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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

#71

Post by NathanKP »

joshuamorton wrote: post #38
libraryatnight wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I'd be curious to see what some indie devs do with it.

Imagine a game where you step into a portrait and are suddenly in the art style of the image. You suddenly walk into a countryside that feels american-gothic style, and then time-jump to 1940s New York in the style of Nighthawks. (different) Stylization as a medium in games isn't that explored, and the opportunity for indie devs to play with that is, IMO, really cool.

The Witcher Blood and Wine expansion actually did a great job with this. There is a main storyline quest where you enter a haunted painting

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

#72

Post by cycrutchfield »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #43
lwb wrote: 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?

There are many low-tech solutions that can be applied instead of shoehorning in neural networks for this purpose.

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

#73

Post by umeshunni »

caprese wrote: post #18
newobj wrote: post #12

There is nothing more Googley than building something that's technically impressive with absolutely no - or even antithetical - market fit

Onlive - required other people's infrastructure and a hardware play, and a software client. Playstation Now - required Sony to buy/use a cloud service, maintain it, and expensive Sony hardware just as a force of habit. Google - negligible instance running on their existing infrastructure, maintained under existing processes, playable on chromecasts already in hotels and homes everywhere, alongside browsers and mobile…

> playable on chromecasts already in hotels

Are there actually Chromecasts in hotels? I have never seen one and curious which chains have them.

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

#74

Post by chris_mc »

alkonaut wrote: post #67

The useful application for AI in streamed gaming seems like it would be for predicting the next 30ms to avoid input lag. This seems gimmicky at best. Prediction has to take place on the client though - so the challenge is making it cheap.

I am not a game developer, but couldn't you make a multiplayer game more fair in this situation by adding artificial lag into everyone's controls to match the highest lag person? Just limit it to a certain amount, like no more than 200-300ms.

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

#75

Post by Lerc »

heyitsguay wrote: post #29
lwb wrote: 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.

I think the more interesting applications will come when you get tools like this used by visual artists, complementing handmade design. The demo is cool but uses style transfer very bluntly, applying one style to the whole image with high intensity. I imagine the future of this is something more like neural "shaders", able to apply real-time pixel alterations to scenes or objects within scenes. Used carefully, they c…

This is where I think the value lies.

I have been thinking about a process where a procedurally generated template is completed by artists and subsequently used as a base for training an AI to apply to further procedural generations.

I also wonder if you can do micro style adjustments to unify artistic style, train a net on one particular artists work, the rest of the team copy the general style but use a final pass of a style transfer to make it a closer match.

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

#76

Post by babuskov »

andy_ppp wrote: post #47
fileeditview wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That was sarcasm? I though he was serious and upvoted.

I can imagine walking down the street in Call of Duty game or something like Cyberpunk 2077 and seeing ads overlaid on wall textures of buildings.

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

#77

Post by Fellshard »

lwb wrote: 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.

Hypothesis: the rough and relatively unpredictable results are not so much a good fit for finished products as it is for _rapid visual prototyping_. A good art director could use this to quickly settle on a rough goal around which the rest of the game would be targeted. I'm aware the pipeline usually goes from art director -> development, but this could help, say, a competent dev team with a gameplay direction but no artist yet, or a long-standing developer that wants to use its existing engines and mechanics to draft new, distinctive franchises.

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

bduerst wrote: post #44
cwyers wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by ender7 »

Fellshard wrote: post #77
lwb wrote: 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.

Hypothesis: the rough and relatively unpredictable results are not so much a good fit for finished products as it is for _rapid visual prototyping_. A good art director could use this to quickly settle on a rough goal around which the rest of the game would be targeted. I'm aware the pipeline usually goes from art director -> development, but this could help, say, a competent dev team with a gameplay direction but no…

This is the use case they highlighted in the keynote. It doesn't appear to be a system designed for shipped games.

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

#80

Post by nprateem »

cwyers wrote: post #34
dragonwriter wrote: post #17

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?

Come on, think bigger. If they're doing this for art styles you can bet your bottom dollar they'll be doing something using Google images. No longer having to actually create 3D meshes - just a Google image search, click a button and have the geometries automatically created for you. Then just add an automatic style.
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