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Archviz Freelancers: 4 AI Game-Changers
AI is at the center of attention for every new piece of article. There's not a single app nowadays that is not leveraging the word AI (even though it often isn't even AI) in order to make it look trendy.
In this short piece, I want to expand on how AI can impact the productivity of freelancers (more so than studios) and how this might reshuffle the landscape of the archviz industry.
Freelancing
Freelancing is great, until you understand that everything is up to you, and that everything that you want to get done, needs to be done by you, otherwise... you're not really freelancing anymore.
Making images is already a lot of work, but running the whole business around it, while interesting and potentially fulfilling when done properly, is a noticeable piece of the whole cake that freelancing is.
Luckily for us, the latest breakthroughs in AI can help us on multiple aspects of freelancing. Below is a short list of just the visible part of the iceberg.
Ideation
Ideation is a big step in the process of making images. It actually is probably the most important. Poor ideation will lead to underwhelming images, even if you make them super realistic. Because a boring realistic image, is boring before being realistic. Luckily, we can leverage the power of AI to push further the envelope of ideation, and come up with even more creative approaches to new projects.
Concept research
If you want to make good images, you need a good initial concept. While I don't think AI can give you the concept itself, it can feed you some ideas on how to turn it into visuals. This is where tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion or Project Dream can become interesting.
If you want to make good images, you need a good initial concept. While I don't think AI can give you the concept itself, it can feed you some ideas on how to turn it into visuals. This is where tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion or Project Dream can become interesting.
You can also do it through a more open conversation with ChatGPT or Perplexity in order to find leads on how to convey specific ideas that you'd have identified with your client beforehand.
References
I'm a big advocate of using references. Used properly, they can leverage your creativity to new heights at a faster speed than just starting from scratch for every project. AI can also help in this step. You can use ChatGPT or Perplexity to describe your project and ask for references on the subject that tackle the same subject. You can use Midjourney or Stable Diffusion to generate references for different aspects of your work (color palettes, lighting, framing, details, atmosphere, etc.).
I'm a big advocate of using references. Used properly, they can leverage your creativity to new heights at a faster speed than just starting from scratch for every project. AI can also help in this step. You can use ChatGPT or Perplexity to describe your project and ask for references on the subject that tackle the same subject. You can use Midjourney or Stable Diffusion to generate references for different aspects of your work (color palettes, lighting, framing, details, atmosphere, etc.).
Workflow optimization
Archviz artists have always had this tendency to obsess over workflow and the technical aspect of the craft. While this is indeed important, AI is actually interesting because it makes the technical aspect so easy, that we can finally focus back to what matters : the artistic aspect.
Script writing
Automation and bespoke scripts are key if you want to stop wasting your time. Luckily, ChatGPT is a great copilot for medium to decently advanced scripting for 3ds max. I know "true coders" will find laughable the quality of the output of ChatGPT, but what is even more laughable is how MAXscript sucks and doesn't have a decent updated documentation in 2024.
Automation and bespoke scripts are key if you want to stop wasting your time. Luckily, ChatGPT is a great copilot for medium to decently advanced scripting for 3ds max. I know "true coders" will find laughable the quality of the output of ChatGPT, but what is even more laughable is how MAXscript sucks and doesn't have a decent updated documentation in 2024.
What matters is that you can easily describe what you need and get a workable script within a few hours and then save a lot of time and money on your future projects.
There's something satisfying to clicking the render button and knowing when you come back in the morning the day after each image has been turned into a proper psd file with your usual folder structure applied, the right naming convention, and your reference folder filtered properly so that you already know where you're going with each file.
Upscaling & interpolation
Animation has always been tricky for freelancers because rendering thousands of frames used to require a local rendering farm that was only accessible to big studios. With the advent of real time, it did change a little bit, but rendering a 4K animation is still very complicated for freelancers.
Animation has always been tricky for freelancers because rendering thousands of frames used to require a local rendering farm that was only accessible to big studios. With the advent of real time, it did change a little bit, but rendering a 4K animation is still very complicated for freelancers.
