from Hacker News

Show HN: NightCafe Creator – Create art from a text prompt using VQGAN+CLIP

by GusRuss89 on 8/5/21, 10:54 PM with 43 comments

  • by GusRuss89 on 8/6/21, 12:11 AM

    I've been working on NightCafe for a few years now and have submitted to Show HN in the past, but since VQGAN+CLIP is a new technology and, to my knowledge, no-one else has built an app around it yet, I thought I'd submit again!

    Advantages over using Google Colab:

    - It's >2x faster (runs on NVIDIA RTX A5000 GPUs). E.g. 800 iterations at 600x600px in 8 mins vs 19 mins on Colab.

    - Can do higher resolution (894x894px > 700x700px).

    - Run multiple jobs in parallel.

    - Works from any device.

    - Obviously it's much easier to use for anyone non-technical.

    - It's easy to "evolve" creations. I.e. tweak the prompt, increase the resolution, and/or just run them for longer.

    - You don't need to keep the tab open to see the result.

    It's free for basic use, but does cost money for extended use. Unfortunately I don't have the same access to GPUs as Google does.

    Try it out. Would love to get the thoughts of the HN community!

  • by protogenes on 8/6/21, 12:46 AM

    Cool! There are at least 2 more VQGAN + CLIP systems:

    - makeai.art (also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28070149)

    - https://NeuralBlender.com

  • by mkishi on 8/6/21, 2:33 AM

    I've been meaning to experiment with GAN art for a while now, but never managed to actually study or run any notebooks. I saw NightCafe Creator mentioned in another thread earlier today, and it made it too easy not to try a few prompts. Very neat first experience!

    https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/EqWtT6LUB3WwVd3T56...

    https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/iH0oqPjpo4oEHvxwlB...

    Does it support the pipes and weights I saw mentioned in a few notebooks, eg. "motorbike:75 | bicycle:25 | car:0"?

  • by math0ne on 8/6/21, 3:03 AM

    Really cool, if there are just two terms is is basically two images combined?

    existential dread simulator: https://nightcafe-studio.imgix.net/jobs/GFM872ChxPF4Xeb2jTiC...

    graffiti sunset: https://nightcafe-studio.imgix.net/jobs/MJfXTM5rFdNqHcR5xBRG...

  • by wraptile on 8/6/21, 5:05 AM

    My first one turned out to be pretty great!

    https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/70lx2Il45nK1rmcE1D...

    I've been playing around with AI art generators for a while now and they are always great fun. Though it weirdly motivates to do some painting or creating of my own as if I need to compete with it. I think AI generators as inspiration tools is a very interesting use-case that I'd like to see more of!

    As a side note, have any people bought any of the prints?

  • by IMAYousaf on 8/6/21, 6:04 AM

    This is what I prompted it. Actually very surprised with the results. Conceptually it did a good job:

    https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/JxN2V4LL2mTozEoPLV...

    Prompt:

    a large robot is fighting another large robot with a scenic background over the water 8k resolution

  • by nickdrewe on 8/6/21, 1:05 AM

    Looking through the recent and top creations, it seems that including specific artistic styles or moods in the prompt produces more recognisable results. Do you have any other tips for crafting the prompt?

  • by mattway on 8/6/21, 2:04 AM

    The text to image results look pretty awesome, but I feel like they all have a "neural net" quality to them. Whilst the style transer results come out more unique. Do you think it would become possible to combine the two techniques? Eg. Generate me a pic of this text, but in this images style?

  • by wyldfire on 8/6/21, 7:05 AM

    "Well, that's just like, your opinion, man" https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/mkjqWgDr9xw2wz3h3U...

  • by tru342 on 8/6/21, 1:55 AM

  • by TekMol on 8/6/21, 5:09 AM

    Interesting to see an art creator based around buying credits.

    Do you use Shopify for the order processing?