Live data from Hacker News

Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

blogs.nvidia.com

141–150 of 239 posts

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#142
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-driving car companies are already working on this. Check out: https://waymo.com/research/block-nerf/ NERF is a very active research area, and the progress from 2020 to now has been nothing sort of astonishing. In 5 years, I expect there to be fully generative NERF's in research i.e describe a scene, and a NN produces a full 3d scene that can you interact with.

Can it be done with Google's existing Street View data?

Yes!!!! I always get frustrated when ever it does the weird stretch thing as soon as you move around in street view. Just jump to the next frame of you have to.

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#143
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point you will have heard all possible jokes. What is life without humor?

That's nonsense. There are infinite possible jokes.

This is not true. Jokes that take more than (say) an hour to tell are boring and thus not really jokes.

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#144

It would be really great to recreate loved ones after they have past in some sort of digital space. As I’ve gotten older, and my parents get older as well, I’ve been thinking more about what my life will be like in old age (and beyond too). I’ve also been thinking what I would want “heaven” to be. Eternal life doesn’t appeal to me much. Imagine living a quadrillion years. Even as a god, that would be miserable. That…

I'm with you on this. I would love to be able to connect with ancestors I barely or never met, even if it only captures a fraction of their essence. I worked on this for a while but Microsoft holds a pretty broad patent on this concept, which scared me off.

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#145
post #8

My prediction/hope is that NeRFs will totally revolutionize how the film/TV industry. I can imagine: - Shooting a movie from a few cameras, creating a movie version of a NeRF using those angles, and then dynamically adding in other shots in post - Using lighting and depth information embedded in NeRFs to assist in lighting/integrating CG elements - Using NeRFs to generate virtual sets on LED walls (like those on The…

I'm pretty sure the porn industry will find many uses to this technology

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#146
This is great, and the paper+codebase they're referring to (but not linking, here [1]) is neat too.

The research is moving fast though, so if you want something almost as fast without specialized CUDA kernels (just plain pytorch) you're in luck: https://github.com/apchenstu/TensoRF

As a bonus you also get a more compact representation of the scene.

[1] https://github.com/NVlabs/instant-ngp

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#147

It would be really great to recreate loved ones after they have past in some sort of digital space. As I’ve gotten older, and my parents get older as well, I’ve been thinking more about what my life will be like in old age (and beyond too). I’ve also been thinking what I would want “heaven” to be. Eternal life doesn’t appeal to me much. Imagine living a quadrillion years. Even as a god, that would be miserable. That…

I suppose I'm less pessimistic. I assume that eternal life wouldn't be the same experience as the corporeal passage of time. Time would exist of course, but would be perceived either as its true essence, or at least as a higher dimensional projection. Rather than be anchored in time at a constant velocity, you would be able to move and exist independently from it.

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#148
post #73

as someone who works in both AI and filmmaking, I remember losing my mind when this paper was first released a few weeks ago. It's absolute insanity what the folks at Nvidia have managed to accomplish in such a short time. The paper itself[0] is quite dense, but I recommend reading it -- they had to pull some fancy tricks to get performance to be as good as it is! [0] https://nvlabs.github.io/instant-ngp/

No post body was provided.

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#149
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps even making non-gimmicky live action 3d films. Having 3d renders of the entire film without needing green screens and a bunch of balls seems like it would have to make some of the post processing work easier. You can add or remove elements. Adjust the camera angles. More effectively de-age actors. Heck, even create scenes whole cloth if an actor unexpectedly dies (since you still have their model). Seems like…

With this - and with all the footage on actors you have (their movies) - then you basically have all actor's models.

Throw those into Copilot for filmmakers and away you go!

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#150

It would be really great to recreate loved ones after they have past in some sort of digital space. As I’ve gotten older, and my parents get older as well, I’ve been thinking more about what my life will be like in old age (and beyond too). I’ve also been thinking what I would want “heaven” to be. Eternal life doesn’t appeal to me much. Imagine living a quadrillion years. Even as a god, that would be miserable. That…

> Eternal life doesn’t appeal to me much. Imagine living a quadrillion years. Even as a god, that would be miserable.

That isn't necessarily what eternal life would be. Indeed, eternity is not temporal at all.

For example, in the Catholic understanding of heaven, those in heaven exist in aeveternity or aevum[0], a state in between the temporal and the eternal. Eternity[1] is proper only to God and is by definition timeless, with no beginning or end, so it would not make sense to speak of quadrillions of years. Where God is concerned, there is, loosely, only a now with no beginning, no end, no past, and no future, only the present, to use temporal language analogically.

Furthermore, heaven is in part characterized by the beatific vision[2] which is an immediate, direct, and inexhaustible knowing of God (Being Himself) which is Man's ultimate and supreme happiness. In this life, knowledge of God is generally mediate like much of human knowledge.

In other words, thus understood, the best of this life is but a faint shadow of a shadow in comparison to the ultimate fulfillment of heaven which is Man's proper end.

[0] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1010.htm#article5

[1] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05551b.htm

[2] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02364a.htm

Post reply on HN