[dragonwriter]

> 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.

[cwyers]

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?

[bduerst]

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.

[candiodari]

That's one thing, plus look at the result. This makes a very lowpoly game quite impressive visually.

And this is just a trivial graphic filter through a neural network. A lot more can be done with AI.

[nprateem]

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.

[petra]

>> Come on, think bigger.

True.

Actually Google is just seeing the wealth of innovation in procedural generation and in computer creativity, knowing where this is going, and just want in on the action.

And since as a cloud gaming provider, they stand to make much more money than tool vendors, their incentive is much bigger.

[libraryatnight]

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

[joshuamorton]

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.

[NathanKP]

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

[ghostbrainalpha]

Would it help in game development? For example giving developers better looking playable prototypes while the artists are still working out their designs?

[disease]

Any technology that can automatically perform the tedious task of coloring 2D art would be a godsend to indie game devs as well as amateur artists.