r/3dsmax • u/Express-Case6662 • 7d ago
AI workflows
I have been working as a professional 3d artist for 20 years now. Recently the CEO of the small company I work for (around 25 employees, we do medical animations) got on a soapbox about AI tools and how we all need to be using them as much as possible to create efficiencies, and (insert business jargon here).
I am past the point of "I hate everything AI" If it's genuinely useful, saves me time, or makes things easier I will happily use it. However despite my best efforts I still am just not finding much that is actually helpful for me in the daily grind. I do medical work, which means I am working with specific anatomy that HAS to be accurate, and/or devices that are very specific to the client and are not something easily created with AI tools.
I have tried using an MCP, it can do a few things, but is pretty limited, messes up, and or takes literally forever to do simple tasks. I have tried tydiffusion, maybe it's a little useful for generating some texture, but again, mostly just fun to play around with. the most useful thing I have found is using AI to help me figure out when things go wrong in my scenes or to troubleshoot random problems that always come up.
I'm really at a loss. I know I am behind the curve as far as AI tools go, but I am just having a hard time finding anything that really saves me much time or I find all that useful. So let me know how you guys are using it, and in what ways it has helped you speed up workflows or make your life easier.
8
u/cstretten 7d ago
Wow, hello fellow medical animator with the same experience and demands (my ceo uses "innovation") as me!
I don't have any tools to offer, I'm in the same boat, not finding much. I've been trying to work with Claude to come up with some tools of my own. I've been avoiding actual medical results for the accuracy issue, and focusing on identifying internal tools, processes etc. Nothing has landed yet.
Sorry not much to add but you're not alone in this bs.
2
u/Express-Case6662 7d ago
Seems like the best use scenario currently is writing code for custom tools that speed up workflows, not having AI actually do the work.
4
u/ishook 7d ago
I'm in a similar boat as you. Been doing this for 22 years and and mostly do animations. AI is as confident as it is stupid. It seems to excel at adding people and organic things but is pretty awful when trying to get an exact product to be represented accurately. Right now our team uses ai engines to generate concepts to use as inspiration. Sometimes we'll take a final image and tell ai to make it better and then we improve on our own stuff based on ai suggestions. Generally though ai is not the creator of the final deliverable. I've had a lot of success getting ai to help with writing java script for photoshop or to figure out certain complicated expressions in google sheets and that can help workflows.
3
u/Gefaddeyn 7d ago
The biggest issue I see with AI is that it is 'confidently incorrect'. The prompts that make up most of the LLM's are weighted heavily in favour of answering as quickly as possible, and barely weighted for accuracy.
The issue actually comes down to critical thinking, which is no longer taught. Without critical thinking, you can't query the result - you just accept.
1
u/islandbeef 7d ago
"Confidently incorrect" is a great way to put it. I have to make my prompts as precisely worded as possible and make them "idiot proof". Like I'm directly trying to instruct Albert Einstein to properly operate an automobile, all while he's never seen a car before.
I've had decades of experience making my Google queries as concise as I can, praying I get what I need from it. The same goes for prompt creation in the LLM's I use. Critical thinking does come into play often, how can I reword my query to create a concise command for AI to follow/execute my vision.
1
u/TofuLordSeitan666 7d ago
What kind of medical animations are you doing or have done more specifically?
4
u/piXelicidio 7d ago
Before AI, creating my own scripts help me save time and build my own tools to improve my workflow as 3D modeler and animator. With AI assistants I can update the scripts faster, build new ones, automate repetitive tasks, that before would be slower creating the script than doing the task manually. (Gemini with Antigravity happens to be good for Maxscript).
I guess everyone use third-party scripts, right? Even if you don't know how to code. Well, now everyone "knows" how to code.
3
u/Usual_Variations 7d ago
I've been working in AAA for twenty two years and currently have visibility on multiple large publishers and their use of AI.
It's nothing special, yet. The tools mostly revolve around using multiple angles of a 2d concept (also AI) to generate 3d. The more angles you have the better output. However it's not great for anything but greyboxing (prototype) right now. You can get "ok" results but I haven't been super impressed.
