Inside the MIND of Future Car Designers! Hochschule München Diploma Show 2024

[@ProfWic]

As a transportation designer, who has worked for a german oem in the exterior design department and having over 30 years of professional teaching experience with over 95% of working alumni in the automotive design studios worldwide, I consider AI as a perfect tool to enhance the design process, because it is an "Inspiration amplifier and frustration tranquilizer." Because I have experienced several times the large concerns of critics and "die-hards" whenever a new technology is introduced. This was the case when traditional representation techniques using colored pencils, ball pionts, ellipse guides, sweeps, markers, chalks, tape renderings, and airbrush were gradually replaced by the digital revolution. The advantages of being able to reverse individual process steps meant that a small mistake at the final stage of a rendering no longer rendered hours of work futile. Today, one would only be met with pity or laughter if one seriously harbored prejudice against creative tools like Photoshop or Illustrator, or if they prohibited students from using these digital tools in the design process. The same happened with traditional clay modeling. There was a true outcry from traditionalists when digital model creation finally gained traction, offering a real alternative to the time-consuming physical model-making process, with advantages such as simultaneous engineering. In short...I’m a huge fan of traditional techniques, but I equally embrace anything that makes design work easier and offers real advantages in the workflow, allowing more time to be dedicated to the essential and critical design tasks. My motto, as a passionate traditionalist with an insatiable curiosity for all innovations, is: Don’t abandon one while embracing the other, but instead, combine both to find your own optimal path to success as a designer. This phrase we find ourselves in now captures the dual benefits of an AI tool that boosts creativity while reducing frustration by streamlining complex or tedious tasks in the design process. This technology marks a milestone in democratizing design. It's no longer limited to experts. For professionals, AI significantly improves quality while saving time in key phases of the design workflow. 1. Design is now decoupled from the need for artistic skills. With text commands and image inputs, many people can express their creativity for the first time. The high-quality visuals produced help them gain credibility in professional settings. 2. AI generates a wide range of creative ideas without restrictions or expectations. There's no need to immediately assess their usefulness, making it a quick and valuable source of inspiration for design innovations. 3. This openness also brings unpredictability. To manage this, the program offers up to four alternatives for any task. If needed, more results can be generated instantly. However, control over the outcome is limited, and manual adjustments are still needed to refine the AI’s proposals. 4. In Vizcom, "style palettes" guide the AI by using relevant images to steer results in the desired direction. This is crucial for meeting expectations. 5. Vizcom’s "workbench" allows users to manually refine AI-generated designs, ensuring precision in the final result. 6. The 3D functionality enables generating all perspective views from a single orthogonal view, like a side view. These can be exported as full 3D models. 7. This process reduces the usual loss of detail when translating designs from 2D to 3D, or from orthogonal to perspective views.

[@BerkKaplanDesigner]

It is a great summary which I hope will help people understand the situation and position of AI in a better way. At the beginning of this year I was talking about "AI will be a big part of this year" but still I had my doubts after seeing online comments. Then in March after having conversation with you, I got more and more confident. Not only you, but also the people who studied under your lead and now working in industry agrees with that vision. I wish there was a chance for everybody to listen your approach to get inspired. Unfortunately the negativity spread faster online but I know most of the silent viewers, agree with us. At least the insights from the car design industry show that! Thank you very much for your valuable comment on the video :)

[@MrAlziepen]

This argument falls flat because the same thing did not happen to traditional tools like clay sculpting and painting, or photo editing software. I understand the argument because you're comparing previous leaps of technology in the arts to AI image generation, which on the surface makes sense, it's a new “tool” to be used like any other, but for reasons I'll get into, it's not a 1:1 comparison. Digital modeling did not mine and data harvest all of the cumulative movements of the clay sculptors throughout their careers and translate that data into profit for Autodesk. Photoshop (when it initially launched) did not take thousands of hours of painting footage and use that cumulative data to emulate specific artists and their styles. (Although oddly enough if you have any photoshop document on adobe’s cloud they now own the rights to it and can use it for data harvesting in their AI models). For example there are brushes within photoshop called, chisel and fan, not specifically ‘Leonardo-brush’ or ‘Syd Mead brush’, just as there are filters like halftone and charcoal. They used math to approximate the desired effect, but obviously were never very good until the new photoshop got neural filters and AI features. There is no denying the time saving utility of image generators for rapid visualization from sketches like in Viscom, my argument is that these ‘tools’ are fundamentally different in their function, in that they cannot function without the data they’re trained on, which often but not always includes art in training datasets where artists are not compensated, or from “publicly available data from social media where web scrapers gather images. There would be no issue here if there was a mechanism where artists were compensated for their contribution to these billion dollar companies that charge token fees to use their products, but that’s just not the case. Midjouney had a leaked document listing 16 thousand artists that are used in a style guide that are recognized in prompts. It’s not only artists that are getting cloned either, for example Jet Li did not want to be in the 4th Matrix film because he did not want Werner Brothers to use performance capture of his moves so that they could own the IP rights to his movements and use them forever. So the issue isn’t necessarily with the technology of performance capture itself, which has been around for decades, it’s companies making clones or doppelgangers of actors, artists, extracting their economic value, and then owning that data as IP for the company to buy and trade on markets. So while it’s tempting to write off every new tech innovation as everyone just being a luddite, it’s important to analyze and listen to what people's critiques are of any new technology, especially with the potential to trigger widespread layoffs in all job markets. It’s also important to understand that the luddites weren’t anti-machine or anti loom, they were opposed to the idea of mass layoffs. Destroying thousands of workers' livelihoods whenever there’s an incremental improvement in some pre-existing technology is entirely avoidable, especially when the artists who are getting laid off are competing against the artificial versions of themselves.

