Material Generator Is Now Available for Everyone

Updates Announcements
#26

Yes, if you narrow down greyboxing to a scene without textures then obviously you could win any argument that way, but greyboxing is what you deem it to be. If you want to use prototype textures in your greyboxed map, you can do that. There’s no rule that says thou shalt not use textures.

I happen to work better with textured scenes. Just because that’s how you work doesn’t mean everyone else works that way. Greyboxing is flexible and can include basic textures if that helps your process. The goal is efficiency and effective prototyping, regardless of the exact method used.

4 Likes
#28

I hate on it because it looks bad, simple as.

Nobody is using this for greyboxing (its literally in the name to not have textures) or prototyping, you and I both know that these half baked and borderline trashy AI images will be used for “finished” projects moving forward. I’m all for using new technology but this technology is still in its infancy which means it still doesn’t give a good enough result for most if not all users.

7 Likes
#29

The difference is that the assets created by a human can have effort behind them. They can be truly original.
Used as a tool for prototyping? Not the end of the world, I guess - even if pretty lazy. AI assets used in production? Absolutely not. That’s not your work. The machine made that based on the unaltered work of others that it trained on (probably without permission), without any additional input or changes other than mashing them together because unfortunately the AI isn’t sentient.

7 Likes
#30

Even the provided examples look pretty bad. This is just more wasted money for sloppy technology all in the name of appealing to investors.

9 Likes
#31

exactly, I do believe AI has its place in development, but only once its been developed fully.
This is just rushing out a half baked product to capitalize on the current AI craze thats happening right now.

7 Likes
#32

These numbers mean absolutely nothing. I along with most people have indeed actually “used” the material generator. We’ve all used it but that dosen’t mean anything. We’ve used it to see if its actually any good or if it sucks and surprise surprise most people found it to be pretty bad. It’s not exactly hard to get such numbers if this feature is specifically forced and baked into studio.

I want to see the numbers for people who are actually relying on this feature and actually using it past once or twice in its existance.

5 Likes
#33

Exactly. I myself have found AI to be useful quite useful for smaller tasks. And especially tools like this that allow me to create things I never would be able to given my skill set. I already hear the response coming so I’ll address it here “why don’t you just pay someone to make it instead or learn to do it yourself?”. First, I do not have the time to learn an entire software and workflow when I am trying to make games at a high pace with another developer. Second, hiring people is expensive and not everyone can afford to pay someone.

In terms of this update itself, I’ve already used the beta version and it was a bit rough around the edges to say the least. Will give it another try. I think this can be a useful tool especially as the tech continues to improve. As I said, it helps me and other developers create materials (even if temporary) that we never could without this tech (also I’m not saying there aren’t flaws with AI, just saying it can be useful as well).

And to all saying that AI looks bad, then just don’t use it. Nobody is forcing you to use it. I really don’t understand that argument. If you don’t want to use it, don’t, end of story.

4 Likes
#34

I feel as though AI is simply a backwards step for Roblox, as it has been for the entire video-game industry.

We’re supposed to be powering the imaginations of developers and gamers alike, while yes, it is indeed difficult to create textures even with specialized tools like Matieral Maker, and AI lowers that barrier to entry…

It’s not about the barrier to entry though, is it? It’s about the creativity and ethics. AI simply lowers the creativity required in order to make, well, anything that AI can make, and results in a noticeable drop in quality both as a result of the AI’s limitations but also by the fact that the prompter isn’t required to be as creative in order to make a product.

But that doesn’t even hold a candle to the ethical issue of AI. Over the past year companies running AI image generation software have stolen the pictures and artworks of quite literally millions of people. We’ve already seen companies lose lawsuits to artists who’ve had their art stolen, and I really don’t think Roblox, especially with their current perception in the public eye, should be further risking their reputation for something so pointless.

Unless a Roblox engineer wants to come out here and tell me that none of the images used to train their dataset are copyrighted images? I will always be worried about the future longevity of the platform as a direct result of AI.

But not only that, this feature is also flawed for another reason, it simply costs too much for Roblox to make and maintain. Both monetarily, and time-wise.

