Render Discussion Thread

[benjirino]

Oh dope, they all look great. Amazing work!

[EdJames]

17 minutes ago, benjirino said:

Celeste Moon, El Avatar, and Electric Dreamer all look a bit more like paintings than the others in the game. Hexx just looks like he has the weirdest proportions and looks cartoonish. Of the roster I've got (81 workers), that's four that look off, that's a bloody good ratio, less than 5% looking off, and none look actually bad, they just don't match the style of the rest.

Hex and his tag partner were difficult ones to do because of their masks. The latest update should make a rework of those MUCH, MUCH easier.

[benjirino]

33 minutes ago, EdJames said:

Hex and his tag partner were difficult ones to do because of their masks. The latest update should make a rework of those MUCH, MUCH easier.

I'm just going to pretend he wears the mask because of his odd proportions 😅

[Rainmaker]

As an artist myself, I absolutely despise the change and my beliefs more align with @Shaman_at-Dawn, @Chikbot and especially @Pteroid. Whatever people choose to do recreationally is fine by me as long as it's not breaking any laws or hurting anyone directly but the fact of the matter is that TEW is a product and GDS are a company, regardless of how tightlyknit we are as a community and how fantastic Adam and the team are, at the end of the day he is selling us something. Thusly the usage of AI (whilst understandable from a budget and convenience standpoint) stands as an endorsement of something that has and continues to hurt many people in the very same field that TEW is in, regardless of intent.

Whilst I believe there is 0 malice with the switch to the AI images, I do find the choice to be negligent, naive and above all dissapointing. As if the last two decades of artistic contributions from the community mean nothing in the face of this new one click to produce solve all solution. I know there are many great creators within the community who will still aspire to create the classic renders and bring us many more of their fantastic works but I would be lying if I would not mention the blatant observation that ever since A.I. got it's hooks into this community, the voice and output of the original works side of the community has been far more reduced and buried under the endless tide of the lifeless machine. I don't want to shame anyone for enjoying it but I'd like them to understand it's not an enjoyment without sacrifice.

Edited July 28 by Rainmaker

[DJAPoster]

I don't hate the AI renders, but I'm very much not a fan of the cropped style that was chosen for the .GIFS pack. It makes it a chore to make another company logo and specialized stable logos with a border. How arduous of a task would it be to remove the backgrounds to have a proper gif pack?

[EdJames]

8 minutes ago, DJAPoster said:

I don't hate the AI renders, but I'm very much not a fan of the cropped style that was chosen for the .GIFS pack. It makes it a chore to make another company logo and specialized stable logos with a border. How arduous of a task would it be to remove the backgrounds to have a proper gif pack?

Working on it.

[Peria]

I enjoy the AI artwork... just not this style. I do not own Midjourney, and I guess we go back to a few purchases being required, which is cool, I'm not going to gatekeep because I got left out because I'm too frugal to make a purchase. About the AI vs DAZ, I think as long as the AI isn't being sold to us, it is fine, right? I agree with most of Rainmaker, but I enjoy the usage of AI Art, especially as it was something anyone could kind of do and learn and it made the AI Thread pretty active between a few of us tackling on various projects.

[Irish Wolf]

I get that this is a small basically indy game but AI generators are fed artists work, without their permission thus 'stealing' from these artists without consent. This on top of taking jobs from artists it is a moral dilemma for some including myself.

 

If some one was making them for personal use like making their own for a diary thats ok. But when you are using this for a paid product thats we're you get into murky territory. I've seen this in other industies like when Hasbro announced they were going to use AI art in their D&D products and the community turned on them so much they rolled back their statement, and a lot of smaller RPG publishers went out of the way to promote they would not be using AI art.

 

If the game was released with the original art and then an AI art pack was released for free I think less people would be upset about it but again tying AI art to a paid product is a problem.

 

Aside from that im just personally not a fan of the aesthetic of the AI renders. They dont work for me. They for the most part seem lifeless. There is little to no personality in the faces. So even if i didnt have an ethical problem with AI art, I still just really dislike the way they look.

