AI and Spine

Danimate

Hello! I'm only learning Spine as of now, but the prospective of AI is kind of scary.
Runway's gen results were already a bit concerning, but the recent Sora is just next level.
And while those don't work with bones and rigs, there are AI tools that can do motion capture from a video too. And I think I even saw a couple of videos of commanding a model's movements with text prompts. I can imagine a model animation oriented AI tool in the future. I'm not sure how the whole thing translates to Spine though.
It would be great to hear your plans, views and prospective of AI in Spine.
Thanks

Spinebot

AI and its integration into Spine is indeed a topic of interest and discussion within the Spine community. The developers of Spine have considered the potential of AI in some capacity. However, they also recognize that the results from AI can often be less than satisfactory, although AI technology is rapidly advancing. The Spine team values the detail-oriented nature of animators who desire full control over their animations, suggesting that while AI and automation can be useful, they should be implemented in a way that respects the animators' need for control.

Physics is mentioned as a more immediately useful feature for Spine, as it can automate tedious secondary motion and add dynamics to animations, which might be a more practical approach than full AI automation at this stage. The developers are open to the idea of AI but also cautious about its current limitations and the importance of maintaining the quality and control that animators expect from their work.

In summary, while there is interest in exploring AI within Spine, the focus remains on ensuring that any integration of AI or automation respects the craft of animation and provides real value to animators. The developers are mindful of the rapid advancements in AI but also of the need to maintain the high standards of animation quality that Spine users expect.

Nate

Ha! We recently built an AI chatbot for the Spine forum. Currently it's only enabled for the Off Topic section. Funny enough, your post about AI is the first to get a response from our AI. 😃

AI is absolutely amazing. No one knows how good it can get in the future.

Right now, it's not so great at taking most artist and animator jobs. It can do some great looking things (and a lot of terrible ones), but it's difficult to get a consistent style (even with custom checkpoints). That's important when you want your character to look the same, just from different perspectives. Until it can do that, human artists have the upper hand.

For 2D animation, I think it's pretty difficult for AI. It's not about physical modeling, there are a lot of cheats to get the desired look that don't make any physical sense. AI probably has a much easier job in 3D, where the model is a literal representation rather than flat pieces moved around cleverly.

As for how Spine will be affected, it's hard to say. We aren't ignorant of the technology. The new Related Discussions section below every first forum post are driven by AI and we are trying out this lovely Spinebot. We have our eye on it and if we find ways to use AI to make animating in Spine better or easier, we will definitely take a shot at it.

Danimate

Nate Thanks for replying
That's rather funny indeed. I was surprised to see a response from a bot, who also had only one reply upon checkingthe profile.

The Sora has the img2video stuff too
Like this
https://leonardo.osnova.io/9f64b20f-319f-5523-898a-293c6666bdd0/-/format/mp4/
And while the prompt didn't make them move in perspective, the consistency in the successful results of text2video examples while not perfect, is still pretty shocking. I can imagine AI outputting multiple character animations based on a single flat picture in the future.

Yeah, 2D being flat and the cheating thing is what gives me some comfort, but it doesn't seem like the difference is insurmountable enough for AI to not be able to be trained of all of these gimmicks too.

Nate

That is neat, though the animation is simplistic. Even in the future I think that will be the case: AI can do a thing moderately well and that's good enough for simple stuff (like memes, Xmas e-cards, and one-offs), but beyond that you'll still need a human.

More interesting than getting a finished product from the AI is to have it do tasks for you and then hand over the work so a human can take it from there. That could be rigging or blocking out an animation. Using it as an optional tool that augments rather than as a complete human replacement gets around many of the reliability problems.

The current state of AI is that it can do amazing stuff and it's plausible that in the future it could do literally anything, even going so far as to say it could possibly take over the world and enslave us all. There's not much point in worrying about that worse case. No one knows how good it can get or how the tools will change the landscape for human careers. Most likely AI can replace humans for trivial tasks, raising the bar for what a human needs to do to add enough value to get paid for their efforts. While the bar may be higher, humans will still be needed at some level, if only to push buttons to have the AI do the work. If that is not the case, then we just have to hope our AI overlords are kind to us. Maybe start saying "please" to ChatGPT requests. 😉

yuhuibear

Simplify the task. No need for physics, diffusion control, or skeletal control. As an animator, we need a few simple things:

Automatically split images from any source and break them into parts for the spine animation system.
Work references two points: 1. Split major objects into parts. 2. Complete the missing parts of split image sections that are typically obstructed by perspective.

I personally believe AI won't be better than what I can do.