Stellaris Dev Diary #344 - The Art of The Machine Age (Part II - Art Blast Edition) - Warning: Many Images

[Echo1n]

On images:
Using the models at all, none of which have consent, compensation or credited datasets, for any purpose, means your team is willing to exploit other creative peers - even if you excuse it as "just a bit of exploitation". Those models are created via piracy and cannot function without it, the companies have admitted as much, so there's no pleading ignorance here. My work is in those datasets, so this act means I will no longer support you, your team or any associated works, and I'm definitely not the only one.

On audio:
Same deal. There's only base model I'm aware of that appears to be both ethical and legal, and that was certified only literally today. That you (maybe) are fairly compensating the VA that it was fine tuned on, doesn't change the underlying exploitation, as with the images.

 

[SS Boss]

On images:
Using the models at all, none of which have consent, compensation or credited datasets, for any purpose, means your team is willing to exploit other creative peers - even if you excuse it as "just a bit of exploitation". Those models are created via piracy and cannot function without it, the companies have admitted as much, so there's no pleading ignorance here. My work is in those datasets, so this act means I will no longer support you, your team or any associated works, and I'm definitely not the only one.

On audio:
Same deal. There's only base model I'm aware of that appears to be both ethical and legal, and that was certified only literally today. That you (maybe) are fairly compensating the VA that it was fine tuned on, doesn't change the underlying exploitation, as with the images.

Goodbye.

 

[The Gracie]

"We used text to speech to massively increase the amount of content we're offering in the DLC, and it matches the theme of the DLC and we paid people."

Seems fair to me.

 

[Arkenai Wyrnspire]

I adore the main menu art we got with this DLC. I also really liked the first contact one so I guess I just like these massive illustrations. Really impressive stuff, love the whole scene.
The art output going into this DLC is crazy high.

 

[cheesesnack]

Thanks for the update on AI. I wanted to say up front that I really respect what y'all have done on this update. For my money this is the most interesting and broadest update this game has seen. However I have to object to the use of generative AI tools, even in the ideation phase. I understand that your team has clearly had discussions about how to use these tools correctly and I'm very glad you've put up some strong guidelines here but I question whether it's possible to use tools like chatGPT, dall-e, or Midjourney ethically. As you may know, all these tools require massive libraries of human art in order to function at all. These companies acquired these libraries largely through theft, and artists and writers generally are not even notified that their work has been used in this way.

As for the voice acting, I have to confess I don't know enough about the technology y'all are using to deliver a strong critique. I certainly understand the motivation, it's not an uncommon situation for an actor to become unavailable during the life of a living game like this one. I would like to learn more about the process but I'm glad you're doing right by your actors on this.

 

[ZHY847]

Are we going to get synthetic versions of human portraits?
My suggestion

Humanoid machine/Synthetic human portraits

Since the release of the Machine Age DLC, the new synthetic and cyborg content has made me want to create an empire inspired by the Pantheon show. But the current options for synthetic species do not include a machine species with a human-like...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Myphicbowser]

Late MASSIVELY to the Party, but I see that a few of the Concept Cyborgs are based off of already existing portraits, what made that not happen? It would have been neat to see already around portraits have evolution stages.

 

[lune_16]

Really glad for the transparency on the AI stuff, and I appreciated being able to see the DLC portraits up close and zoomed in, but I hope in the future there's much better integration of this new kind of portrait (with modular pieces and such) with the animation quality and style of previous Stellaris portraits.

I don't mind the shift in art style, but when going over the portraits to choose one for a game I couldn't help but notice how stiff and overly zoomed out many of them were -- it was hard to make out details about the alien's heads or distinguish body parts, and there were very few animations that went beyond the static portrait just shifting around. We got the evil cats clutching their hands evilly, which was great, but sometimes it looked like portraits stretched/compressed to simulate movement rather than actual animations.

It's a shame because the past portraits feel a lot less stiff -- the Toxoids have the little dudes in the shell armor, Ratlings wiggle their snouts, and it's much easier to make out what part of each alien is what. I really hope next portrait updates improve on this, because the designs are cool otherwise.