[Keyser2.0]

I lost interest in the game until the new batch of renders using AI came to town (people like Waltersobchack, ScottZodiac and so on).  The new "realistic" renders seems to me ugly and with low interest (I understand that behind there is a lot of work and I appreciate it but I don't like it). Anyway with the AI old renders I can make improve the experience for me, so I have no problem anyway.

[Callum07]

I like the idea of using AI art for worker pictures. There is a hugely succesful thread for TEW 2020 and in that thread the general consensus was that people preferred a 3d render AI style rather than photo realistic, Im wondering if it was the artists choice or part of the design brief @EdJames

[EdJames]

45 minutes ago, Callum07 said:

I like the idea of using AI art for worker pictures. There is a hugely succesful thread for TEW 2020 and in that thread the general consensus was that people preferred a 3d render AI style rather than photo realistic, Im wondering if it was the artists choice or part of the design brief @EdJames

It was simply the preference I had when building out my own pic pack back in 2023 - I wanted a game world for me that was full of real people who matched the stats in the game and who felt like real people and not over-the-top caricatures.

As such, there was no brief, simply a request to use the work I’d already done and previously shared on the forums for the forthcoming game. This whole picture pack was already done before Adam and I even spoke, which repositions the whole conversation ‘a little’ because the work had already been done as a community project for personal use rather than being created specifically to sell TEW IX. 

[Shianne_EB]

I am an artist. I began making renders because of my love for TEW, and more importantly the Cornellverse. I've invested so much time, money and effort into perfecting my style and bringing an aesthetic to my work that sets it apart from others, as have all of the other fantastic artists on these boards. I did it because I love TEW, and I perhaps maybe selfishly thought that "Hey, maybe if there's a new game - Adam might take a couple of my renders and use 'em somewhere. All he'd have to do is ask. That'd be pretty hecking cool, wouldn't it?" 

All said, I do not mind when people use AI artwork for their own private, recreational fun. 

But I do mind when it's sold to me as part of the game that I started this entire side gig over, and when the original pack isn't even included in the install, I've got to look around for it. 

I've avoided poking around in the debates because in my mind it has been a battle that was lost ages ago. But reading @Rainmaker's post hit me a bit, because it's a really accurate take. I have felt drowned out, and I'm sure I'm not the only artist who has. It's hard to keep up with a machine that spits out hundreds of images a day when I manually sculpt and pose every render to my own standards, and it's demoralizing when the machine wins out and receives all the attention over the work I and other artists are doing. Where the re-render threads used to bustle with activity and feedback, they're now ghost towns... and yeah, that's upsetting to see. 

-

 

Also, for those who are complaining about how dated the CVBlue renders looked, and whatever else - are you not the same people who are telling us now that we can just "switch the picture pack back," if we so desire? In that case, with that mindset, why didn't you? Re-renders for nearly every character in the database have existed for ages, so acting like the 20 year old renders from TEW2005 that are in the game because they are ADAM'S choice for the default are the only images that exist, the argument falls a bit flat. 

You are telling us that we can change our pic pack whilst ignoring the fact that you could have too, and likely did, if it bothered you that much in the past. There have always been other options, and a plethora of them. 

-

The problem now isn't that the AI exists. It was fine before even if we had gripes about it because it was an option, something that people went out of their way to create and find and put in their personal games. What's not fine is that it has replaced two decades worth of real artwork that has been contributed to the game by loyal render artists who love it and is now part of the paid game's experience. That's what is not okay, and what I wish Adam or whomever else (if anyone) involved in the decision would've taken into consideration before taking the plunge. 

 

-

 

Apologies all for a long rant, I've been stewing. This is not aimed to be an attack on anyone either, so I do hope nobody takes it as such. Just my stance, opinions and thoughts as an artist who is passionate about this game and its universe. 

#KeithVegasIsTheBestCVCharacter

[alpha2117]

3 hours ago, Irish Wolf said:

I get that this is a small basically indy game but AI generators are fed artists work, without their permission thus 'stealing' from these artists without consent. This on top of taking jobs from artists it is a moral dilemma for some including myself.

