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Aias: Update 7

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atcDave

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Charity

The next level down was full of those snake-guys. They are aggressive! And have a large number of spell casters. Made for a brutal slog. And we were being taunted by some creepy little girl. The evil practically radiated from her, I didn’t even need Ila’s confirmation.

Finally we came to a throne room sort of chamber. The “little girl” was holding court with a number of the snake-guys. She had a little surprise for us.

“They’re Yuan-Ti not ‘snake-guys’ you ignorant savage!”
“We’re from out of town…”

That was exciting. The “Yuan-Ti” are not all that fearsome. But this alien demon monster thingy was! She had a number of magic defenses up. I recognized Stone Skin, I just learned that one myself. Also I think Fire Shield? I’ve seen it mentioned but its not in my book. Pikwell could lower her magic resistance, and I cast Breach. I just learned that one too! She went down pretty quickly once the Stone Skin was down, I’ll take that as a warning to myself. I know all of our warriors were battered around pretty good by then.

Now it was time to lead our great caravan back to Kuldahar. A number of freed villagers meant many happy and tearful reunions. Sadly we saws the faces of a few families whose loved ones were not returning. It sickens me how our enemies cheapen life.

We also found a number of Orog raiders come into Kuldahar. These big brutes are not much of a threat to us, just like bigger orcs. But we couldn’t figure where they came from? We haven’t seen any of them in our travels yet.

I think you boys took a wrong turn…
We found Arundel bleeding out in his private quarters. He directed us to an ancient Elven Fortress called the Severed Hand to find someone who could use the Heartstone Gem. I liked Arundel, this evil needs to be stopped.

On the way we stopped at a small Halfling village. This was mostly a lower key rest stop for us. Halflings are usually pleasant and helpful. We still found a few minor chores to help out with.

I like this town! Its built for my size!
We’ll be happy to look around for your glasses sir. Don’t you worry about it.

The worst of it was the village headwoman was being visited by nightmares. These had a very real origin in a snowy valley nearby. Some sort of elemental evil was feeding off people’s doubts and fears. Interesting, it warned us something much more powerful was now in the greater area.
On that note, we hurried off to the Elven fortress.

18 responses to “Aias: Update 7”

  1. Zeno Avatar
    Zeno

    Yuxonomei is fun to play with, isn’t she? Surprisingly easier to render than I had anticipated once you start with the Indian Naga theme. Other than setting off the filters all over. Don’t think I ever got quite that many arms though.

    Charity and Arundel looks very good. A shame we have to trick it with “exhausted” and “sleeping” instead of “dying”, but it works well enough when you set the stage right.

    Pikwell is fun as always.

    The art styles between the two pics with Charity look rather different. The first looks like what I get with “dark fantasy oil painting”, while the second looks more like “fantasy painting” or “fantasy oil paint drawing”. Was there a difference in tags? Or just luck of the AI?

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    1. atcDave Avatar
      atcDave

      No doubt, I’d previously considered Yxi impossible. But Naga seems to be the magic word. I did say “ten arms”, maybe eight is what’s actually shown? But it overdid it! I think I count 11, and a few other projections that may be arms. But I liked the look of this one, so there it is. I didn’t;t have a horrible reject rate, but maybe I pre-empted it by saying “scale armor”. 

      it is funny the games we learn for dying! Some renders still have them trying to get up, which ruins everything unless they’re sharing parting words. For all that, the reject rate on this one was horrible. I was only getting a single render every 3 or 4 tries. I am pretty sure, when I say “torch light reflected in her skin” that it determines to show more of the skin. Cool effect, but it does up the no-shows. Add to that, I had Charity “leaning close to the sleeping man”. I also think the AI has a dirty mind. I knew it would be low percentage, but it was worth waiting for the result.

