Nike 3D-printed concept sneakers
NIKE unveils A.I.R, its 13 3D-printed sneakers designed using computational design, generative AI, rapid prototyping, and 3D printers.
Demo scenes are not dead
Massive in the 90’s, Demoscenes are not dead. Revision 2024 demo party just took place March 29th to April 1st in Saarbrücken Germany.
There was music, seminars, videos, livestreams, a 5k run, and of course – amazing code demos. This included some competing 256-byte demos here. One of the best was a post-apocalyptic black-and-white city created with just 256 bytes of Gopher code running on DOS.
Fractal VR experience
While most of VR is focused on creating 3D worlds like we currently know them – some artists are experimenting with mathematically generated audio-visual journeys.
Recombination is an VR album by Dutch artist Julius Horsthuis. When it launched a year ago, the VR app offered eight experiences that take you on a journey through beautiful mathematical spaces
Algebra of Awe is another of his works that focuses more on fractal geometry.
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Luma AI Genie
Luma Labs Genie can take a text prompt and generate a 3D model for you. You can inspect and download it in a variety of standard formats.
They seem to do a much better job than some of the earlier generative AI methods I wrote about before (like DreamFusion).
LumaLabs AI also has an AI powered 3D scene capture technology that looks very good as well.
3D from 2D photographs
Emm used her iPhone 12 Pro + @Scenario3d iphone app to generate this 3D image of her daughter.
Scenario makes a number of products. Read more about Scenario3d here.
LumiLabs also has some of their own offerings to capture scenes.
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AI generated short films using LTX Studio
AI video platform LTX Studio is now open for users to get stuck in and make short films, storyboards and other generative productions all from a simple text prompt. Simply type the film idea or a full synopsis of your desired creation and then set the visual aesthetic, aspect ratio, inspiration and your virtual casting for a selection of AI generated characters.
It utilizes dozens of AI models to generate the script, add voice narration, background music, sound effects, and generate the image and video elements.
Other AI video tools create more realistic video, speech tools with more realistic speech and lip sync available in both Pika Labs and Runway — but for each of those you still have to make a series of short clips and they have poor character consistency.
It has a lot of limitations; but it absolutely could be used for previsualization and concept pieces.
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Generating a music video from a text prompt
Sora is an artificial intelligence video generator that is capable of producing multi-shot clips of a minute or longer from nothing more than a text prompt — but so far only a select few have used it to create content. OpenAI is working on security issues and slowly rolling it out this year.
One of the artists given early access to Sora is August Kamp, a musician, researcher and creative activist. She described Sora as representing a “turning point” for artists as it means the only limitation on visuals is the human imagination.
“Taking these pictures that I’ve held onto [in my mind] for two years and saying ‘August – we can share these with folks’. that’s what I think is special about this tool,” she said.
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Big Box PC Games
I have a small collection of my favorite old big box PC games. It turns out that others do too. BigBoxCollection website has a bunch 3d scanned boxes from your favorite old games. You can combine this with box and manual scans on MobyGames.
Go check out some nostalgia.
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‘Photo’ Was Made From an 84-Year-Old Woman’s Memory using prompt engineer
An interviewer and a prompt engineer will sit down with the subject whose memory they are trying to retrieve, as the person recalls a specific event or place the promptographer will input the descriptions into an AI image generator and what follows is a bit of back and forth to get the image right.
“You show the image generated from that prompt to the subject and they might say, ‘Oh, the chair was on that side’ or ‘It was at night, not in the day’,” explains Garcia. “You refine it until you get it to a point where it clicks.”
It’s more like guided painting/drawing of a scene from a description – but using generative AI to do the work is pretty unique.
The team recently worked with an 84-year-old woman from Barcelona called Maria. Maria has vivid memories of peering out from her balcony as a child to try and catch a glimpse of her father who was incarcerated in a prison opposite where they lived.
These childhood memories only existed inside Maria’s mind, but the AI researchers worked with her to bring these reminisces to life by describing the place and the historical context (Maria’s father had been jailed by General Franco).
“It’s very easy to see when you’ve got the memory right because there is a very visceral reaction,” Pau Garcia, founder of Domestic Data Streamers, tells MIT Reivew. “It happens every time. It’s like, ‘Oh! Yes! It was like that!’”
AI image from the Spanish Civil War was co-created by a 90-year-old woman called Nuria who vividly remembers men waiting outside bomb shelters with shovels and picks ready to rescue anyone trapped inside.
It’s not as complex as previous methods of reconstructing images from brain scans, but it’s an interesting approach.
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Catholic Shops for 2024
I was recently looking for good baptism gifts for an adult joining the church.
- Etsy – Unique catholic gifts – https://www.etsy.com/search?q=catholic&ref=search_bar
- Rugged rosaries – https://ruggedrosaries.com
- Catholic Company – https://www.catholiccompany.com/
- Catholic to the Max – https://www.catholictothemax.com/
- Leaflet Missal – https://www.leafletonline.com/
- EWTN gift shop – https://www.ewtnreligiouscatalogue.com