 

If some one was making them for personal use like making their own for a diary thats ok. But when you are using this for a paid product thats we're you get into murky territory. I've seen this in other industies like when Hasbro announced they were going to use AI art in their D&D products and the community turned on them so much they rolled back their statement, and a lot of smaller RPG publishers went out of the way to promote they would not be using AI art.

 

If the game was released with the original art and then an AI art pack was released for free I think less people would be upset about it but again tying AI art to a paid product is a problem.

 

Aside from that im just personally not a fan of the aesthetic of the AI renders. They dont work for me. They for the most part seem lifeless. There is little to no personality in the faces. So even if i didnt have an ethical problem with AI art, I still just really dislike the way they look.

The thing people don't quite understand is when you say the AI generators are fed artists work, that's true but the same is true with every artist.  Everyone learns and is influenced by what they see, AI is the same.  If the AI straight out replicates an artists work that's an issue but looking at things to understand what things look like is just the way both humans and machines learn.  People tend to ignore the fact humans learn in the same basic way as the AI.

I am not a huge fan of AI as I believe its too unregulated and that can lead to issues with its widespread use.  In a case like this with it being used in a small indie game I totally understand and don't think its doing any harm.  The sheer numbers of pics makes it a task to use rendering programs for each one and in previous versions led to a lot of generic looking workers. As for expressions the person who did them has stated many times that the default is a neutral expression as it allows people to use the characters however they like but that there are tools available to adjust stuff like that if people really want.  Additional rerenders are being done.

 

 

 

 

[Astil]

I made a lot of my points before but to add to it again:

 - AI Art ethically trained is fine. That was not used here.

 - Midjourney has stolen art. Not in the way of they scrapped data available free online but they took art that is commercially available and used it without paying and without permission.

 - Midjourney leaders taught volunteers how to make it look like they were not stealing art meaning they had knowledge what they where doing was wrong and continued anyway.

 - Using Midjourney alone is highly unethical.

 - IF Midjourney was paid for that also is surprising given to my knowledge prior renders were donated.

 - Also many AI images appear that the CVerse image was used as a base. Were the original render artists contacted and was permission requested? Donation of an image for a specific purpose is not a free pass to do whatever with it going forward.

And my personal opinion: 

Some of the images are pretty good but enough have extremely noticeable issues and are not in a cartoon style like a 3D render where it can be waved away. Call it uncanny valley if you want. More realistic means I notice quicker if a mask is patched with skin, the bandana is off or the hair is wildly incorrect. Also I dont see the consistency that was stated would be there. These are pretty different is terms of color, background, shading etc. Especially the shading where darkness seems like it was used to mask issues on some of the harder images to make.

[Irish Wolf]

11 minutes ago, alpha2117 said:

The thing people don't quite understand is when you say the AI generators are fed artists work, that's true but the same is true with every artist.  Everyone learns and is influenced by what they see, AI is the same.  If the AI straight out replicates an artists work that's an issue but looking at things to understand what things look like is just the way both humans and machines learn.  People tend to ignore the fact humans learn in the same basic way as the AI.

I am not a huge fan of AI as I believe its too unregulated and that can lead to issues with its widespread use.  In a case like this with it being used in a small indie game I totally understand and don't think its doing any harm.  The sheer numbers of pics makes it a task to use rendering programs for each one and in previous versions led to a lot of generic looking workers. As for expressions the person who did them has stated many times that the default is a neutral expression as it allows people to use the characters however they like but that there are tools available to adjust stuff like that if people really want.  Additional rerenders are being done.

 

 

 

 

A person seeing soneone's artwork and being influenced by it as absolutely not the same as a machine using some ones artwork and using an algorythm to pump out art in the style of. And again these machines are fed this artwork without the consent of the artist so that people can make money without having to pay artists. Im artistically inept i coukd never create what some if the renders did so for personal use i might consider using AI. But using AI for a paid product not a good look and even a cursory look at the debate over AI art in paid products would have told any company the problems using it.

[newbiezness]

3 hours ago, Keyser2.0 said:

The new "realistic" renders seems to me ugly and with low interest (I understand that behind there is a lot of work and I appreciate it but I don't like it).

4 hours ago, Peria said:

I enjoy the AI artwork... just not this style. 

