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Comment by jero1000 | Hacker News Reader

I abandoned 3D art after witnessing DALL-E 2's capabilities, and I've observed the ripple effects across creative fields. Initially, photographers and fellow artists dismissed AI as a non-threat. That turned out to be misguided optimism. Now, with Midjourney producing such impressive work, the majority of us have become largely obsolete. These days, I'm noticing developers exhibiting the same denial. From my perspective, they're on a similar trajectory. This AI revolution is impacting creative and technical industries far more rapidly and dramatically than most anticipated..

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I was a paid wedding photographer in the 1990s, and I used a Rolleiflex TLR with 120 Roll film. I recently attended a friend's wedding, and took with me a Fuji GFX100 series camera, effortlessly shooting pictures I could never have taken with a Rollei from terrible angles at like 5x the resolution with far, far more dynamic range than 120 film ever had.

30 years after I gave up the Rollei, I'm not obsolete as a photographer, and when there's a quality diffusion model that could take a few of my photos from the event at 100 megapixels, and get prompted by me as to what I want to see out of them creatively, I will still not be obsolete, even as a photographer, but most certainly not obsolete as an artist. In fact, I'll have more tools available for my art, with new skills needed, and different workflows.

As to abandoning 3D art -- your call. If you love it, why not see how these new tools open up your art? If you don't love some of the new tools, no problem, don't use them. I still shoot medium format film some times. If you were planning on a long term creative career without staying on top of technical advances in your field, that has not been possible for at least a few centuries.

Sure, Midjourney's work looks visually impressive, but have you seen evidence that it really is displacing professional 3D artists?

Are legitimate companies genuinely switching to Midjourney over hiring artists now, or is Midjourney usage still mostly happening in places that previously wouldn't have commissioned custom illustrations at all (instead using things like stock photography)?

It raises the bar of 'professional 3D artist'.

There're hundreds of thousands of '3D worker' working behind the scene to create the 3D models for makeshift ads, and as far as I know many of them (including my high school mate) already got displaced by Midjourney and lost their job. This used to be a big industry but now almost entirely wiped out by AI.

> This used to be a big industry but now almost entirely wiped out by AI.

To my knowledge, 3D artists weren't that huge of an industry to begin with. One of my friends went to college researching 3D physics models, and never landed a job in the field long before the AI wave hit. Unless you're a freelancer or salaried Pixar employee, being a 3D artist is extremely difficult with extraordinarily low job security, AI or no AI.

I think "almost entirely wiped out by AI" is hyperbole, because the primary employer of these artists will still be hiring and products like Sora are a good decade away from being Toy Story quality. AI will be a substitute product for people that didn't even want 3D art in the first place.

I used to be an illustrator and I know from speaking to my former colleagues that they have, in fact, lost work to AI image generation services. Illustration is seen as a cost center by anyone higher than front line art directors and taste normally stops at that level as well. I think this will eventually end up with a bimodal distribution of undifferentiated AI slop and those who use high-quality human illustration to signal a commitment to taste, design, or maybe even luxury, but the economic consequences of that shift are already in motion.

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