      I’ve been using “Larry Elmore oil painting” for this whole run, so no style difference there. But the scene with Arundal was described as a dark, torch-lit room. While the other was a sunny day in a snow covered village. To me, the funny thing in the second one is the odd texture on some of Charity’s skin. I’ve seen this before on her. It *might* be because her clothing is “red robe with gold trim” which may cause a fabric effect onto her skin? Or maybe, since her look is almost entirely red and gold the AI is making stuff up for interest? I don’t know.

      do you think the AI maybe made Pik a female on that one?! Funny. I do like putting Pikwell in a range of scenes, every set is better with a lemur in it.

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      1. Zeno Avatar
        Zeno

        I can definitely see Larry Elmore for most of those. But Arundel and Charity doesn’t look very “Elmore-y” to me. But you’re right – I think the complex lighting has a lot to do with that. I associate “Elmore” style with leaning a bit more towards the comic/drawing end of the style scale. Bright colors, looks more like airbrush than oil paint, etc. Although your Yuxonomei picture also has complex lighting going on, and it still clearly matches “Elmore Style” for me.

        Dying and death with the AI is weird. Sometimes you get massive rejections for even a hint of it, and others you get dead bodies strewn about when you didn’t even ask for it. My recent picture of Percy just said something about “tumbling past guards in blurred motion, panicked guards trying to catch him”. The dead bodies on the ground were all the AI’s interpretation of the scene. I was happy enough with the result, but if I’d actually *asked* for that it would never go through.

        Pikwell is perhaps looking a bit female there, but its hard to tell with a Lemur. Its not obvious enough that I noticed before you said something.

        I finished IWD2 last night. Trying to get my “final-highlight-reel” pics for everyone in the last battles. May take a bit. Has me asking the AI for some pretty low-percentage stuff. One the other hand it gives me more time to think about a proper Epilogue.

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      2. atcDave Avatar
        atcDave

        No doubt there is huge inconsistency in what the AI does with both sex and violence. It is entertaining sometimes how baffling it can be. I’ve definitely had a few good ones I thought were cheating the system.

        I may have screwed up with my OpenArt models. I’ve learned a lot and am confident I can do at least some of what I want with that AI. Well I knew I could only have two models, so after playing around I knew I wanted to make changes to both. Rather than edit I decided to delete and start over…
        well huh. I assumed the “2 model limit” meant I could just remove them and start over. But no, it means two a month. Now I’m *hoping* I’ll be able to rebuild them on December 1, and not 30 days from now!

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      3. Zeno Avatar
        Zeno

        I remember playing around with those OpenArt models for a bit and then deciding I didn’t like the implementation, but I don’t really remember what I didn’t like about it. And it was so early in my AI experimentation that I may have simply not known what I was doing. 😉

        Liked by 1 person

      4. atcDave Avatar
        atcDave

        it is definitely different! And I’m not even sure if I can do the range of characters, beasts, and interactions we can do Co-Pilot. Or it may require a level of complexity I won’t want to mess with most of the time. I will likely use both for my coming BG run.

        But the big thing is, my characters will be Chuck and Sarah from the show Chuck. I *need* a stable rendition of Zachery Levi and Yvonne Strahovski to pull that off. And I can do it with OpenArt, at least to get good portraits. I’m not sure if they’ll fight orcs or anything. But dang the portraits look good.

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      5. Zeno Avatar
        Zeno

        You might just try character names or “looks like <character> from <show>”. While Bing won’t let you reference “Harrison Ford” directly, it gave me this for when I referenced “Indiana Jones Boulder Scene”…

        https://www.bing.com/images/create/indiana-jones-boulder-scene3bfantasy-painting3broma/1-673b00deb0c442feaae32de7e380e111?id=GA%2fVpu5OIFrMjOvCawX2Ww%3d%3d&view=detailv2&idpp=genimg&thId=OIG3.Qy4mFiLph1yp3B2G_Lmp&skey=SGG-yOOYvqn5ADsIyJpkT4ztxLOgrXvJkEc1OruhSz8&FORM=GCRIDP&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0