1 hour ago, Callum07 said:

I like the idea of using AI art for worker pictures. There is a hugely succesful thread for TEW 2020 and in that thread the general consensus was that people preferred a 3d render AI style rather than photo realistic

4 hours ago, Irish Wolf said:

I Aside from that im just personally not a fan of the aesthetic of the AI renders. They dont work for me. They for the most part seem lifeless. There is little to no personality in the faces. So even if i didnt have an ethical problem with AI art, I still just really dislike the way they look.

This.

51 minutes ago, EdJames said:

As such, there was no brief, simply a request to use the work I’d already done and previously shared on the forums for the forthcoming game.

It was so easy. It was just a matter of asking the community. I am not talking about using AI (maybe that could have been asked too but that's a different topic that I don't know enough about). It was as simple as asking the community: Do you prefer the old style, a cartoonish AI style or a realistic AI style?

It was so easy!

[Astil]

18 minutes ago, alpha2117 said:

The thing people don't quite understand is when you say the AI generators are fed artists work, that's true but the same is true with every artist.  Everyone learns and is influenced by what they see, AI is the same.  If the AI straight out replicates an artists work that's an issue but looking at things to understand what things look like is just the way both humans and machines learn.  People tend to ignore the fact humans learn in the same basic way as the AI.

I am not a huge fan of AI as I believe its too unregulated and that can lead to issues with its widespread use.  In a case like this with it being used in a small indie game I totally understand and don't think its doing any harm.  The sheer numbers of pics makes it a task to use rendering programs for each one and in previous versions led to a lot of generic looking workers. As for expressions the person who did them has stated many times that the default is a neutral expression as it allows people to use the characters however they like but that there are tools available to adjust stuff like that if people really want.  Additional rerenders are being done.

 

 

 

 

A) Humans have morals. This is so catastrophically important in learning that I bristle at  the term machine learning for that reason.

B) Humans iterate, machines replicate sometimes to the point of copying.

C) Looking at other art is a part of the human learning process. It is the entirety of the AI process. People who do art in exactly the same style as another are not called artists. They are called criminals for plagiary.

D) AI art is not influenced by what it sees. It recreates it again and again until the user is satisfied. 

E) I've seen this go around a lot and as someone who dabbled in machine learning for coding and dabbled in art comparing the two is just not factual. I don't think its a malicious argument to be clear just false. 

[EdJames]

Just now, newbiezness said:

This.

It was so easy. It was just a matter of asking the community. I am not talking about using AI (maybe that could have been asked too but that's a different topic that I don't know enough about). It was as simple as asking the community: Do you prefer the old style, a cartoonish AI style or a realistic AI style?

It was so easy!

The other art style wasn’t an option as far as I’m aware because nobody has committed to getting the entire database done. If someone had, there may have been a conversation to be had. The beauty of TEW is though that is Walter or someone else gets it done, you guys can use that instead. Same with the old renders - we can all choose which we prefer with a simple copy->paste. 
 

This wasn’t commissioned. I did it for me. By the time Adam asked to use it, it was already complete and available. 

Also bear in my that there are plenty of people on this thread who DO like the ultra realistic style 🤷🏻

[Irish Wolf]

4 minutes ago, EdJames said:

The beauty of TEW is though that is Walter or someone else gets it done, you guys can use that instead. Same with the old renders - we can all choose which we prefer with a simple copy->paste. 
 

This here is actually what bothers me most. This statement is absolutely true. But with that it goes the other way. Even peeking into the ethical issues of using AI art for a product people are going for pay for, Adam and the developers at Greydog could have used the old non-Ai renders for the base game and then released an AI art pack as a free download that you could choose to use. So no instead of chosing to use AI art or not people are choosing whether to buy the game or not because of the AI art.

[Astil]

9 minutes ago, EdJames said:

The other art style wasn’t an option as far as I’m aware because nobody has committed to getting the entire database done. If someone had, there may have been a conversation to be had. The beauty of TEW is though that is Walter or someone else gets it done, you guys can use that instead. Same with the old renders - we can all choose which we prefer with a simple copy->paste. 
 

This wasn’t commissioned. I did it for me. By the time Adam asked to use it, it was already complete and available. 

