Experience with using AI to generate texture packs?

[Krougal]

I'm sure China, North Korea, Venezuela or any other communist shithole of your choice would be happy to accommodate those of you who would like to see what it is really like...

Edited August 13, 2025 by Krougal

[cosmobeau]

Enzoi does this not for shader packs but for customizing furniture and clothes, and aside from Enzoi being a failed game so far, their AI features honestly suck compared to how they were advertised.

I'm all for using AI for utility and streamlining certain things but when it comes to visuals, AI is best used to help something YOU made, not the other way around. Let's say someone is animating something or finishing up a landscape- an AI can help with that, but making the AI do it on its own completely is almost always going to include plagiarism, and will honestly look poor for what you're describe because they're not really programmed to make texture packs. 

Tbh I'd follow in the game creator's footsteps. They supported creators and made their own original thing. Without AI.

[Diff]

On 7/6/2025 at 10:03 AM, Thorfinn said:

Thanks. That was my impression, too. I couldn't see how the code could be greater than the coder, but I had not kept up on it, and thought it was possible. You can already program it to create a texture. It would not be that hard to code a requirement that a texture be tilable. What there is not is an algorithm that the code can use to determine if this one is any good.

It doesn't work like that. That's not *really* a thing you can do. You don't program an AI like that, AI's fundamentally not really capable of understanding tiling well, and in general the more requirements you lay down, the more it will just ignore you. Smooth tiling is also difficult to add as a post-processing layer, and even if you accomplish that, all you can do is re-roll and cross your fingers because you cannot make the AI understand what you have just programmed, you can only pass/fail the output and hope that by pure chance one makes it through the barrier while you keep racking up increasing bills.

As someone who spans both graphic design and programming in their career, AI really cannot automate anything you care to. It's good at demos. It falls flat immediately on contact with reality. And with something like a texture pack, AI is going to be fighting you every step of the way. With the fundamental issues with the way image generation works being at odds with tiling, and the fundamental issues with the way image generation works being at odds with getting a cohesive visual style, and the fundamental issues... don't believe the hype.

On 7/6/2025 at 10:03 AM, Thorfinn said:

If they are good enough to get away with it, good on them. I generally just fired them, as most weren't half as good as they thought they were. And a workforce that's walking on eggshells afraid of offending someone is not a happy workforce. Better off getting rid of the easily offended.

Ah yes, snap firings based on trivialities like using correct terminology in a professional setting, definitely a good way to keep your employees from walking on eggshells...

[Thorfinn]

13 hours ago, Diff said:

It doesn't work like that.

Right now it doesn't, no. AI works through imitation. At some point in the future, I'm confident that if it sees enough examples of what tiling is, it will be able to do it.

 

13 hours ago, Diff said:

Ah yes, snap firings based on trivialities like using correct terminology in a professional setting,

It wasn't for using "correct" terminology. It was for being abusive to co-workers who didn't use the "correct" terminology.

Edited August 13, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Diff]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

Right now it doesn't, no. AI works through imitation. At some point in the future, I'm confident that if it sees enough examples of what tiling is, it will be able to do it.

In all good humor, if you're confident about that, then it's because you do not grasp how it works. Here, take a much simpler example: pixels. Just pixels. This is a highly desired, highly trained on, and highly used example. But image generation models can't do it. It can't even keep the pixels square. It cannot commit to an "internal" grid size to align the pixels to because each part of the image is done practically independently. This conflict with the underlying way that AI image generators work means that despite the demand, despite the simplicity of the requirements, and despite the amount of time that has passed, there are NO models in existence that can generate pixel art assets that would be usable or acceptable in a real project. And that's just due to one of the fundamental issues with these models. There are others.

Tiling takes that up to 11, for a laundry list of additional reasons that all boil down to a similar "the way that this must be done is just fundamentally, entirely at odds with how the technology operates at its most primitive levels," but with the difficulty curved ramped up exponentially. There's no waiting around for this to get better because this is baked into the foundations. It's part of the basic premise of how the technology operates that this *can't* work.

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

It wasn't for using "correct" terminology. It was for being abusive to co-workers who didn't use the "correct" terminology

Abusive's a strong word. It sounds like it's for the best that you got out of the business, then. Regardless, there's been no abuse here and I'd maintain that it's entirely reasonable for someone to insist on the earlier distinction between artists and the latest silicon valley hype fad whose stated purpose is to obsolete them. If you described a systems engineers job as vibe coding, unless they're a doormat, they'd correct you. 

Edited August 13, 2025 by Diff
Tone

[Krougal]

10 minutes ago, Diff said:

If you described a systems engineers job as vibe coding, unless they're a doormat, they'd correct you. 

I sure would. Especially since I don't even know WTF vibe means. Damn kids today!

