- Hey guys, Alex here. Welcome to "Office Hours". (frame whooshes)
(coffee beans rattle) (frame whooshes) (Alex slurps) Have you heard the buzz about people using AI to create 3D models? We've been seeing a
ton of questions lately about how people can and are
using artificial intelligence and 3D modeling together,
(melodic music) so if you want to know more or you're looking to
try it out for yourself, today we're gonna dive in to two of the most popular
free options out there and show you what's
possible, what's practical, and what the future may hold. Keep watching. (pencil scribbles)
(harmonious music) (frame whooshes) You've probably seen some of the stunning, mind-boggling images
that people are creating with AI these days. And then there's the amazing
renderings people can produce from traditional 3D modeling software, but did you know that people are actually combining the two together, using AI to help create,
edit and animate 3D models? (Alex mimics explosion) Let's talk about how you can
try this out for yourself for free, even if you have
little or no experience using AI or 3D modeling software, starting with getting set
up with the right tools. For the purposes of this
video, we'll be talking about two of the most popular
free options out there for both AI and 3D Modeling,
ChatGPT and Blender. But don't let the price tag fool you. Both of these are insanely
robust and powerful tools. Let's talk about how to get up
and running in Blender first. Blender is an open source software for everyone from creative
professionals to hobbyists, with amazing tools for
3D modeling, sculpting, creating photorealistic
and highly stylized images and animations, plus a whole lot more. To get it, just open up your web browser and visit www.blender.org. Click Download Blender
and follow the steps to download the correct version depending on your operating system. In your Downloads folder,
if you're on a Mac, double click the DMG file
to mount the disk image, and then drag the Blender app icon into the applications folder to install. If you're on a Windows machine, double click on the installer file. Then follow the steps to install it. If you're on Linux, I've added a link to
Blender's reference docs in the video description in case you run into
any unexpected issues. All right, navigate to the folder where you installed the
application and launch Blender. You'll see a welcome screen. It may be a little different
than what you see here depending on the version
of Blender you download, as Blender releases frequent updates, but the core functions we're covering will work just the same. You can click once away
from the welcome banner and you're ready to go. All right, next, let's talk about ChatGPT. What is ChatGPT? ChatGPT is an advanced AI-powered chat bot developed by a company called Open AI. ChatGPT is trained on vast data sets to mimic human conversation,
but where it gets really cool is that you can actually ask ChatGPT to write and compose unique things based on its machine learning, from stories to poetry to
essays, even computer code, and that's how we're able
to interface with Blender to use AI to do our 3D modeling for us. To get started, head to chat.openai.com. Sign up if you don't
already have an account, and once you're logged in,
you'll see a welcome screen with a text field to type a message. Now, real quick, I should
mention that while it's free to sign up and use ChatGPT, there's also a paid option
called ChatGPT Plus, which gets you priority
access to the new features and latest version of the
machine learning model, which at the time of
publishing this video is GPT-4, a more advanced version of ChatGPT than you currently get
with a free account, which is GPT version 3.5.
(frame clicks) I'll talk more about the
differences in improvements between the two later in
this video, but for now, let's go over the basics
using the free version, since the process you'll
follow is the same regardless of the version
of GPT you're using. All right, how to use
ChatGPT and Blender together. Now, you're probably already imagining all the exciting possibilities, like, "Render me
(melodic music) "a three bedroom house on the beach," or "animate a robot walking",
(melodic music) but hold on. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's dial it back and quickly cover the practical fundamentals of how to actually use
these two programs together. To do that, let's ask ChatGPT to build us something
super basic in Blender, and then we'll go from there. Now, as I mentioned earlier, ChatGPT is able to write computer code or what's called a script,
which Blender can interpret. So in our browser
window, let's ask ChatGPT to write a Blender script
that creates a gold ball. You'll see ChatGPT print
out a block of code along with a short explanation
of what it created. The interesting thing to note here is that ChatGPT's responses will vary, even when asking the exact same question. So if you're following along at home, your responses will look
different than mine. Also note that I included the
word "script" in my question. (screen beeps)
That's because if you just asked ChatGPT to create or model something in Blender without asking it to write
a script specifically, it will sometimes respond
with step-by-step instructions of how to build it yourself,
which is also pretty cool, but not what we want for
the purposes of this video. Okay, let's copy the code block by going to the upper right
hand corner and clicking copy. Then in Blender, let's
delete the default cube so we start with a blank slate. To do that, select the cube
and hit X on your keyboard and click to confirm. Now, in the upper right,
select the Scripting tab. Click where it says New. Then in the text area,
press control + V on a PC or command + V on a
Mac to paste the script you just copied from ChatGPT. Click the Run button, and