Also bear in my that there are plenty of people on this thread who DO like the ultra realistic style 🤷🏻

So GDS did not pay in any way for this AI art?

[newbiezness]

17 minutes ago, EdJames said:

This wasn’t commissioned. I did it for me. By the time Adam asked to use it, it was already complete and available. 

Also bear in my that there are plenty of people on this thread who DO like the ultra realistic style 🤷🏻

I'll begin replying to this first.

1) I'm in any way questioning you or criticizing you as an artist, contributor, etc. All I said was aimed at the game developers. 

2) I know there are people who DO like the ultra realistic style as well as you know that there are people who DON'T. That's why I said the developers should have asked the community.

3) Of course you can change the pictures. I've already said in another post in this thread that if I decide to buy the new game that's the first thing that I'd do. But the style of the default pictures is important because they set the standard and as someone who writes and reads diaries here and that represents an important part of my interest in the game (probably the same level of interest that pictures represent to you) I'd like to maintain the default style we had or at least another one much closer to it... and I'm not alone.

17 minutes ago, EdJames said:

The other art style wasn’t an option as far as I’m aware because nobody has committed to getting the entire database done. If someone had, there may have been a conversation to be had. The beauty of TEW is though that is Walter or someone else gets it done, you guys can use that instead. Same with the old renders - we can all choose which we prefer with a simple copy->paste. 

Some people have already told me this. This isn't true. They could have kept the old pictures and only create new ones for the new workers (that aren't as much as I expected by the way). They could have asked more than one person to do the work. Just to mention some possibilities, there are other creative ways to solve this. There were plenty of options.

Edited July 28 by newbiezness

[EdJames]

5 minutes ago, newbiezness said:

7 minutes ago, newbiezness said:

I'll begin replying to this first.

1) I'm in any way questioning you or criticizing you as an artist, contributor, etc. All I said was aimed at the game developers. 

2) I know there are people who DO like the ultra realistic style as well as you know that there are people who DON'T. That's why I said the developers should have asked the community.

3) Of course you can change the pictures. I've already said in another post in this thread that if I decide to buy the new game that's the first thing that I'd do. But the style of the default pictures is important because they set the standard and as someone who writes and reads diaries here and that represents an important part of my interest in the game (probably the same level of interest that pictures represent to you) I'd like to have a different default style... and I'm not alone.

Some people have already told me this. This isn't true. They could have kept the old pictures and only create new ones for the new workers (that aren't as much as I expected by the way). They could have asked more than one person to do the work. Just to mention some possibilities, there are other creative ways to solve this. There were plenty of options.

Re: 4, I’m talking about having a universe in a single, consistent art style, which is what the community have been asking for as long as I can remember.

[Crym]

While still mostly against AI art, I'm definitely more okay with the realistic look used in the new renders than if they were done in a cartoon/anime style. Replicating an artist's style using AI to generate art is something I'm heavily against and it would have been a dealbreaker for me in playing TEW IX. The realistic renders, well, while still morally grey aren't as bad, in my opinion, as training AI to replicate drawings as is applied on the internet. There's plenty of royalty free photos of real people on the internet to train an AI model without having to resort to stealing photos off of people's Facebook. And well, it does it's job in creating an unified look. I'd have preferred if they were an unified 2D or 3D look, like the Thunderverse, but I know it might not be feasible on a commercial scale.

But goddamn, the first batch of masked workers had some rough looking ones. Tigre Salvage Jr in particular looks like he's wearing a helmet with facepaint. I hope the new batch of masks looks better

Edited July 29 by Crym

[alpha2117]

1 hour ago, newbiezness said:

This.

It was so easy. It was just a matter of asking the community. I am not talking about using AI (maybe that could have been asked too but that's a different topic that I don't know enough about). It was as simple as asking the community: Do you prefer the old style, a cartoonish AI style or a realistic AI style?

It was so easy!

Is it though?  Different people like different styles and I don't know if we would ever get a consensus.  The good thing with this product is its easy enough to import different graphical stuff to alter it to suit your own preferences which is actually pretty rare in most games.  

With this we get a default, we get the option of backwards compatible from previous versions, new realistic, traditional style rerenders, comic book style,  real world pics or multiple other choices.