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      6. Zeno Avatar
        Zeno

        It just allowed me to do the below. It objected to “woman who looks like Sarah from the show Chuck”, but it was perfectly happy with “Sarah from Chuck in the Outback”

        https://www.bing.com/images/create/fantasy-oil-paint3bsarah-from-the-show-22chuck22-in/1-67452d260b794861869201bb00a74ad3?id=r8pFBIX7LuEMGzOh6q6MYw%3d%3d&view=detailv2&idpp=genimg&thId=OIG1.CrDbQOosTisToNQa3Wmh&skey=AkNylgTM_ss9mES1QtAJ3xv-VRUPBQmlrxgWcqhRaoA&FORM=GCRIDP&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0

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      7. Zeno Avatar
        Zeno

        Yep. It’ll totally let you go to town with that:

        https://www.bing.com/images/create/fantasy-oil-paint3bsarah-and-chuck-from-the-show-22/1-67452e146d14469eb8fc29c01086fca3?id=L%2feL%2fRa0HGPt043rhGoJ1w%3d%3d&view=detailv2&idpp=genimg&thId=OIG2.xGQOW2_xfYBFXVjHb0Ui&skey=AkNylgTM_ss9mES1QtAJ3xv-VRUPBQmlrxgWcqhRaoA&FORM=GCRIDP&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0

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      8. atcDave Avatar
        atcDave

        That is interesting, and a very good likeness. I may use that some, especially if depicting actual action scenes remains problematic. The model I was rebuilding had to do with range of emotion, I was noticing I couldn’t get intense anger or grief kind of things, and I think that had to do with my training pics were all more upbeat things. So I tracked down more negative reactions to add in. That is tedious, and that may lead to me using Co-Pilot for more than I thought. But I’m not sure any Chuck moments will be iconic enough for anything comparable.

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      9. Zeno Avatar
        Zeno

        I suspect, like most things, it’ll take some playing with it to sort out how to get the best results. I just wanted to see if it would object up front or understand the reference in the first place. Following it up with descriptive terms would probably help.

        Liked by 1 person

      10. Zeno Avatar
        Zeno

        I wouldn’t have even thought to try it if I hadn’t accidentally summoned Indiana Jones while trying to do Percy and Kordaal running from a boulder. But has me wondering if I can use character references to solidify faces or get different looks the way I currently use ethnicity. That would be *very* interesting. I was just having trouble the other day playing around with renders for Shayna (Lion and the Unicorn) and not having it look like an older Keira. Being able to explicitly make her look more like… I dunno… Lucy Lawless or something would certainly help.

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      11. atcDave Avatar
        atcDave

        That is all surprising and useful. Actually being able to do this will be a big help, and a time saver. OpenArt will still give me some better portraits.

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    2. Zeno Avatar
      Zeno

      Even better:

      https://www.bing.com/images/create/fantasy-oil-paint3bsarah-from-the-show-22chuck222ccha/1-67452da07ddc422c86d83bbac1d23dfd?id=5WurDv158YSLu%2f9MJDYwSg%3d%3d&view=detailv2&idpp=genimg&thId=OIG2.dssoHo7dA4crLi_FW.GX&skey=AkNylgTM_ss9mES1QtAJ3xv-VRUPBQmlrxgWcqhRaoA&FORM=GCRIDP&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0

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      1. atcDave Avatar
        atcDave

        Not a very convincing Sarah. I mean, good action and all, but it just doesn’t look the part.

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      2. atcDave Avatar
        atcDave

        It could be made to work if it wasn’t square on the face. I’ve actually already done some of this for training pictures.

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    3. Zeno Avatar
      Zeno

      I’ve still got to play with that more. Both that and MidJourney. Anything that lets you train models is going to do consistency better.

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      1. atcDave Avatar
        atcDave

        Yeah it looks like a choice between speed (and maybe flexibility) and accuracy.

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