I don't know much about 3D printing, would be very interested in learning more about this idea if you'd be so kind as to expand on it. Could I have AI spend all day auto scanning what teens are doing on instagram, auto generate toys based on it, auto generate advertisements for the toys, auto 3D print on demand?
I think their suggestion was more "I have a photo of a cool horse, and now I would like a 3D model of that same horse."
Another way of looking at it, 3D artists often begin projects by taking reference images of their subject from multiple angles, then very manually turning that into a 3D model. That step could potentially be greatly sped up with an algorithm like this one. The artist could (hopefully) then focus on cleanup, rigging, etc, and have a quality asset in significantly less time.
The question is whether this actually "creates a 3d model based on the picture",
or if it "finds an existing model that looks similar to the picture and texture map it".
Hypothetically, sure, assuming the parent comment that these meshes are sufficient for modelling is correct and that you can find any teens who want a non-digital toy.
I think a good hobbyist application for this would be something like modelling figurines for games, which is already a pretty popular 3D printing application. This would allow people with limited modelling skills to bring fantastical, unique characters to life “easily”.
OP is suggesting that this (AI model? I honestly am behind on the terminology) could replace one of the common steps of 3D printing - specifically, the step where you create a digital representation of the physical object you would want to end up with.
There are other steps to 3D printing in general, though; a super rough outline:
- Model generation
- "Slicing" - processing the 3D model into instructions that the 3D printer can handle, as well as adding any support structures or other modifications to make it printable
- Printing - the actual printing process
- Post-processing - depending on the 3D printing technology used, the desired resulting product, and the specific model/slicing settings, this can be as simple as "remove from bed and use" to "carefully snip off support structures, let cure in a UV chamber for X minutes, sand and fill, then paint"
As I said before, this AI model specifically would cover 3D model generation. If you were to use a printing technology that doesn't require support structures, and handles color directly in the printing process (I think powder bed fusion is the only real option here?), the entire process should be fairly automatable - a human might be needed to remove the part from the printer, but there might not be much post-processing to do.
The rest of your desired workflow is a bit more nebulous - I don't know how you would handle "scanning what teens are doing on instagram", at least in a way that would let you generate toys from the information; generating and posting the advertisement shouldn't be too hard - have a standardish template that you fill in with a render from the model, and the description; printing on demand again is possible, though you'll likely need a human to remove the part, check it for quality and ship it. You could automate the latter, but that would probably be more trouble than it's worth.
Interesting, to be clear I don't think this is a good idea and it's kinda my nightmare post capitalism hell. I just think it's interesting this could be done now.
On finding out what teens want, that part is somewhat easy-ish, I guess you'd need a couple of agents, one that is scanning teen blogs for stories and then converting them to key words, then another agent that takes the key words (#taylorswift #HaileyBieberChiaPudding #latestkdrama etc) into Instagram, after a while your recommend page will turn into a pretty accurate representation of what teens are into, then just have an agent look at those images and generate difs of them. I doubt it would work for a bunch of reasons, but it's an interesting thought experiment! Thanks!
