What Will Virtual World Economies Do With Image-to-3D Mesh Conversion AI Programs Coming Soon?

Tim Hannan, an indie creator who's been doing some interesting experiments blending Second Life video/images with gen AI (as here), recently sent me these two fairly alarming -- but actually not that surprising -- images. 

The image on the left is the photo of high end basketball shoe. The image on the right is the same shoe in Second Life.

In this case, I do mean "same", in the sense that the virtual shoe shares the underlying digital substrate as the RL shoe, so to speak. While it's possible to recreate the shoe in Blender by hand, the modeling was done by an algorithm which first ingested and then extrapolated the 2D image itself to output it into a 3D version.  

"There is now a free open source [AI] model for image to 3D mesh that can be run locally," Tim tells me. "Just a quick sample I don’t know crap about 3D modeling etc." To do this, he uses an all-in-one AI program with a plug-in for the 3D conversion. "Give it an image it returns a .gilb (?) file, then I just load it in Blender, [then] convert to .DAE for Second Life."

This does not mean, I should quickly add, than an avatar right now can just come along and wear this virtual version of the shoe. It would first need to be rigged to the SL skeleton and optimized with the various mesh bodies. For SL fashion merchants, this technology might still be useful for prototype/showcase purposes. (I.E. "Hey fam, do you want a shoe like this in SL?")

For creators like Tim, who might use the shoe (or anything else that can be so modeled) as a non-interactive prop in his machinima, it's good enough to use right now:

"For someone like me it makes me less reliant on the marketplace," as he puts it. "For someone already good at Blender this would just streamline their process don’t have to sit there sculpting or whatnot."

As for rigging, optimizing, etc.: "With AI this tech a year from now may be perfected."

This has always been the Pandora's Box with uploadable mesh-based content in SL and other metaverse platforms: If you're able to sell that content in the virtual world marketplace for real money*, you immediately create an incentive for people to inundate the world with mesh knockoffs of all the kinds. This knockoff process used to be fairly difficult, but gen AI programs are making it easier to do with each successive year. The best time for companies like VRChat and Linden Lab to address this with policy was... well, probably years go.

As for virtual world merchants, this is yet another reason to trademark your brand in real life, which unlike the appearance of an item, can be protected under law. (More on that in the Johanna Blakley TED talk above.) It's also yet another reason to foster and grow a community of supportive fans who want your virtual content, even when they can get an AI knockoff for much less lucre.

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* Yes, virtual currency that can purchase digital entertainment / goods / services are effectively real money; even moreso when they're readily exchangeable for government-backed currency.

Comments

[Maxwell Graf]

"...it makes me less reliant on the marketplace...For someone already good at Blender this would just streamline their process don’t have to sit there sculpting or whatnot."

"Or whatnot" being the equivalent of "or creating mesh at all," and it is already damaging the economy in SL and RL. This is the downside of it from an economic standpoint, it will chip away at the market until there is no viable reason or alternative for creators to continue doing completely original work and being able to make any amount of profit from it to justify the effort, unless profit is not the desired result or customers are willing to pay a premium for items they trust are being created without it. At some point, AI will dominate the economy of available goods in the marketplace, simply because it makes it easier to make money.

The SL creator economy is already a predominant aspect of why SL continues to exist at the size and concurrency it does. RP environments, entertainment, hobbies, live/DJ music venues and even just hanging out with friends has diminished considerably over the years and the creators making stuff is the main pillar supporting it now. However, even that has changed over time, in types of content, point of purchase/marketing methods, pricing and product usage; The market is dominated by avatar bodies, fashion and accessories, mostly presented at events, purchased mostly from marketplace and considered largely disposable (wear it once and put it away, etc.) Not always, but I am considering the primary market. Even furniture, home and garden items are rarely used for the amount of time they used to be before being changed to something else.

Add to all of these factors the expansion of the number of creators/brands available, vastly increased from even a decade ago. ALL of these factors contribute to dividing up the limited economic pie of sales into smaller and smaller slices, at a time when the plethora of events and competition drives the pricing of items down and down, limiting return unless volume is increased. THAT nexus brings us to AI and how it is arriving at exactly the moment when that volume economy is dominating the marketplace. More and more, AI will begin to creep into the marketplace, whether we like it or not, simply because A) the constant demand is there and B) the volume is necessary to continue profiting as prices drop.

The inclusion of AI, for the reasons Tim gave that I listed up top of my response, will cause prices to drop even further, as the availability and time to market for mesh items and wearables is reduced and people accept the inevitability of "AI fast fashion" as part of the landscape in SL. It is already happening, not just in marketing materials and imagery, but in marketed items. It is here, now. Going forward it will only become better quality and less distinguishable from original works and eventually surpass the quality of many brands.

The questions then become: How will users respond to it? How much will they be willing to pay for it if they do accept it? How will those creators who refuse to utilize it maintain and eventually compete along side AI? Certainly there will continue to be a demand for non-AI original works, but how long will it take until you can't tell anymore and just accept the creators word that no AI was used in any aspect of the production of that item you purchase? Will it cease to matter?

