets, and those producers might view it very differently than AAA studios.

You still have to do all the work of building the geometries for the art assets, are you really saving that much on not having to color/texture those assets?

Maybe? One of the hacks of adding more assets without having to do much work is just recycling existing assets by assigning different color schemes/textures.

Re: Google Stadia uses Style Transfer ML to change video game art in real time

#45
post #14

Consensus in this thread seems to be that this is a neat gimmick but nothing else. Maybe because I have a friend working on a video game as a solo developer, and putting a /lot/ of energy/money/time into art--I really see the potential in this (type of thing). This is not really for the player's benefit to put on whatever mods they want. This is for fast iteration for artists and creators to automate a huge (sometime…

> Maybe because I have a friend working on a video game as a solo developer, and putting a /lot/ of energy/money/time into art--I really see the potential in this (type of thing). For that usage Nvidia's thing was way more interesting: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2019/03/18/gaugan-photorealist... That gets you usable texture assets super quickly, which is probably what your solo developer friend spends the most tim…

> For that usage Nvidia's thing was way more interesting

If you're building a photorealistic game. And there's already lots of tools on the market to generate these sorts of textures.

I could see this Nvidia thing used for much better looking mockups / concept art. But it doesn't seem suited for final asset generation.

Re: Google Stadia uses Style Transfer ML to change video game art in real time

#46
post #3

To me this was the least interesting part of the Stadia reveal. State share was the real innovation imo. Would any serious game studio use style transfer ml to actually replace their visual artists? Didn't seem like the quality was there. That said, it is an awesome PoC. Just not something I see being practically applicable.

Exactly...This is a cool gimmick to try once, but it will seriously distort the intended art style.

It is another example of forced intrusion of DL techniques creeping into places where it is not needed in the first place.

Re: Google Stadia uses Style Transfer ML to change video game art in real time

#47

Can't wait for ads to be inserted into games with this...

A few days ago I commented on the Stadia on HN and basically predicted the same thing. Does not seem to be a popular opinion however..

I do find HN to be against sarcasm of any kind, which in it's own way is slightly ironic. I enjoyed your comment [1] and consequently upvoted it!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19433773

Re: Google Stadia uses Style Transfer ML to change video game art in real time

#48
I don't think there will be heavy users of style transfer among high budget games anytime soon, but the important part is that it's done in real time. With an assumption that it has a reasonable level of latency, probably AA, super resolution or any other neural net based quality improvement can be a real thing.

Re: Google Stadia uses Style Transfer ML to change video game art in real time

#49
post #30

Is anyone else concerned this will be yet another Google product that goes by the wayside in a few years? This has essentially become my biggest fear now with any new product they announce/release.

It's pretty much a certainty with this project, in my opinion. Until everybody somehow has gigabit lines to their home and to their phones, I don't see this becoming popular. Like most Google projects, their actual success period is most likely 10+ years away, and the project will be axed long before then.

5G deployments have already started rolling out. 5G has average latency in the range of 1-2ms. Google controls a huge swath of the backbone after that. They can realistically achieve IMO, a more valid argument against its success would be that any consumer who is in a position to ensure they have fast enough internet for this service, is also in a position to buy a gaming console. But the counterargument to that is that there is no reason someone cannot have a gaming console and also use Stadia.

I'm normally very skeptical of Google's motivations, respectful of their cloud technology, and doubtful about many of their products. But I think this one will be a success, and shortly followed by competing products from Amazon and Microsoft.

Re: Google Stadia uses Style Transfer ML to change video game art in real time

#50
this is certainly just a neat gimmick, but it's interesting to me for a particular reason: the Stadia box uses an AMD GPU, and per the Google announcement, all the style transfer is done in real time.

this suggests that we may soon have better AMD support in TensorFlow.

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