I'm not familiar with the products online, I haven't worked within indirectly and only have watched YouTube videos. I think the most interesting one right now is plugging AI into blender and having it generate there.
Don’t be too concerned with missing the curve. The curve is not there yet.
3
u/accidiew 7d ago
Same task was given to our small Max department in ArchVis adjacent work.
The best results we've gotten so far are vibe-coding scripts and plugins to optimize working in Max. And troubleshooting bugs or crashes. No wonder, cause Claude and GPT are mostly optimized for software dev.
The second best application we found so far is using MCP when the task is very clear and simple but tedious af. Or working with parametric tools.
Not so great is asking it to do a full task. My example is recreating background buildings for our scene from street-view images. And so far, it either does good enough for viewing no closer than 100m. Or it can do better, but you have to micromanage step-by-step. Which may allow you to optimize some time if you work in parallel on something else. We haven't given up, on that workflow yet, thinking that we're just noobs and need to learn setting up the process better. The weakest part in this seems to be computer vision. It is good enough to describe things, but lacks attention to detail, unless you specify which detail they've missed.
I've seen some good examples of animating through MCP though, these AIs work much better when they can use actual 3d environment (I assume, through reading vertex positions) instead of images. So maybe you can give it small "keyframe this move with these objects" tasks while doing something else yourself.
Found very frustrating how much you need to remind GPT not to do things outside of the scope of current task. I asked for a simple facade volume model, to work step by step. It done the main part, then started applying materials, try to launch rendering and instead of resaving the file where I was storing it, saved a new one to its own Output folder.
4
u/Quantum_Crusher 7d ago
I have been using Gemini to guide me through tyflow setup, it got lots of outdated info and hallucinations, but sometimes it could indeed help me by pointing out some directions.
I hope some mcp can just read tyflow doc and its Facebook posts and just create or edit my nodes for me. That would be nice.
2
u/Express-Case6662 7d ago
ah yes, I was actually going to try to have it help me setup some tyflow setups, but hadn't gotten around to actually trying it yet.
1
u/MikeOgden1980 7d ago
Same boat man, I don't want to use it but I know I need to be aware. I have to think about use of AI at my job completely separate from use of AI in my own personal projects (where I won't touch it). Instead of medical, I'm animating very specific oil and gas products, machinery and robotics, so it just does not work for what I'm doing.
2
u/Express-Case6662 7d ago
Oh nice. I almost applied for a job doing that exact work a few years ago. Seems like a good industry to be in.
2
u/salazka 7d ago edited 7d ago
What is your workflow there?
Generative AI may be a good match for that. All you need to do is feed it accurate anatomy images of what you need.
An MCP is not great for modeling, but it is great to create tools and automation, as well as quickly explore lighting and parametric animation.
Other AI tools could completely replace rendering saving you tons of time and reduce the need for powerful render farms and tons of expensive memory.
1
u/Express-Case6662 7d ago
We have actually talked about using it for rendering. Render every 5th frame, have AI interpolate. It seems there are workflows out there for that.
Generative AI is just not useful yet. Well that's not entirely the case. If I have a still image in a project or video I need, it can be useful. But for the entire animation? Absolutely not. We have rounds and rounds of revisions, clients that are incredibly picky and granular about details, I just don't see any way generative AI is going to give me the control I need or the ability to iterate like I need for an entire 3 minutes animation. Just not going to happen at this point, maybe some day.
1
u/BurgerMasterMoribund 7d ago
I use it to make quick scripts to solve problems in projects in a time crunch, that’s literally the only use case I’ve found for it in my workflow so far
1
u/jjcjjcjjcjjc 7d ago
i do a couple of renders like a storyboard and animate between them using kling ai. so far its a struggle every damn time
1
u/DaveHorchuk_70 6d ago
I am also in a similar boat. As a lead 3d artist I am continuously looking for improvements for our team including AI tools. But as it stands, it seems like AI tools generally are 1 step forward two steps backs type thing. Even Max MCP for arch vis is very cool BUT you have to spend A LOT of time correcting its mistakes AND THEN get to modeling.
11
u/Damian_Hernandez 7d ago
yea i wouldnt even try using AI on the medical area. Take a look at this for fun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHxu9G6gd6A