Machine learning isn’t necessarily always going to be about typing a prompt and letting the machine do the work. There are far subtler possibilities in generating tiles – and even how tiles are grafted together for seamless materials. Here’s a great deep dive into that topic.
Athens’ own Dimitris Katsafouros is one of the best people to follow in 3D design and tech, so this one doesn’t disappoint. There are two episodes here. In the first, he digs into AI texture generation in general, and is generally disappointed by the results – although there are some interesting creative details to tiling and generating textures you might not get otherwise:
But there’s a twist. Adobe has baked AI texture into Substance 3D with Substance Sampler. The tool is a bit more conservative – maybe dialed back for more consistent results and ease of use. But it works reasonably well. Most of the time we talk about generative AI’s endless sameness and conformity. In this use case, it could be the opposite – how often do you see default textures used in Unreal Engine projects, for instance? Ahem. So there’s potential here, not to mention that some of the techniques used to make the “AI” texture tools work may yield side benefits in tiling and so on.
Have a look – and have a good weekend: