Disclosure about the usage of AI

Hello!

This is a little disclosure about the usage of artificial intelligence found in this project.

A TL;DR will be at the end of this section!

The year is 2023 and this was my third project and the first 3D game at that, where I also wanted to include texture work. The usage of AI was still in its very rough and early early stages where no one really saw any more in it than crappy generated images.  It was interesting to test how you can use it in ways that were new and exciting, which I wanted to try. I used a lot of techniques in the making of the textures for SUBordinary, for example the credited source of CC0Textures, which are still very lovely. I also made some entirely by myself, like the store shelves I made from photos I took and then of course: 3 AI generated textures.

I wanted to test the capabilities with these in 3 ways. 

A repetetive texture, which I used for the trypophobia textures. I generated many holes on a square and then edited it with colors, seams, a custom normal map and made it as good as I can. I think it turned out okay, yet I would try to do one myself nowadays to see if I can replicate the unnerving nature of small irregular holes.

A vague texture of a spooky face, resembling these creepypasta images, where I did not trusted myself at that time to achieve a drawing good enough. It is relatively trash and I would want to replace it with something better.

And a more defined texture, which resulted in the control panel in one of the rooms. This one is ugly as hell and I want to replace it properly since a while. It is very smearly and encapsulates the state at which AI was at the time of making the game. It has been a year or more where I actively want to sit down and make an update to this game but sadly I just could not find the time, which is why I wanted to hold on with writing this post. This is not me saying I won't do it anymore, but I think if I start to "own" it that this stuff looks terrible, I might want to replace it soon. 

And to the question "why not just use something from CC0 archives, when you already used CC0 licensed textures" 

It was a mix of 80% "being afraid of legal reasons, because I did not read enough fine prints and then I use a texture, which is not free to use and then someone wants to sue my butt" and 20% "I want unique things in my unique game, even if I already use free usage textures as bases"

I was a very easy to scare dev when the page did not outright say "you can use it as you wish" 

The years have past and we are closing to the next one and the rise of AI is terrifying. It won't go away probably but I hope we finally reach a point, where this nonsense starts to get regulated and we stop exploiting artists of their work and people start to see the unhealthy slop it produces and how it does not give any value whatsoever. 

TL;DR

I used AI to try things out and learn what I want to do and what not to do. It was a huge fun working on this project and trying ways out to create assets, but the usage of AI would not be really something that could hold my visions, hence why I did not try to use it in future projects like Clerk.

All assets which are not the trypophobia, the spooky face or the control panel texture, are made or edited from real bases by me. This includes every other asset from my current 6 solo projects. 
 

Thank you for reading!

Draco