Google’s AI Tool Turns Doodles Into 3D Creatures

Love to doodle? A new AI tool from Google, Chimera Painter, will turn those drawings into fantastical creatures.

Google envisions Chimera Painter as a tool for video game artists “to quickly create fleshed-out versions of creature outlines. The intention is for the tool to reduce the time needed to create quality art for digital games while enhancing creativity and artistic choice,” Andeep Singh Toor, Stadia Software Engineer, and Fred Bertsch, a software engineer with Google Research’s Brain Team, wrote in a blog post.

For now, anyone can try it out. Just sketch a creature in your app of choice and upload it to Chimera Painter. Point out the body parts, such as wings, muzzle, or claws, and click Transform. If you want some inspiration, the model comes preloaded with customizable, 2D outlines, too.

The machine learning tool was trained on hundreds of thousands of 2D renderings of 3D creatures, which were generated in Unreal Engine, a real-time 3D creation platform. Each image pairs to a “segmentation map” or overview of anatomical parts that the model uses to render painted images from users.

Ideally, the tool will “inspire others to think differently about their art pipeline,” Toor and Bertsch wrote. “What can one create when using machine learning as a paintbrush?”

Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.