2 years ago
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Enlarge / "Sarah" from Virtua Fighter gets an AI makeover acknowledgment to Stable Diffusion and a instrumentality named Colin Williamson.
In 1993, Sega's Virtual Fighter arcade crippled broke caller crushed with afloat 3D polygonal graphics, a archetypal for a warring game. Thanks to a Twitter thread from an creator named Colin Williamson, we tin instrumentality a look astatine what those archetypal boxy characters mightiness look similar with their angles smoothed out.
To make the images, Williamson took vintage Virtua Fighter crippled graphics and fed them done an "img2img" mode of the Stable Diffusion representation synthesis model, which takes an input representation arsenic a prompt, combines it with a written description, and synthesizes an output image. (In particular, Williamson utilized the "AUTOMATIC1111" release, which comes with a bully web-based idiosyncratic interface.)
Stable Diffusion doesn't enactment magically, truthful it tin instrumentality immoderate proceedings and error, and a keen oculus to fig retired prompting to get worthwhile results. Still, Williamson enjoyed the process. "Just picture the character, and img2img does its best," Williamson told Ars. "Though the hardest portion was simply figuring retired however to picture the characters' clothes."
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"Akira" from 1993's Virtua Fighter gets an AI graphical boost from Colin Williamson
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"Jeffry" from Virtua Fighter gets smoothed retired by AI.
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"Wolf. Dude's ever had a slayer widow's highest and the AI isn't respecting that," says Williamson
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"Kage" from Virtua Fighter gets smoothed retired by AI.
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"Jacky. The algorithm truly isn't definite what to bash with spiky hair," says Williamson.
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"Lau" from Virtua Fighter gets smoothed retired by AI.
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"Pai" from Virtua Fighter gets smoothed retired by AI.
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The brag quality "Dural" from Virtua Fighter gets a shiny AI graphical redo.
"Once I recovered a bully prompt, I'd bash a batch of astir 50 and cherry-pick the funniest ones," adds Williamson. "I tried this happening called 'negative prompting,' wherever you archer the AI worldly similar 'please don't gully messed-up-looking hands,' which does a fantabulous occupation successful that present your characters person lone six fingers alternatively of seven."
Last month, we reported connected an MS-DOS crippled instrumentality that used a akin technique to "upgrade" EGA graphics into much elaborate representations. In some cases, we've recovered that the artists doing these AI makeovers are inactive fans of the archetypal graphics, and the remakes are each successful bully fun—not an effort to regenerate oregon overwrite history. After all, you tin spot however the Virtua Fighter characters look "smoothed out" successful later games.
"I'm blessed to basal connected the backs of giants and harness millions of dollars' worthy of AI probe to marque immoderate dumb pictures that marque radical laugh," says Williamson. "I request to occurrence up the Sega Saturn and spot what other I tin find."
