On September 6, 2024, Roblox, the online gaming platform, introduced an AI tool at the Developer Conference. The tool can create HD 3D environments from a single text prompt. This innovation promises to advance game development by simplifying environment design.
The new model will interpret text, images, videos, or 3D asset prompts, allowing users to modify or expand existing 3D assets easily. Trained on 3D data from Roblox creators and augmented with open-source and licensed datasets, it can generate 3D objects or complete scenes.
Roblox’s previous AI assistant tool added textures and used existing assets to create scenes. The new 3D model generator, capable of creating content from scratch, will eventually be integrated with this tool.
Let’s take a scene at how this advanced model works. The prompt is “Generate a robotic car that will turn into a flying car whenever it goes high”. That’s it the AI with generate this for you. Users can also modify or expand scenes —let’s say, change a daytime scene to night or more.
While developers can create similar scenes manually on the platforms’s creator studio. Roblox claims that the new Gen AI model can make realistic 3D art in no time. The company has not yet announced a specific launch date for the tool.
According to Marcus Holmström, CEO of The Gang, a company that builds games on Roblox: “Instead of sitting and doing it by hand, now you can test different approaches”. “For example, if you’re going to build a mountain, you can do different types of mountains, and on the fly, you can change it. Then we would tweak it and fix it manually so it fits. It’s going to save a lot of time.”
Roblox’s new tool “tokenizes” 3D blocks, assigning them values based on how likely they are to follow one another. This works similarly to how language models predict the next word in a sentence.
If you prompt “The capital of France is …” into an LLM like GPT-4. It will analyze the most likely token to be next. It will come up with “Paris”. Roblox’s work is just like that to make sure every detail is covered.
Although it may seem straightforward, this process is quite challenging for a few reasons. First, there is less data available for 3D environments compared to text. Secondly, to train the model, Roblox must rely heavily on user-generated data from creators as well as external datasets.
Roblox’s new tool is set to integrate AI into all aspects of its platform. Currently, the company has 250 active AI models, including ones that analyze real-time voice chat for inappropriate language. The system can issue warnings and enforce bans for repeated violations.
Coming ahead, Roblox aims to let gamers join a 100-player battle royale game that runs smoothly on devices with only 2GB of RAM. If successful, this could let people with older iPhones or budgeted phones enjoy the game.
