This weekend, I decided to get creative and visited a local art studio in Austin. I spent the day relaxing, drinking a bottle of wine, and making watercolor paintings.

I love the idea of combining analog art with AI. A lot of AI-generated art feels bland and predictable, but starting with something original like a watercolor painting can lead to more unique results.

Hanging out at Craft in East Austin, a cool creative space
a sunflower watercolor painting by Spencer Cooley
A sun flower painting that I made

I isolated the flower part and ran it through a model called TripoSR from Stability. Stability offers some cool open-source models, you can check out the source code here: TripoSR on GitHub.

Using TripoSR to convert a painting to a 3D model

I took that 3D model and loaded it up into a gltf viewer with a skybox:

The result isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough to use in a simple game or a fun cartoonish animated short. The process is straightforward and doesn’t require specialized knowledge of 3D modeling.

I like this model because it is open source. When I use tools, I like to know they can be integrated into my own projects without vendor lock in. It’s nice to know you can self-host if you have an application idea in mind.

I have some ideas for tools to streamline the animation process within an easy user interface. I will probably do more with this concept later as I explore more of the open source world of generative ai.