I am ambivalent about AI and have concerns over its widespread use but in a small India game like this I get why its being done and am just thankful we all get the option to customise the game so we can get the look we most enjoy.

[The Masked Orange]

I've been avoiding getting involved in this debate for various reasons but I'll add something only because I don't think I've seen it brought up yet in either the release of pre-release threads.

 

TEW9 is a solo-developed game. That, to me at least, means that the C-Verse is entirely Adam's creative property. Again, this is just as I see it, but the solo creator of an artistic endeavour should have a greater right to control how they achieve the art they want to achieve. Sure, we're not about to hang the C-Verse up in the Louvre, and the C-Verse is packaged as part of a somewhat distinct commercial product (I think TEW is released knowing enough people will only play RW mods that it's not a package deal like Return of the Obra Dinn), but it's Adam's baby. I begrudge a big company, like Hasbro, using ai in this way because it is just about eliminating artists. Even for a smallish indie developer, I wouldn't be thrilled about it. That's still a team gig, and the creativity is a team effort, and you've just pruned that team of an employee or a freelancer and replaced an artist with a program. But I personally feel like I have to give Adam the benefit of the doubt because this could genuinely be a better realisation of Adam's 'artistic vision' than what was achieved previously. I'd have to do the same if he replaced all the images with stick people drawn on napkins. Aesthetically, I'd hate it and I'd be in the mods forum getting renders I like for a game I loved, and if that's where you are here I get it. Morally, I can't tell someone how to art.

I remember playing TEW on my laptop in 2014 and a friend of mine laughing out loud upon seeing the default renders on this pokey little text-based game I was playing. I imagine the increased consistency and professionalism is something Adam's desired for a long time but not had obvious resources with which to achieve until now. I'd be curious to see how CBU would have been designed visually if it were made on this side of the ai 'boom'.

I do get that there is some grey area because so much community work ended up being used in the C-Verse that you could argue it was not a 'solo' project from that point on. I mean, none of the company logos have exactly been rushed to be replaced with ai alternatives have they? They're all still community content from as best as I can remember. I don't think I'm putting forward a perfect argument and I'm not trying to. This is just how I feel.

I'm not an artist but I do work in a creative industry. I am not so much bothered by the existence of ai than its cynical implementation by certain humans and the typical 'move fast and break things' approach from tech companies over legally protected works being added to 'the pile'. I'm also pretty pissed (but unsurprised) at western governments for failing to reform law, regulation and legal process to be able to better protect artists and creative industries despite having a huge amount of notice that it was necessary even before the 'boom'. It does make me feel a little better that Midway appears to only be involved as the program of choice from a community member (whose community work I appreciate) rather than a GDS corporate decision.

I spent many years on these forums going through the rerender and alt threads looking for better and more appropriate pictures for my personal games and I cannot thank enough the dozens of people whose labour and craft I took enjoyment from. Like many people on this thread, for me the C-Verse modders have been the beating heart of the community for a long time. I even gave DAZ a whirl for a while back in the day before deciding my talents lay elsewhere. But I do also remember being committed to starting a C-Verse India playthrough last year and having to spend three days worth of free time trawling through old and unorganised render threads looking for enough viable 'free pictures' to allow the game to generate enough workers to make the thing actually doable. It's not great when I'm there looking at a render for a Hispanic man trying to decide if I can trick myself into believing he could be Indian because it's the closest thing I've seen in ten pages. That's not a knock on the artists, go where the art takes you, it's probably just another weary indicator that a tool like ai is going to be too convenient for a solo creator to not utilise when the alternative is an incomplete or unrealised project. I feel weird saying it, and there are still some lumps and bumps, but the TEW9 pictures are a realised project. It's the first time the visual style of TEW hasn't been patchwork and placeholder-y in my history with the game and it's hard for me to deny a solo creator/artist the right to try and achieve that. Again, Adam's no auteur and this isn't high art, but I do feel like my red lines are drawn differently to where I would draw them for projects with multiple creative inputs. I'm going to start TEW9 trying out these new ai images and seeing how I feel. Hope this has been interesting to someone in the middle of all this messiness.