Cloud farms like Chaos Cloud or RenderFarm have been trying to help, but their cost efficiency is still questionable and will eat up a good chunk of your revenue.
With the progress in scaling and interpolation with the likes of Topaz, combined with real time solutions like Unreal or Vantage, it becomes possible to render high quality videos at a fraction of the cost and time.
There are still some caveat as to when you can use them without losing too much quality, but in most cases, you can usually render almost at half the resolution and half or even less the framerate, and still get decent looking outputs.
This is a big change because it makes animation more likely to be adopted, and with more players on the market, it will hopefully bring innovation to that medium because, let's be honest, 99,9% of the marketing animations out there are so boring and relying on the same luxury tropes it becomes laughable.
Bespoke assets
For a long time, populating your images was by far the most tedious and time consuming task. Even when automating what could be automated (color adjustments, cast shadows, etc), you still had to find the right cutout, in the right perspective, manually place it in the canvas, manually blend it in, and repeat with each character.
For a long time, populating your images was by far the most tedious and time consuming task. Even when automating what could be automated (color adjustments, cast shadows, etc), you still had to find the right cutout, in the right perspective, manually place it in the canvas, manually blend it in, and repeat with each character.
Nowadays, with Midjourney or Stable Diffusion (or Photoshop generative fill), you can simply generate every cutout you need.
I remember having a scene to work on with people restoring art works taking a break. That's a very specific thing that would normally require a specific photo shoot, or hours of looking for the right photos and then combining different images.
With Midjourney, a few minutes generally are enough to get to the desired result, put it in Stable Diffusion to get rid of weird faces, and you can then throw everything in your posproduction tool, and place your cutouts.
This gives a chance to freelancers to experiment with much more original and creative composition by not being limited to the entourage they have on their hard drive.
Enhancement
Decent looking 3D people changed a little bit the game, but populating your scene with playmobile looking people is still a bit underwhelming in terms of result and the contrast with a nice looking 3D model can sometimes be frustrating.
Decent looking 3D people changed a little bit the game, but populating your scene with playmobile looking people is still a bit underwhelming in terms of result and the contrast with a nice looking 3D model can sometimes be frustrating.
In the same way, if you use cutout from Midjourney, they will often tend to not look quite right.
Fortunately, with tools like Stable Diffusion or Magnific AI, or Project Dream, you can upscale and enhance your image and recover nice details, especially in the faces and fabrics of characters, making them blend in seamlessly.
This also helps in making vegetation looking better, adding details that you were too lazy to model, and overall refine a little bit the textures.
Bottleneck identification
You can also use an AI tool to identify the bottlenecks of your process. The idea is to have a simple conversation with say ChatGPT, or Perplexity, describing in depth your process and asking them where they see bottlenecks, and how each of these can be optimized, or automated, ideally with the use of other AI tools.
You can also use an AI tool to identify the bottlenecks of your process. The idea is to have a simple conversation with say ChatGPT, or Perplexity, describing in depth your process and asking them where they see bottlenecks, and how each of these can be optimized, or automated, ideally with the use of other AI tools.
Marketing
As a freelancer, you are in charge of your marketing. Some enjoy it. Others don't. With AI, you can refine your marketing strategy, make it more coherent and personal, and deploy it in an easier way.
Social media managing
You can use AI to help you manage your different social media accounts, repackage and repurpose your content, rewrite content for specific platforms, and basically handle the whole thing (if you trust it) so that you don't have to touch it too much.
You can use AI to help you manage your different social media accounts, repackage and repurpose your content, rewrite content for specific platforms, and basically handle the whole thing (if you trust it) so that you don't have to touch it too much.
Bear in mind that you need to spend extra time at prompting and refining the models so that they don't look too "AI-written" to mere mortals, otherwise you'll most probably lose more than you'll win.
I stopped counting the number of people I've unfollowed on Linked-In since they started binge writing garbage with AI just do be posting daily.
