cragsand

@cragsand@universeodon.com

VR, RP and science nerd
I play in #NeonDivide, an episodic #RP #LARP in #VR

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:mastodon: Also on mastodon.social: @cragsand

#VRChat #VRRP #GoldenGator #TheGoldenGator #Twitch #Roleplay #TTRPG #DnD #VirtualReality #Sweden 🇸🇪

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

reginasbread, to random
@reginasbread@homo.promo avatar

just watched a video about the lack of bicycles in hollywood productions. e.g. there are post apocalypse shows where there's no fuel or they can't use engines for other reasons, and the characters are shown walking or riding a horse. they never try bikes even though it's the most popular mode of transportation on the planet. Daryl from TWD on a bicycle? uncool. if a protagonist is doing it, it's a comedy. riding a bicycle is seen as a ridiculous thing to do unless you're a child. I am stunned.

cragsand,

@reginasbread Bicycles are the most practical and cool vehicle.
I wear my bike helmet proudly as I park and enter stores.
Not because I'm balding, nope definitely not because I'm balding.

cragsand, (edited ) to ai

I learned how to train LoRa AI models using open source StableDiffusion...

For the purpose of recreating the appearance of my 3D VR roleplaying character the results I got were amazingly good... almost frighteningly so.

I'll go through the process, results and some thoughts.

🧵 part 1of4

#stablediffusion #loramodel #characterart #ai #aiart #aitraining #sd #lora #tech #technews #vr #3d #vrchat #roleplay #neondivide #cragsand

cragsand, (edited )

So much of the majority of AI art I see is terrible, bad looking and deformed. But with the right instruction's it doesn't have to be.

To accurately create fictional characters, this is probably the best method I've seen so far. There's work involved for training a model like this and not something you can just give a bunch of prompts and expect good results.

I started by gathering 64 screenshots of my 3D VRChat model from Blender in various positions and angles in different lighting while wearing select clothing of choice. Then I added proper tags describing each image in a respective text file.

Based on the training data and they keywords I specified, you can input various clothing alternatives including:

  • armor
  • jacket
  • shirt
  • barechest
    Training took about 30 minutes using an RTX2080Ti GPU.

cragsand, (edited )

These guides were really useful for explaining complex concepts without having the understanding of the mathematics involved. It tends to get really complicated the deeper you delve into it.
https://rentry.org/lora_train
https://rentry.org/59xed3

The GUI for stable diffusion I'm using is completely open source written in Python for everyone to use https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui

I posted the LoRa AI training model publicly for download here for anyone curious: https://civitai.com/models/70408/cragsand-character-lora-sten-berglund

Since I really liked the results I ended retouching some parts manually. Things like eye color, fingers and random clutter where there were details that looked weird.

The end results are available in this gallery here: https://www.deviantart.com/cragsand/gallery/87722291/sten-berglund-character-artwork

cragsand, (edited )

End thoughts...

With this technology gaining traction I certainly sympathize with artists concerned about their profession being in danger. It's a topic worth discussing and what it's societal effects will be. I can certainly see it ending up being bad and requiring proper regulation.

One thought on my mind would be that these are "tools" for us to use, and as with any tools if they're good or bad ends up being determined by how they're used. It's not the technology itself that is the danger, but rather how corporations and bad interests may exploit it to the detriment of everyone else.

Curious to hear other's thoughts about this and how we can approach it in a way that is beneficial for everyone.

Thank you for reading the thread ! 💙

cragsand,

Amazing...

I put my roleplaying character lora through a photorealistic model named "AmIRealV3".

Even though it was just trained on screenshots in various lighting conditions from VRChat, Unity and Blender it still works great with photorealism.

https://civitai.com/models/49463/am-i-real

rolle, to ai
@rolle@mementomori.social avatar

I used to think AI avatars are cool and look so real. Then, as a perfectionist and the advocate for openness I started to think: It's not real - so it's not good. Why should we vote for fakeness? I don't like the direction we are heading with generative AI. I understand the things that helps us do our jobs faster, like erasers, fine tuners. But faces? Nope.

9to5Google: Pixel 8 camera specs leak, adds manual controls, AI to change faces, Magic Editor, more https://9to5google.com/2023/09/23/pixel-8-camera-manual-controls-ai-features-leak/ #AI #GenerativeAI #GooglePixel #Pixel

Google Pixel's AI feature that lets you switch the faces, looks quite natural. A description from the article: "Perhaps the most wild use of AI in the video, though, is a Google Photos feature on Pixel 8 where the app will literally be able to change people’s faces in a shot to create the shot you want – the Michael Scott treatment, if you will. There’s no explanation on how this works, but it seems like it uses multiple, similar shots to create one final product."

cragsand, (edited )

@rolle I never liked camera filters but this is next level discomfort. When Samsung added face smoothing by default on some of their phones camera apps I was outraged. This is even worse. What's even real anymore...