We need to all be asking ourselves, our favorite creators and the Lab these questions in preparation for how we all handle the coming changes to the 3D world we so lovingly have supported for so long, because it IS inevitable that AI is here already and will continue to be integrated into the process of living and consuming inside all virtual spaces. To what degree and to what effect is what we must learn.

I am familiar with AI, have explored a lot of it and will continue to follow it's development, as we all should. I, like many creators, do not want or plan to use AI in anything I produce for sale, though I have extremely limited sales or production for the last several years, for a variety of reasons. I like to think that the success of Rustica over so many years has been that for whatever reason I am able to produce items which exhibit some characteristic which makes them identifiable as my work, that my stuff has a "look," that, while not ever the best quality or following trend, that people can recognize as something I made. That is, to me, the greatest reward I get from SL, I have never been one of the trendy stores or a big seller. But I have persisted, and I like to think it has something to do with that aspect of my work. I don't think that is something I can get from AI, no matter how I prompt it.

I hope that AI does not damage SL. I see what it is already doing to a lot of writers, artists, coders and game developers/designers outside of SL and I have the same concerns most of us do. I think the best way to move forward is to decide how we continue to exist in online spaces alongside AI, because it is NOT going away. It is here, now.

[Josh Latham]

The AI generated shoe looks incredibly janky to me. Would love to inspect it first hand to judge it better. But just seeing it, I see a mess that would take more time to clean up than just start from scratch and do a clean job. Actually it doesn't even look like it could be fixed. I would just start over. Creating a mesh is the easy part anyway. Putting time into loading it up, creating the textures, optimizing everything for SL, rigging etc etc. Putting the time to sell the item, make it something interesting and new and innovative is the hard part. I can flesh out a shoe like that in a couple hours. But then you gotta make someone want to buy it.

[Tim H]

@josh no doubt clean up needs to be done. Right now. The tech moves quick though

[Whystler]

I welcome it.

People, who are currently profiting creators, can be afraid of it.

I've been in the VR creator game for more than 25 years. Some of it has been quite profitable. Some of it has been motivated instead by spectacle, interest and creative experience alone.

It is possible that AI will lessen the ability to profit from making schtuff. But I remember a time when that was NOT the aim of being creative in VR.

AI will take some of the privilege out of creating. This could mean anything from the time a creator was privileged enough to have ... to the education a creator was privileged enough to have ... to the ability to afford software ... and yeah, this is going to be scary to those who had that privilege. But that doesn't mean it's immoral.

I firmly believe that the most motivated and thoughtful creators will continue to shine with these AI tools. They will move beyond the low hanging fruit and make amazingly interesting things. They may not make a living at it, but they will be compelled to make the things, as they always have, regardless of whether profit is a motivator.

In FACT, it is entirely possible that the spirit of experimentation and collaboration will flourish more than it has been of late, with the use of AI tools.

It it also entirely possible that the meshes will be regarded as the elements of the art ultimately created , and not the art itself. Instead, the focus of arting may well go back to the multifaceted built experience we were all enthralled in the first decade of Second Life.

For example, I recently made an interactive card game for a real life society's banquet whereby the attendees received cards that identified their characters and their abilities and their actions throughout the night in a lovely but casual roleplay experience. It required A LOT of cards, and hence A LOT of art. I could have hand-designed perhaps 4-8 of these cards myself within the time I had, but I needed dozens. Enter AI art. This helped me create a much bigger experience than I could ever have accomplished pre AI art.

Imagine what multilevel , compound , creations a single individual can soon, if not now, accomplish in Second Life with AI art!? And then ... imagine ... what incredible impossibility of experience could then be created by a whole team? These now possible impossibilities are exciting. And, in the service of art, to let our fears impede these results, is a selfish crime.

AI will take some of the privilege out of creating. This could mean anything from the time a creator was privileged enough to have ... to the education a creator was privileged enough to have ... to the ability to afford software ... and yeah, this is going to be scary to those who had that privilege.

I firmly believe that the most motivated and thoughtful creators will continue to shine with these AI tools. They will move beyond the low hanging fruit and make amazingly interesting things. They may not make a living at it, but they will be compelled to make the things, as they always have, regardless of whether profit is a motivator.

In FACT, it is entirely possible that the spirit of experimentation and collaboration will flourish more than it has been of late, with the use of AI tools.

It it also entirely possible that the "building" blocks of building (that being the mesh items) will be regarded as the elements of the art created , and not the art itself. Instead, the focus of arting may well go back to the multifaceted built experience.

For example, recently I made an interactive card game for a real life society's banquet whereby the attendees received cards that identified their characters and their abilities and their actions throughout the night in a lovely but casual roleplay experience. It required A LOT of cards, and hence A LOT of art. I could have designed perhaps 5-10 of these cards myself, but I needed dozens. Enter AI art. This helped me create a much bigger experience than I could ever have accomplished pre AI art.

Imagine what multilevel , compound , creations a single individual can soon, if not now, accomplish in Second Life with AI art!? And then ... imagine ... what incredible impossibility of experience could then be created by a whole team? The possibilities are exciting. And, in the service of art, to let our fears impede these possibilities, is a selfish crime.