There was an old polaroid of me by my car back in 1984, possibly 1985 so I thought I would pop that into Midjourney, with its new video generation feature.
Here are 2 of the very impressive results.
genai
GenAI video gets even better with Midjourney
Two years ago I generated the first scene in my first novel in midjourney, as a static image, then got the Runway app to bring Roisin to life, this was the result. The post about it was here and later on on keeping a consistent character in the still image generation here
It was good and somewhat amazing but this week midjourney added a powerful new video generating model, and the same image gave this even more stunning result.
The new one has much more consistency and intricate details, down in the bottom right a silver zip toggle sways as she types. The music was not AI just added on a youtube short. Midjourney has the stated goal of getting to generate worlds i.e. metaverse. This seems to be at least as good as Google’s Veo3 that we just got here. It’s much harder to spot the progress in the LLMs, but this is a good visual indication of the speed and improvement
Also the flying penguins get a look in too. It’s been tricky to get penguins to fly so far but Google Veo3 did this one, the desert island with a soundtrack generated too. Hard to see they are penguins but they are 🙂
Whilst that looked really good the ultimate one came from midjourney video again. Look at this 🙂 (Sound added from YouTube short editor
Consistent characters in Midjourney GenAI
It’s been a while since I posted anything for lots of reasons, that’s an offline conversation. However, this weekend something appeared on my feeds that was just too exciting not to do a quick test with and then share, which I already have on Twitter, LinkedIn, Mastodon and Facebook plus a bit of instagram. So, many channels to look at!
Back in August 2022 I dived into using Midjourney’s then new GenAI for images from text. It was a magical moment in tech for me of which there have been few over the 50+ years of being a tech geek (34 of those professionally). The constant updates to the GenAI and the potential for creating things digitally, both in 2D, movies and eventually 3D metaverse content has been exciting and interesting but there were a few gaps in the initial creation and control, one of which just got filled.
Midjourney released its character constant reference approach to point a text prompt at a reference image, in particular of a person, and to then use that person as a base for what is generated in the prompt. Normally you ask it to generate an image and try and describe the person in text or by a well known person, but accurately describing someone starts to make for very long prompts. Any gamers who have used avatar builders with millions of possible combinations will appreciate that a simple sentence is not going to get these GenAI’s to get the same person in two goes. This matters if you are trying to tell a narrative, such as, oh I don’t know… a sci fi novel like Reconfigure? I had previously written about the fun of trying to generate a version of Roisin from the book in one scene and passing that to Runway.ml where she came alive. That was just one scene, and to try any others would not have given me the same representation of Roisin in situ.
The image above was the one I used to then push to runway.ml to see what would happen, and I was very suprised how well it all worked. However, on Friday I pointed the –cref tag in midjourney to this image and asked for some very basic prompts related to the book. This is what I got
As you can see it is very close to being the same person, same clothing, different styles and these were all very short prompts. With more care, attention and curation these could be made to be even closer to one another. Obviously a bit of uncanny valley may kick in, but as a way to get a storyboard, sources for a genAi movie or create a graphic novel this is great innovation to help assist my own creative process in ways that there is no other way for me to do this without some huge budget from a Netflix series or a larger publisher. When I wrote the books I saw the scenes and pictures vividly in my head, these are not exactly the same, but they will be in the spirit of those.
Metaverse and GenAI webinar for BCS
This month was the AGM for the BCS Animation and Games specialist group that I have been chairing for a very long while now. I gave a presentation from a personal view point (this is not a work presentation and I make that clear in the disclaimers, though it is what I work in too of course), on the advances in Metaverse and GenAI content creation. The full YouTube version is below but the link to the blurb and bio (and the video) at the BCS is here
We are always looking for presenters to come and share some ideas with our specialist group around all things games, animation, metaverse, esports etc, so if you are interested ping me there is a slot waiting for you. We sometimes get a big crowd, other times smaller ones but with the videos published like this it can be a useful thing to do and share.
For those of you who don’t know, BCS (formerly British Computer Society) Chartered Institute for IT is a UK based (but worldwide membership) professional body for anyone in the tech industry. It exists at all levels from just getting going in the business to Fellows with vast amounts of experience and willingness to help. It was part of my professional certification whilst at IBM and I then also became a certifier whilst there too. Volunteering and sharing ideas, such as this presentation, is one of the many ways to get involved (you don’t have to do this). It benefits you as an individual but also elevates tech roles within enterprises and organizations you work in.
You can find more at BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT (bcs.org)