in the upper left corner, you'll see what the script has created. If you click on the layout tab, it'll get you back to a full view. Now, our ball doesn't look gold but that's just because
of Blender's default view. If we click this icon for
Material Preview across the top, now we see the color. All right, we just created a
3D model in Blender using AI. Of course, this is a super simple example and I'll admit probably
a little underwhelming, but there's actually a lot to unpack here. First, now that you know the basic method, you can go back and forth
between ChatGPT and Blender to experiment with creating more and more complex
and interesting things. But a word of warning. Oftentimes the things you ask
ChatGPT to build in Blender simply won't work,
(text buzzes) and you can waste countless hours
(emoji groans) struggling to get the
results you're after. Why? Well, one of the main reasons is that ChatGPT's learning model is only trained through 2021, so changes to Blender since
then may cause ChatGPT's script to reference something outdated. Another key factor is, just like a human writing code,
(upbeat music) the more complex the
problem, the more code ChatGPT has to write,
(keyboard clicks) which means there are more chances for it to make a mistake that
causes the script to fail. Now, one thing to know is that you can sometimes
work with ChatGPT to overcome these issues. For instance, if a script fails, try copying the error
message and pasting it into your reply to ChatGPT. It will try and fix the code. Again, just know that for
more complicated requests, even the fixes often fail. But actually, the best
way you can help ChatGPT is to learn some of the
fundamentals of Blender before you try to use
ChatGPT and Blender together. Being familiar with the names
of the tools and features as well as the fundamentals
of how modeling and the basic tools work in Blender makes creating effective
prompts for ChatGPT much easier. Take our gold ball, for example. It looks pretty faceted and plain, but knowing your tool settings
and terminology in Blender allows you to prompt ChatGPT in a way that can get you closer to
the end result you're after. If you're completely new to Blender, I definitely recommend checking out our "Getting Started with Blender" video before experimenting
with your own prompts, as it covers many of the
basic features and tools you'll wanna be familiar with.
(frame whooshes) I've added a link in the description. Okay, but what about
having ChatGPT create me (melodic music)
that three bedroom house on the beach, or that walking robot?
(melodic music) Unfortunately, in practical
terms, it's not quite there, yet. But let's talk about
these more complex tasks, ChatGPT Plus, and where this is all going because it's pretty interesting. Remember when I mentioned
that paid version of ChatGPT with a more advanced
version of their AI, GPT-4? Well, it turns out that this new version does a remarkably better job at creating working scripts for Blender when it comes to more complex prompts. And while it's still not a magic wand that, voila,
(bells chime) creates super polished outputs, let's talk about what
it does do effectively and what that means for you. First, while I was unable
to get a working script out of the free version
of ChatGPT on GPT-3.5 for either a house on the
beach or a walking robot, using ChatGPT Plus with version 4 produced a script that did
work in Blender for both. Unfortunately, this is what it created
(melodic music) for my house on the beach, and this is what it created
(melodic music) for a simple robot walking. Not exactly what I was after. But that being said, there's some pretty interesting
stuff going on here. First, you can see in the ChatGPT response that the logic is there in terms of how it sets out to
accomplish this task. Where it fails is in
scripting the execution. Then again, I'm asking it to do something really complex here. Similarly but slightly less complex, I also ask GPT-4 to write
a Blender 3.4 script that animates nine planets
orbiting around a sun, write a Blender script that
animates the game Pong, and write a script to create a 3D model of a car in Blender. While the results are pretty rudimentary, they're also pretty amazing
when you think about the fact that all I did was ask an AI to create these things
for me in one sentence and potentially really helpful when I think about how much
longer it would've taken a seasoned Blender user to manually create similar examples using Blender alone. And again, these are
tasks that simply failed when asking ChatGPT-3.5 the same things. That's why I think some of
the crazy hype around AI and 3D modeling is actually kind of valid. While in its current form
some of these results may feel a little underwhelming, keep in mind that this type
of AI is still super new and the idea of using it together with 3D modeling is even newer. And not only is the AI
itself constantly improving, but as more people start to use this type of scripting approach
to combine AI and Blender, the more Blender developers will continue to streamline and improve
(melodic music) the way in which the
two interface together. And who knows, maybe it's
not so far off that ChatGPT will be designing you that
three-bedroom house on the beach. (tropical music) All right, so now that you know the basics of how to use ChatGPT and
Blender together, what's next? Try out your own prompts and ideas and leave a comment below about the things you create and discover. Then, check out one of the
videos in this playlist, where we cover everything
from the fundamentals you need to know to use
Blender the right way, to tips on how to avoid
the frustrating mistakes that often trip people up or cause them to waste a ton of time when setting out to learn Blender. Got Blender questions
you want us to answer in a future "Office Hours"? Let us know in the comments below. Don't forget to like and subscribe, and until next time, happy Blending.