JustDalek_, to vrchat

YEEEES

W feature

#VRChat #vrc

Content Gating

https://hello.vrchat.com/blog/content-gating

cragsand,

@JustDalek_
This is great news and something I've been repeating for years. Hopefully it can integrate with Steam and other services for better age verification.

The old feedback from 2019 is now "Tracked" finally. 😎
https://feedback.vrchat.com/feature-requests/p/age-verificationnsfw-content

cragsand, (edited ) to firefox

Figured out a way to make by @rolle compatible on on for any instance!

Instructions:

  1. Install the approved extension from the Firefox addon menu.
  2. Add the extension from here https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/470753-mastodon-birdui-style-override

There may be better ways to do this but it seems to work fine. Let me know if I messed something up... 😅
Added Universeodon and Mastodon dot Social for now but easy to add more.

wild1145, to random

Universeodon.com Update:

I've deployed a lot of the Queue processing now onto a new server, to start to test to see if the new setup will need further capacity I'm going to be disabling the legacy queue processing.

There is a chance there will be backlogs tonight as I balance things. In theory things should be able to self balance a lot better, we have priorities per queue worker but every queue worker will start to pick up other queues. We may need to re-order these if we start to see it doesn't quite work.

We've balanced it and scaled it for now the same way we did MastodonApp.UK and are in the process of building a second machine to run additional queue processing given the load here is significantly increased :)

cragsand,

@wild1145 thank you for all your hard work! I've had some lag loading images and avatars and search not working otherwise it's been running well enough.

cragsand,

@wild1145 :blobheart:

malwaretech, to random

I've lived in the US for so long that I forgot other countries have like semi-serious government that actually do stuff. I just tried to buy a house in the UK and since I was last there they've added a billion new taxes. There's a buying a house tax, a buying a second house tax, a buying a house when you don't live in the UK even though you're a citizen tax, a non-resident landlord tax, UK specific capital gains tax... and they all stack on top of each other. I am going to get absolutely clapped by taxes, but it's nice to see even right-wing governments trying to address the housing crisis.

cragsand, (edited )

@malwaretech Something I observed relatively recently when comparing different housing arrangements in different countries is how Swedens seems more rare when our most common form of housing are a type of regulated "housing-cooperatives" called "bostadsrättsförening".

It doesn't directly translate to the English/UK form of "cooperative-housing" so I'd recommend reading a translated version of the Swedish wikipedia article instead to grasp the regulated implications:
https://sv-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Bostadsr%C3%A4ttsf%C3%B6rening?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=English&_x_tr_hl=sv

By having a non-profit, where laws regulate that all profits must return to the co-owners, shared ownership, costs are substantially lowered. It's not perfect and must go hand-in-hand with other regulations but compared to LLCs or companies own housing, especially if it's a public company with shareholders... they're astronomically better in potential to improve housing availability and pricing.

cragsand, (edited ) to mastodon

Welcome new 🐘 people!
Some 👇:fedi:

To disable the sounds in :

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If you miss the look try the custom user interface called :

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  • Some servers have it locally but it can connect to others as well

Words:

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  • Favorite = Like

Boosting a post shows it on your feed. Favoriting a post will show it to the author:

  • Others can only see your favs by clicking that post
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Some instances allow longer messages. This depends on each servers settings.

To make posts by others:

Cheers!

cragsand,

Welcome to the @captaincaliansonadora !

Above are some beginner tips ! :parrot_beer:

To add follow someone on another instance, enter their username or message URL into the # Explore section.

cragsand, to space

This is amazing!
"Scientists Unveil a 5.7 Terapixel Global Image of Mars"

Try zooming in on Valles Marineris. Reminds me of the procedurally generated planets in Space Engine but it's actual streamed accurate data.

Article: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/scientists-unveil-a-57-terapixel-global-image-of-mars

Explore the map here: https://murray-lab.caltech.edu/CTX/V01/SceneView/MurrayLabCTXmosaic.html

cragsand,

Valles Marineris compared to Grand Canyon

wild1145, to random

Testing image uploads.

cragsand,

@wild1145 It works! Thanks again for rescuing the server!

With searching becoming a standard mastodon feature I guess the need to stay on the custom fork for becomes less useful?

