wu zongyu

Hi,I downloaded a USD file containing three trees. I have some points from my terrain and I want to use them for instancing.

So,How to split three trees in to single and instance them on points randomly

Sygnum  信号
I`ve worked for, let`s say one of the largest corporations on this planet, just a few months ago to promote a new functionality, and a group of guys specialized on generating image and video used the latest generative AI of the same corporation instead of filmed/photographed content.
The amount of content produced to get where the client wanted to get was mind-boggling, and we still didn`t get the best results. Two shots in particular stay etched in my mind: A cat sitting on a laptop and thereby hitting random keys and this was just ONE clip, a few seconds long: The screen showed nonsense, the keys had garbage alphanumerics on them, their shapes were "morphed" between Mac and Windows, the cat`s head movement were robotic and the timing the agency wanted was inverted. I did a helluva work to fix most of it except the odd head movement which we took care of by time stretching the clip and cutting that moving head part out.

Apart from all this, my general observation is, that the images/videos are very very often awfully blurry and full of artefacts, I can`t believe that after so many years of refinement of our tools, from 2D to 3D and the best quality cameras ever built we`re now accepting this kind of low quality crap built upon mostly stolen content. And one thing a lot of people are not getting is: this is the best these generative systems can get - they`ve literally gobbled up whatever they could grab, from low res, heavily compressed garbage to a bit of higher res stuff. And since less and less people will share their content and nobody will produce film/commercial level stock images, there won't be anywhere to go to steal new/better data to feed the beast. It´s also impossible to create "ugly" stuff with the curated general purpose AI`s, just as an ever growing set of filters prohibit various things the current mainstream deems inappropriate.

I also thought about the cultural consequences. We`re now entering an era of less and less new human made creative works. We already are in a cycle of endless rehashing of old ideas, but if wide adoption of AI content happens, everything will be preserved/mummified at a pre-2020 kind of state. Everywhere I go, regardless if Europe or Asia I see the same midjourney-style averaged images of "beautiful" people. It`s an actually depressing mindset the media is trying to push. It`s the superficiality of social media nonsense we already had but amplified by a thousand.

I agree with your point of view, but short mobile dramas are relatively easy to monetize now. For example, our company is currently working on AI-generated 3D animated short films. First, we generate single frames of characters using AI, then we build simple scenes in 3D software, and we also filmed dynamic footage with real people. Finally, we put everything into AI to replace the characters and refine the visuals. I think that driven by profit, this could indeed have a negative impact on the traditional CG industry.

habernir

happybabywzy
Will AI replace Houdini in some tasks in the future? For example, in film and television special effects or visual effects in advertisements. I've been using Houdini for eight years, and it's a fantastic software. I don't think any other similar software can surpass it.

but with the emergence and development of AI, I'm a little worried about our current efforts.After all, AI can achieve about 70% of Houdini's effect with only one-thousandth of the time and money.

Ai Can't do 70% of Houdini's effect, not even close to that.
where did you get this number?

And people will always want to see visually than use text ,
so think what will happen when sidefx will develop AI within houdini

and don't listen to dooms day people because most of them speak out of self interest.

I'm sorry, I don't have exact number, this is just a guess. I'm a Houdini tercher at a university, and I often see news about the continuous progress of AI, such as the recent Seedance 2.0, which is already very powerful. I also constantly hear people around me saying that what we teach is outdated or no longer competitive, which makes me a little scared.