[HN Gopher] Point-E: Point cloud diffusion for 3D model synthesis
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       Point-E: Point cloud diffusion for 3D model synthesis
        
       Author : smusamashah
       Score  : 120 points
       Date   : 2022-12-20 11:15 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | acreatureofhab wrote:
       | This is bananas... the metaverse may be possible with tech like
       | this being available for the masses.
        
       | bilsbie wrote:
       | Can I 3d print this?
        
       | tarr11 wrote:
       | See also Magic3D from Nvidia, which generates mesh models.
       | 
       | https://deepimagination.cc/Magic3D/
        
       | dr_dshiv wrote:
       | Anyone else using Kaedim to translate 2d images to 3d models?
       | https://www.kaedim3d.com/
       | 
       | We made some midjourney lamps--and then printed them! Pretty
       | cool.
        
         | virtualritz wrote:
         | Looking at their prices and the (impressive) quality of the
         | mesh topology in the demo movie they have on their web page
         | (the rat) I couldn't help but think this a front that pretends
         | to use pure AI but actually has real people (specialized
         | mechanical turks) involved.
         | 
         | Specifically for guiding generation of the mesh from a possibly
         | AI-generated point cloud (PTC). E.g. using manual contraints on
         | an mostly automatic quad (re-)mesher ran as a post process on
         | the triangle soup obtained from meshing the original, AI-
         | generated PTC.
         | 
         | I.e.:
         | 
         | 1. AI-generate PTC from image(s).
         | 
         | 2. Auto-generate triangle mesh via marching cubes or whatever
         | from PTC.
         | 
         | 3. Quad re-mesh with mesh-guided automatic constraint discovery
         | (think edges, corners etc.).
         | 
         | 4. Manual edit quad-mesher constraints.
         | 
         | 5. Quad re-mesh.
         | 
         | That would explain their pricing which seems a tad too high for
         | a fully automatic solution. $600 for 30 models x 10 iterations.
         | I.e. each iteration would cost $2.
         | 
         | Or maybe it's just so niche this is simply because of number of
         | users for now and indeed fully automatic.
         | 
         | Curious to hear what other people involved in 3D and cloud
         | compute think.
        
         | punkspider wrote:
         | How long does it take to convert 2d to 3d?
         | 
         | I found out about Kaedim a few weeks ago and when I saw this
         | repo, it came to my mind as well.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       | https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.08751 (via
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34060986)
       | 
       | https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/20/openai-releases-point-e-an...
       | (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34069231)
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/drjimfan/status/1605175485897625602 (via
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34068271)
       | 
       | (but no meaningful comments at those other threads)
        
         | pavlov wrote:
         | Maybe the lack of commenter enthusiasm is because point clouds
         | are fairly specialized. Most people don't have interesting
         | point cloud data lying around to test this with, or the means
         | to capture such data.
         | 
         | 3D sensors are slowly but surely becoming more common. The
         | iPhone Pro series has one, and AR hardware designs tend to
         | include these capabilities. So this model synthesis seems a bit
         | ahead of the curve, in a good way.
        
           | JayStavis wrote:
           | Agree with you that point clouds aren't mainstream at all and
           | most people aren't sure what they'd use them for.
           | 
           | I think the premise of this is text-to-3D, and that because
           | it's quicker generations you don't really need anything
           | besides a GPU to start playing around with it.
        
           | uplifter wrote:
           | anyone with a recent (last five years) iphone or ipad has the
           | means to generate point cloud data using the depth sensors.
        
             | speedgoose wrote:
             | Do you have an app to recommend? And does it work well on
             | small objects? The apps I tried were not very impressive.
        
               | uplifter wrote:
               | Sorry I don't know any store apps for such, my only
               | experience is through personal corespondance/demos
               | with/by developers experimenting with the hardware
               | feature and sdk. Quick googling turns up some contenders
               | but I can't vouch for them:
               | 
               | https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/point-cloud-ar/id1435700044
               | 
               | https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/point-precise/id1629822901
        
           | 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
           | > Maybe the lack of commenter enthusiasm is because point
           | clouds are fairly specialized.
           | 
           | Please correct me if I am wrong.
           | 
           | The pointcloudtomesh notebook seems to be be able to output
           | something could be converted for 3d printing purposes.
           | 
           | I haven't yet attempted to do so, but that does seem like an
           | exciting and general purpose use case.
        
       | FloatArtifact wrote:
       | An alternate approach, although brewed force would be generating
       | an image set using prompts and then using photogrammetry to
       | convert to 3D. Either way, I'm excited for this space to grow
       | both in 3D prompt generation and alternate inputs through
       | scanning. There's a difference between creative and functional
       | use case.
        
       | cdcox wrote:
       | Web demo for anyone interested takes about 2 minutes to run:
       | https://huggingface.co/spaces/osanseviero/point-e
       | 
       | Seems super fast, some are saying 600x faster [0], than than the
       | version made off of Google's paper. But it is a little less
       | accurate. Point clouds are less useful but some on Reddit and the
       | authors have tools to try to convert to meshes [1][2]. It does
       | feel like stable diffusion level generation of good 3d assets is
       | right around the corner. It will be interesting to see which tech
       | wins out, whether it's some variant of depth estimation like sd2
       | and non ai tools can do, object spinning/multi angle view like
       | Google's tool does, or whatever this tool does.
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1605175485897625602?t=H_...
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/zqq1ha/ope...
       | 
       | [2]
       | https://github.com/openai/point-e/blob/main/point_e/examples...
        
         | numpad0 wrote:
         | > The main problem with mesh generation from stuff like this is
         | that usually the topology is a mess and needs a lot of cleanup
         | to be useuable. It's not quite so bad for static non deforming
         | objects but anything that needs to be animated deforming or
         | that is organic looking would likely need retopologizing by
         | hand. > > That's one of the worst parts of 3D modeling so it's
         | like you're getting the AI to do the fun part and leaving you
         | to do all the boring cleanup process.
         | 
         | From [1]. Seems like there is a pattern of "AI asked to
         | generate final results with only final results to learn from,
         | immediately asked for the apple in the picture" in AI
         | generators. I suppose lack of specialization in application
         | domains of NNs is a deliberate design choice for these high-
         | profile projects, in a vague hope of simulating emergent
         | behaviors as seen in the nature and avoiding to be another
         | expert system(while being one!), but that attitude seems
         | limiting usefulness, here and again.
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | > Web demo for anyone interested takes about 2 minutes to run:
         | https://huggingface.co/spaces/osanseviero/point-e
         | 
         | It's a fun demo. Worth to note that on mobile it didn't include
         | any button to download the generated point cloud data itself,
         | at least not that I could find. Might be the same on desktop
         | also.
         | 
         | Additionally I think the amount of time taken depends on the
         | amount of visitors. I had to wait about 7 minutes for it to
         | finish.
        
       | speedgoose wrote:
       | > We would like to thank everyone behind ChatGPT for creat-ing a
       | tool that helped provide useful writing feedback.
       | 
       | I wonder how much of the research paper is written by ChatGPT.
        
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