 

[cosmobeau]

My honest reaction to this thread 

[Krougal]

6 minutes ago, cosmobeau said:

My honest reaction to this thread 

I don't get it. Is it vibing? I need to go back to Rust so the kids can unironically (they like to say unironically a lot now, even when it doesn't make any sense most of the time) catch me up on the slang again.

Edited August 14, 2025 by Krougal

[cosmobeau]

6 minutes ago, Krougal said:

I don't get it. Is it vibing? 

The meme means, pick up the art tools and make the art yourself. "Pick up the pencil and draw" pick up the programs needed to make texture packs and make them yourself. That's why he's throwing a pack of Crayola colored pencils. 

People are already telling OP that AI isn't programmed to make AI art for texture packs. And using AI to make EVERYTHING on its own will always include plagerism.

Same OP criticized me for criticizing a originally made game, using its own original game engine, turns around, and asks how to make texture packs with AI. Staggeringgg

Like no ill will towards OP but c'mon lol

Edited August 14, 2025 by cosmobeau

[Krougal]

5 minutes ago, cosmobeau said:

The meme means, pick up the art tools and make the art yourself. "Pick up the pencil and draw" pick up the programs needed to make texture packs and make them yourself. That's why he's throwing a pack of Crayola colored pencils. 

People are already telling OP that AI isn't programmed to make AI art for texture packs. And using AI to make EVERYTHING on its own will always include plagerism.

Same OP criticized me for criticizing a originally made game, using its own original game engine, turns around, and asks how to make texture packs with AI. Staggering.

Yeah, the AI right now is still mostly a glorified search engine.

It's hard not to get sucked into the hype these days.

I saw some youtubes, this guy asks AI stuff, mostly political, and it is all outright bullshit. I've gone and asked all the AI the same questions, phrased the same way and I get a very different response. Most of them will even respond that they are just a program and they don't have an opinion of their own if you try to bait them with loaded questions.

 

Edited August 14, 2025 by Krougal

[Teh Pizza Lady]

9 minutes ago, cosmobeau said:

Same OP criticized me for criticizing a originally made game, using its own original game engine, turns around, and asks how to make texture packs with AI. Staggeringgg

This is a really old thread. You know that, right?

[cosmobeau]

5 minutes ago, Krougal said:

Yeah, the AI right now is still mostly a glorified search engine.

It's hard not to get sucked into the hype these days.

I saw some youtubes, this guy asks AI stuff, mostly political, and it is all outright bullshit. I've gone and asked all the AI the same questions, phrased the same way and I get a very different response. Most of them will even respond that they are just a program and they don't have an opinion of their own if you try to bait them with loaded questions.

 

"AI" (we don't have true AI yet) can certainly be very exact and good at it's job. We're developing AI that can detect cancer early, help with processes that include human direction and creative input on a actual person's art or skill, and even help a long technical processes and collect incredibly relevant citations for requested data that would normally take a long time to compile for research.

I don't like the black and white nature of the politics surrounding AI, but as it stands in the realm of art it's highly wrought with not just technical, but moral issues.

[cosmobeau]

1 minute ago, traugdor said:

This is a really old thread. You know that, right?

I think regardless of the order the two separate behaviors are still pretty conflicting and funny to point out. Also, it's been at the top a lot recently. 

[Krougal]

6 minutes ago, traugdor said:

This is a really old thread. You know that, right?

  

4 minutes ago, cosmobeau said:

Also, it's been at the top a lot recently. 

There's a lot of necromancy around this place lately. I blame all the Hytale refuges

(and no, I don't even know if they are actually a thing)

Edited August 14, 2025 by Krougal

[cosmobeau]

5 minutes ago, Krougal said:

  

There's a lot of necromancy around this place lately. I blame all the Hytale refuges

(and no, I don't even know if they are actually a thing)

I literally didn't even realize it was the same person until my nosey boyfriend pointed it out because he likes seeing what I post in the forums.

I mean AI texture packs ... I'd honest rather see a program that lets artists who make art in stuff like Paint Tool SAI or Krita be able to just make the art there and have an AI configure it and format it into a texture pack.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

You'll get used to Thorfinn. 

[Krougal]

12 minutes ago, traugdor said:

You'll get used to Thorfinn. 

Yeah, he'll grow on you after a while.

I generally like and respect him, even if I want to strangle him sometimes.

[Yakkob]

On 8/12/2025 at 9:52 PM, Bummed_Machinist said:

You make a caricature of those politics and come off as bizarre and out of touch. That language might be understandable in whatever group you run in but people here don't talk like that. You will not win people over with that silliness. You have to remember we live in the material world. I have met many genuinely nice people of the "Capitalist class" and many assholes of the working class- Class isn't primarily a moral issue, it's just that the former are economically unnecessary, and their interests generally (but not always) contradict with, and are parasitic to the general interests of working class people. Talking solely from the moral lens at the mere mention of a person's class alienates you from actual industrial workers, who often don't see class as such an intense moral situation, just an economic reality we are resigned to. 