[@MrAlziepen]

A little disappointing to see the level of AI involvement in the ideation phase. Plus I can't imagine presenting your concept in the final presentation. "Hello everyone, so here's what the AI spat out at me base on my inputs, then after some further back and fourth with some inputs and outputs I arrived at this look." If the creative process in art school is getting distilled into an automated pipeline what's the point exactly? So the student's can spend more time making theatrical quality movies of their designs in UE5? That's the other thing, So much is required of the undergrads, high quality 2d sketches and rendered artwork, high quality digital model, physical model, and cinematic animation. And more recently some studio sponsors attempt to own the rights to the student's designs under contract. At the end of the day is it about the design or about having a student that is capable of doing 5 jobs and fluent in 15 software packages? I can imagine the studio presentations 10 years from now, where in a semester students are expected to do half scale prototypes, make a feature length movie, construct their own ai design algorithms that emulate their unique sketch style, and have all of that somehow be owned by the studio sponsor.

[@santoku2027]

What a dystopian future of design. AI may actually in a way negatively affect the world of true design if we are not careful.

[@jonygold100]

Yeah, but maybe the first guy used it too, as a tool, but prefered to show sketches by hand rather than iA process... who knows..

[@nikousenpai]

​@@santoku2027 It's been happening for a while mate, companies have had access to some level of automation before the general public has, but I also feel like designers and aspiring designers lack the aesthetic sense to make something that looks truly unique, you look on some automotive design schools, behance and instagram pages, everyone's portfolio work looks the exact same blend of flashy 'Vizcom-style' cyberpunk aesthetic, the soul is completely gone and AI only amplifies it. To me it just feels like people compensate for their lack of aesthetic vision by making their renders and sketches look as pretty as possible. Can't speak on the research end of things without reading reports so i'm sure theres merit behind their ideas otherwise they wouldn't be green lit (hopefully!), but nothing actually stands out on the looks department, or at least, very few do.

[@tontidlamini3718]

​@@jonygold100 Even then still the process was automated to appeal their sponsors. If this is how the design process will look in the future, why bother having design as an industry or a career path? Be an engineer or a 3d visualisation modeller while using AI as a tool to keep everyone happy. At least Vizcom is trying to implement the design process in an effective way by reducing rendering times and making the process slightly quicker without destroying the main purpose of design. This is actually sad to look at because what is stopping major automotive companies from seeing transportation designers as a waste of space and bring in more engineering students to create designs using AI.

[@Augu162]

Completely agree with you

[@Zerotwostudio]

Impressive presentation. Good usage of Blender and Unreal Engine.

[@Alexgudmusic]

I'm so inspired to make a model of a car now

[@kirillnadtochiy5039]

This is really amazing. My favorite car was the one that you can upgrade and build with friends. It's a really cool and unique concept and thinking. It's very human oriented, and for bringing people together.

[@rinilraphy7409]

I think Bastian steffens have a really interesting idea!..........but I don't think companies would like it as much😢

[@jonygold100]

Amazing! those Behing the scenes and the Scale models process are very inspirational.. there is not so much videos about the process of modeling, printing, sanding.... I'm still studyin industrial design and this is another thing.

[@MyAkikan]

honestly the most beautiful car in this video is from far the purple Viper ! the sound of the V10 is incredible ! i was really surprise to see that this color match so good to it !!

[@Tejas.vm19]

8:17 where are the vents for the front end, like for the hot air release from the front wheel and radiators and all? Isn’t that important?

[@whynotbuildit]

some of these designs are too simple and cybertrucky for me. Much too little topology, edges like a knife... honestly hideous. I want future cars to look more like the viper lol

[@jonygold100]

Hi Berk! it would be so nice if you show more scale model process, from sketches until the final presentation with all those beautiful details..... there is not much videos about it..showing the process... I just found some about clay modeling.. It could be nice to see the 3D printed process, which materials they use?.... how they integrate the interior pieces into the model, etc.... Regards from Argentina!

[@Cred_it]

I was more interested in that F-Type, Viper and Audi Quattro. No AI , simple human brains who designed such timeless pieces of art.

[@santoku2027]

True honestly. I personally don't know what the brief required from these guys designing the cars, but the approach of AI, while intriguing and helpful, doesn't really help sell a good design for them. Most of the designs feel limited and generic to a typical Tesla Cybertruck. No true innovation but the presentations do look very good. Hope and pray they get amazing opportunities

[@Cred_it]

@@santoku2027 Exactly, that too from a renowned University is making me sad. There is no flow to the designs, students don't want to work with their own brain, instead becoming that lazy to trust on some other brain. That often results in designs that are generic and have no soul to it.

[@Tejas.vm19]

12:50 which software is that!???

[@Tejas.vm19]

11:10 showing the influence of ai in your portfolio hood? Cause won’t they feel that ai did majority of the work and not us!! Ik you the owner of vizcom which is tbh the life changing for me but what’s would they think if we add the ai models in too?

[@TT-rl4su]

What software are the students using for animation?

[@GEORGE.M.M]

Unreal engine 5

[@harisha.v6958]

what are the 3d printer brands these students used for their physical models?

[@BastianSteffens]

stratasys

[@harisha.v6958]

@@BastianSteffens thanks a lot man!!

[@mensahniikweikwuma-ss1qs]

❤