What other custom features are added than these:

  • Longer message lengths
  • Full text searching
    🤔
wild1145, to random

I think we're in a better place now with the web tier, I need to build one more node out and normalise some of the infrastructure setup but I think (and with a lot of help from @zach ) we're back up and running a lot more stable now and I haven't been able to reproduce the blank page issue for some time!

cragsand,

@wild1145 @zach Using on has been pretty good the last few days. Not sure if the interface helps with slowness or maybe it's just coincidence. Still, thank you for all your hard work saving the instance! :blobheart:
https://elk.universeodon.com

randulo, to random
@randulo@mastodon.social avatar

I searched for a grape blend on google and duckgo and found links that mostly didn't contain the answer. Then I used Bing "AI-powered" Chat and it immediately gave an exact answer, including links to the sources.

Bing used to be a laughing stock, but for serious questions, it works better than any search I know of.

cragsand,

@randulo Its a double edged sword for sure. In many cases its quite remarkable how good it is, but in others its plain out wrong. Being powered by ChatGPT its probably the most advanced large language model.

What I find it lacking are technical and categorical understanding of concepts. For example asking it engineering questions it will often just "make up" responses and cite something unrelated that has nothing to do with whats being asked.

Another is asking it fantasy or scifi questions where it can't sort categories or distinguish the difference between different concepts like creatures, magic or similar.
#bing #chatgpt

cragsand, to neondivide

It saddens me that because of health and real life obligations I won't be able to attend the schedule for Neon Divide any more.
Timezone differences for EU have always been difficult (2am-sunrise)
Thank you all for making this wonderful RP together!
ND & Scrap Town forever!💜😢

Cragsand's VRChat avatar for the character Sten Berglund in the VRChat roleplay Neon Divide, leans forward and tips his cowboy hat.

rolle, (edited ) to mastodon
@rolle@mementomori.social avatar

Oh, the search feature is coming to Mastodon after all: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/26344

This clearly seems to follow up the VyrCossont's idea of the extended search feature that finds public posts.

Gargron: "It is my decision to unite all discovery features in one setting, because all of this stuff is an expected part of a social network and splitting it up into different settings that everyone has to opt-into one by one just to get the same behaviour they get by default on other social media seems like a bad user experience. Also, discoverable is already a federated attribute." #Mastodon #Search #OpenSource

cragsand,

@rolle This is great! #FullTextSearch for everyone who wants it

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

Mastodon's Mastodon'ts.

There are a few fundamentally broken things about how Mastodon posts work that are terrible vectors for abuse, as well as being bad for basic usability. Maybe they are fixable, I don't know. To be clear: I am a fan of Mastodon....
https://jwz.org/b/ykC_

cragsand,

@siderea @isagalaev @jwz This makes me think of YouTube comments where the video author has total control to delete all criticism.

While this is great for moderation when dealing with harassment it is not so great when dealing with scammers or conspiracy theorists posting who have actively bad intentions.

With this level of control you could offer questionable ideas or promote harmful prospects without peer-review or expressed skepticism in the replies.

This would work with a very pro-active server moderation team like say, many small Mastodon servers, but not so good in a more relaxed larger public forum.

It has pros and cons to be aware of. Thank you for the thought experiment, this bears careful considering.

cragsand,

@siderea @isagalaev @jwz I agree with you that YouTube comments where you can up/downvote don't really translate to Mastodon and would like to see the feature described implemented. It's having one side be in complete control of a discussion by default that I'm concerned about.

Not every poster wants a discussion at all of course and if a thread is started with this option on, it should be indicated in the initial post that replies are at the discretion of the poster. An option to only allow people you follow to reply would also be a great option to have. If you want an open discussion you'd have third party moderators and turn this off.

For content on YouTube, reading comments and checking up/downvote ratio (was) used that to get an initial take on video accuracy. Less so now since they removed it and the author can delete any comments that are in disagreement. Many users still install third party extensions to recover that functionality to some degree like: https://returnyoutubedislike.com

cragsand, to wow

Some days I really miss my old vanilla WoW community

I know you all are busy elsewhere in life but still if you read this know I miss the adventures and challenges that we shared together. It was an honor o7

FeelsStrongMan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci4wAHZg3mw

A Tauren druid from Vanilla World of Warcraft walks with the camera looking up at the stars in the night sky

arstechnica, to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

Dude, what are those humongous plasma waves in Jupiter’s atmosphere?

Plasma collisions in the outer edges of Jupiter's magnetosphere produce big waves.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/08/dude-what-are-those-humongous-plasma-waves-in-jupiters-atmosphere/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

cragsand,

@arstechnica Should clarify that the image is an artists representation of lightning distribution.

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