I think I like you too!

[Yakkob]

On 8/12/2025 at 10:05 PM, Krougal said:

I'm sure China, North Korea, Venezuela or any other communist shithole of your choice would be happy to accommodate those of you who would like to see what it is really like...

bUt ThAt IsN'T rEaL cOmMuNiSm!

in all seriousness I think I'm going to fit in pretty well here... 

BtW vibe translated from gen alpha to English can mean something like "feels" or "agree", eg "that skeleton is giving off spooky vibes" or "I'm vibing with you" 

[Krougal]

19 minutes ago, Yakkob said:

bUt ThAt IsN'T rEaL cOmMuNiSm!

in all seriousness I think I'm going to fit in pretty well here... 

BtW vibe translated from gen alpha to English can mean something like "feels" or "agree", eg "that skeleton is giving off spooky vibes" or "I'm vibing with you" 

Regardless, a lot of you seem to forget the simple fact, the world doesn't owe you or I or anyone a living.

My family could tell you how great living in Soviet Russia wasn't, except other than my wife, who was only a child, they're all dead.

Anyway, thanks for vibin  

[Yakkob]

1 hour ago, Krougal said:

My family could tell you how great living in Soviet Russia wasn't, except other than my wife, who was only a child, they're all dead.

yeah the same could be said for most of my dad's side of the family... they were jewish, Ukrainian, kulaks... literally all things that would get you g3nocided in the "tolerant soviet union"... the sole reason any of them survived is that my great grandma, her sister and her brother immigrated to the US... otherwise they would be in some mass grave right now... 

[Thorfinn]

13 hours ago, Diff said:

In all good humor, if you're confident about that, then it's because you do not grasp how it works.

I guess I'm in good company, then. The kings of Silicon Valley think it's going to be far more capable than that.

If you are right, all this bluster about copyright is just that -- this is just a phase, and once it's proven (again) that AI can't do it, and never could, we'll all have a good laugh at ourselves for being so silly.

"Abusive" is exactly the right word. Employees who had been there since the beginning of the company were coming into my office talking about how hostile the workplace had become since a few of the newer hires. I watched the dynamics, and, sure as heck, they were causing problems. This was before all the pronouns and stuff. Can't really imagine how bad that got. But you are right. That's not happening here. Not sure where you got the impression I said it was...?

[Thorfinn]

7 hours ago, cosmobeau said:

People are already telling OP that AI isn't programmed to make AI art for texture packs. And using AI to make EVERYTHING on its own will always include plagerism.

Weirdly enough, at the outset, I was pretty sure it was not up to the task. And obviously it will be plagiarism if you define that sufficiently broadly. Is a bar band doing a cover "plagiarism"? Used to be that didn't bother anyone. Now if a computer is told to make a cover, even if it does a crappy job, people run around like their hair is on fire. People who should know better, since there's no real risk of AI ever being serious competition...

7 hours ago, cosmobeau said:

Same OP criticized me for criticizing a originally made game, using its own original game engine, turns around, and asks how to make texture packs with AI. Staggeringgg

I'll have to go back and reread that thread. Not sure what you are talking about. Give me a hint what I'm looking for. Something about Hytale's art style, I'm guessing?

[Koobze]

This is a great topic and definitely bigger than this game/this forum. I am also a developer, and I love programming - have been programming since I was ~12 and now I am in my 40s. I also enjoy making art and also music. I find it pretty funny that it is artists and musicians who are the most up in arms about the plagiarism aspect. If I draw a circle and AI auto-fills a face, it's plagiarism, but if I write a function definition and the AI fills it for me, it's absolutely fine? I have written a ton of really cool code, and consider programming to be an art form full of flexibility to express creativity, exactly like art and music. 

I use AI code assist for most of my programming nowadays. Writing code is fun for about 20% of the work, but the remaining 80% is very dumb work that I am extremely happy AI can offload for me. For sure the AI can only do that because it has read through a ton of code and can copy it with slight tweaks to suit my needs, but because of "open source" being a thing that encourages copying and modifying code, it is socially acceptable even though it is clearly removing many jobs and greatly impacting entry-level programmer jobs.

On the other hand art and music - which I would argue are careers with the lowest bars for entry - are sacred and as soon as AI starts chopping those jobs we need regulations and restrictions etc. 

Personally, I never looked at art or music as a way to make a living, it was purely a way of expressing my creativity, and that's also why I started programming - so for me having AI to do 80% of art/music/code to let me focus on the parts that I enjoy is absolutely fine.

[Thorfinn]

8 hours ago, cosmobeau said:

Same OP criticized me for criticizing a originally made game, using its own original game engine, turns around, and asks how to make texture packs with AI. Staggeringgg

Nope. No idea what you are talking about. I went back and reviewed the two Hytale threads, and didn't even find your reply, let alone my response to it.