[JasonB]

I wan't really sure where to put this, but...

I'm not a big fan of the idea of AI, but then, I thought I ought to at least dip my toes in and see what it's all about. 

I was aiming to find a useful way for people to produce posters to promote their slot car events. I was hoping that some snazzy AI would be able to produce the whole thing for us from a text description, for free. Well, that didn't happen, but it wasn't a completely wasted attempt.

I found a completely free, no log in reqired site, which will turn your text description into an image, https://perchance.org/ai-text-to-image-generator. Needless to say  there are a few caveats, which may be deal breakers...

• It won't create accurate versions of a particular car
  
• It doesn't do text or numerals vey well, which is a bit bizarre, since they are fairly simple and well established
  
• The maximum image size is 768 x 512, way too small for a printed poster, but maybe just about okay for forums and socials.
  

So, if that hasn't put you off completely, let me show you some examples.

I searched for 1990s saloon racing cars. The software also has several settings to produce different styles, and in this case I set it to 'Professional Photo' 

       


A search for 1970s F1, pulp art, produced these.

       

Prompting the AI with Racing cars Le Mans in a painted anime style provided these results

       

Racing cars vintage Le mans, painted anime.

       

Racing cars vintage Le Mans, concept sketch style

       

Dakar rally, 60s photo style, also finding that adding smoke to the prompt can add some drama.

       

I tried 1970s rally, with a cinematic style, and for the second one added splash and smoke to the search terms.

       

Then I searched for 1950s NASCAR, added crash, smoke and sparks, and also asked for a newspaper headline page. Mixed results, it doesn't do text very well.

       

Finally, rally cars in a 'franco-belgian comic' style, wth added "VROOM" text in honour of Michel Vaillant.

       

[Kevan]

AI tools are developing at a fast pace, the genie is out of the bottle whether we like it or not so embrace it.. especially if it's free.

[JasonB]

You can also enlarge images with https://perchance.org/image-upscaler

The results seem pretty good.

[GT40Racer]

I have found the AI 3D generators quite useful - take an image and turn it into a 3D stl file.

I have mainly used them for making small parts - I needed an exhaust for a car and was able to take a photo of the exhaust and then create a 3D model of it and print it out. I have also had success with wheel inserts and side mirrors. You could probably do other things like dashboards and fuel caps - while some of these are available to buy - for me that usually means from overseas with the expensive postage charges.  I haven't tried doing engine detail yet but think it would work for making a rear engine detail from the 60s Le Mans type cars. 

The other thing they are good for is making figures - still working my way around getting the best output for this but I was able to make a usable 1/48 scale train driver for my On30 Trains - I haven't done a race car driver yet as I have some good files that was able to source from 3D sites. I suspect that I will find to more useful from my train modelling than slot cars.

I don't think they are there yet for making a full car (maybe the paid version which allows multiple photos would do this)

[Kevan]

AI photo-to-3D solid is already passably good. 

I've been experimenting with this since alerted to the possibilities by Trevor Ford.

[woodcote]

Thanks Jason for the post about the perchance AI image generator. I had a play with it, just in case I got asked to do the posters for next year’s Slot Rally GB events.

I wanted to place a rally car in the location of each of the rounds and it sort of worked - not being very familiar with any of the towns, apart from Worthing. And when I got to Worthing, I could see how AI doesn’t get it right at all…

A sandy beach (it should be pebbles), hills (it’s pretty flat round here), a very odd-looking pier and wind turbines not on the horizon that I was expecting (over the hills, rather than out to sea). But to someone not very familiar with the Worthing area, it might be perfect.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun to do and I did get asked to do the posters - and you’ll see the five of them in due course. This is the one for the full season…

   

For those interested, I opened the image generated in perchance in a new tab, saved it and then imported into a DTP program where I could increase to A5 size and reformatted the image to prevent pixelisation. I then added the text and logos and exported as a jpeg.

[JasonB]

Looks good. Glad to hear it's proving useful Andy.