Keep in mind that AI will not create a value proposition out of thin air. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say. So make sure you have something to say, something to share, before bothering working on it.
Graphic design and website management
I personally enjoy a lot wasting my time redoing my websites on a regular basis and experiment with ideas. Still, you can also just outsource the ideas and design to some AI tools in order to avoid the headache of doing it yourself.
There are many platform nowadays that just prompt you regarding what you want and can churn out a few decent options for your portfolio which will most probably be enough.
I personally enjoy a lot wasting my time redoing my websites on a regular basis and experiment with ideas. Still, you can also just outsource the ideas and design to some AI tools in order to avoid the headache of doing it yourself.
There are many platform nowadays that just prompt you regarding what you want and can churn out a few decent options for your portfolio which will most probably be enough.
Business management
Administration and business development is not the fanciest topic, but it is paramount even for a solopreneur. AI can also help us here in tailoring strategies to get new leads, or to handle day to day tasks like accounting.
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Lead creation
- Tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity can help you in your lead generation endeavour by identifying potential clients that could fit what you're looking for.
- I personally am more of an advocate for organic growth, but whatever floats your boat.
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Cold emailing
- Again, with the same tool you can tailor better looking (and without spelling errors ideally) cold emailing for specific purposes and leads. Properly done, this can increase your conversion rate. But bear in mind we're still talking about cold emailing, so you won't go that far anyway with it.
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Invoicing
- As a freelancer you usually don't handle 10 invoices per week, but still, you can leverage AI to handle your invoicing a bit more seamlessly and consistently.
The freelancing powerhouse
The impact of AI for freelancers might really be even bigger than for companies. Why? Because it becomes finally possible to delegate and automate secondary tasks that are not core to the value proposition of your work. It also becomes possible to handle much bigger projects thanks to rendering optimization. While still in their early stage, AI agents have the potential for becoming proper helpers for secondary (and even some primary) tasks in a near future.
Being able to leverage this and build your own in-house digital team will help freelancer compete with bigger studios, thus levelling the playing field, and ideally bringing back some innovation and creativity into the industry.
The drawbacks of AI, turned to 11
Now, there is one main drawback that I see with the state of AI and its current use. This could take a whole article, but I'll boil down the idea into just a few sentences to wrap up this article : the absence of customization and tailoring.
AI is evolving fast, and there's a FOMO that is bigger than ever. You need to hop on the AI train now! What this means is that now, almost everybody is using the same fricking tools for everything, in the same way.
This paradoxically lead to images that look the same, texts that sound the same, and a very recognizable styling inherited from MagnificAI, Midjourney or ChatGPT.
I touched on this caveat in a previous article, as well as on the topic of time. While AI can for sure save us time on many tasks, it's good not to go all the way to the extreme by saving time and then delivering poor undifferentiated results that will hurt you more than anything in the long run.
AI is generally feeding a decent base to work from, but very rarely does it give a refined final result that you can use as is. You always need to rephrase, always need to clone stamp, blend, correct.
So take time to explore, take time to create your own tools and workflows, leverage as much as you can this new tool to become a full-fledged freelancer. But be careful not to lose what makes your work yours in the process. AI has the power both to differentiate your work even more, or homogenize it even more. It's just a matter of how careful and mindful you are when using those tools on your work.
This is also a little hint for you to devote time to use more open-source and customizable (and free) tools that are widely available in the field of AI, rather than relying on ready-to-use, off the shelf, average looking solutions out of pure laziness.
Hope all this helps and gives you some perspective on where can AI help, and what to keep in mind when using those tools in order to not sabotage your own work, but elevate it.
Cheers
Simon
If you want to learn more about what matters, and not be a slave to mindless AI prompts, you can check out my full course on composition, how to make cool images, make them efficiently (using AI properly), and sell them like hot cakes to clients, check out my course From The Ground Up.
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About this article
AI is here to stay, but how can it impact the everyday life of freelancers? In this article I list the main aspects that can dramatically change the way freelancers operate, and how it can reshape their business positioning.
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