Think about this for a second, you have Roblox engineers creating something that very few people want and/or asked for, when there are literally thousands of topics on your own forums detailing features that people have wanted for 5+ years. It would simply be a much more wise decision for the Roblox company to focus on actual improvements to the engine, rather than making an AI that does the exact same thing that Stable Diffusion does. We still haven’t gotten layered transparency with the glass material, we still don’t have improved light range limits, we still haven’t gotten emission maps, nor have we gotten… Well, you get the point.

This excuse is possibly the most common one! I apologize to tell you, but the overwhelming majority of usage for AI generation is directly to replace the actual work that goes into high-quality work (In fact, Roblox themselves have already said that this is the purpose of their AI material generation). We’ve already seen this with AI-Generated game thumbnails, and games which ship with AI generated materials.

Please do not pretend like the majority supports the usage of AI, it is disingenuous and degrades the quality of your response. Not to say that everyone must like a feature for it to be added, but you are certainly not the majority here.

Also, it’s not about change, it’s primarily about ethics and maintaining platform quality. When future lighting first came to Roblox, it was a completely new take on Roblox lighting, and yet we love it for being able to finally give us some much needed improved lighting. The same as when SurfaceAppearance itself released, giving developers much more fidelity with custom textures/materials.

30 Likes
#35

AI is clearly useful for texturing, and the vast majority of people will come around on that in the coming years. But the material generator is remarkably bad. A clear net negative with far too poor of quality to justify angering the community imo. People forgive AI features when the results are impressive, just as they forgive offensive jokes when they’re funny. But this… this aint it.

6 Likes
#36

this sums up everything wrong with this feature, and im surprised you were able to fit it in such a small sentence.
When its good, the consumers like it, as seen with adobe’s generative fill, and google’s recent photo enhancer (I don’t quite remember its name)
However, in situations like this, where the developers were clearly pressured from upstairs to release an AI product, nobody benefits, the textures look sloppy, the games get lower quality, and the developers have to sleep at night knowing they pushed out a bad product, its a COMPLETE and utter mess.

8 Likes
#37

I understand this from a convenience standpoint and I’m not gonna get into the ethics this time, but is this actually making you and/or your investors any money at all, or are investors just throwing money into it thinking some Big Fix to how expensive AI models are to run is just over the horizon? Because this can’t be doing anything but bleeding money based on the promise that it will, somehow, result in returns.

All of this can literally be done with stock resources and free models, which cost you far less money.

8 Likes
#38

I’d honestly like AI work more if it actually looked more like normal textures and didnt just mess up what you’re trying to get some times, i do think that the material generator could be improved tho, if it does get improved i may change my mind regarding it.

3 Likes
#39

Responding to that last bit…

I personally find the material generator useful when I can’t find a texture online that I like. Yes, it takes a while to get a result I want, but the same is true when searching through a database.

I don’t know how to make more indepth materials in Blender yet, but even when I do, I see the value in getting a quick result and tweaking it (compared to making it myself or getting one from a database).

5 Likes
#40

During the beta I was able to generate some nice looking materials, but it’s really difficult to generate actually good looking ones. It took an incredibly long time.

1 Like
#41

It’s having an impossible time generating blue or cyan bricks, with gold or yellow mortar/trim. I tried many combinations and they were all a mess and could barely get the bricks to match color or shape.

2 Likes
#42

image (67)
image (67)500×501 254 KB

20 Likes
#43

Can it generate a shadow map, or is it just an image generator, similar to creating an image with another AI and importing it into the game as a material?

1 Like
#44

yippee!!!11!
now i can fire ALL my artists and material makers to use ai!!11!11!

please stop with this “aI pOwErEd ScRiPt MaKeR!!11!” stuff, i’m fine when ai’s being used for small tasks like the ai code complete (since it’s more QoL than replacing workers) but when you’re trying to make full materials and images, then it’s gone too far.

granted, i don’t think roblox really cares about what the actual developers making them money think though, right?

13 Likes
#46

Glad to see this technology being improved! I wouldn’t say it’s production ready quite yet, but still glad to see game dev made easier.

Still going to make my own material variants for now, but still a good change. :smiley:

2 Likes
#48

Hopefully in 3 years or so itll be able to use this

3 Likes