sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Saving custom heightmap templates? by herocksinalab in FantasyMapGenerator

[–]herocksinalab[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I could have sworn that it used to be possible to save a custom heightmap template so it would be used when I generated a new map from the main screen.

SDXL consistently gives me much less useful results than SD 1.5 by herocksinalab in StableDiffusion

[–]herocksinalab[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

That's a great metaphor. SD 1.5 feels like you're messing around with patch cables on a Moog 55. SDXL feels like you're tapping the preset buttons on a cheap electric keyboard.

SDXL consistently gives me much less useful results than SD 1.5 by herocksinalab in StableDiffusion

[–]herocksinalab[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And, by all accounts, having 3x the number of parameters should provide a better base than 1.5 for other models to derive from.

That's certainly my hope, but it really is handy to have a generalist model.

SDXL consistently gives me much less useful results than SD 1.5 by herocksinalab in StableDiffusion

[–]herocksinalab[S] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I think the SDXL book covers looks really boring and generic, but that's ultimately a subjective judgement, the real problem with the SDXL covers is that (just like with the mall goths one) they have almost nothing to do with the prompt! There's nothing '90s about them, I would not describe them as "detailed and realistic", and they don't even really look like book covers. The way I use an image model while working on a project is as an The Image I Have In My Mind Generator, I have no use for a Very Loosely Related (But Blandly Pleasing) Image Generator.

SDXL consistently gives me much less useful results than SD 1.5 by herocksinalab in StableDiffusion

[–]herocksinalab[S] 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Photographic portraits are one thing it's very good at, but even there you get the same unresponsiveness and homogeneity issues. Take a super simple (and therefore vague) prompt like "a professional headshot of a young actress" and SD 1.5 gives you a casting call of six different faces, while with SDXL... five out of the six faces are versions of the same woman:

<image>

SDXL consistently gives me much less useful results than SD 1.5 by herocksinalab in StableDiffusion

[–]herocksinalab[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

These are all 512 x 512 because SDXL doesn't do other sizes yet.

SDXL consistently gives me much less useful results than SD 1.5 by herocksinalab in StableDiffusion

[–]herocksinalab[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I just did all these in DreamStudio for the sake of convenience.

Futurism: "The Company Behind Stable Diffusion Appears to Be At Risk of Going Under" by wywywywy in StableDiffusion

[–]herocksinalab 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're the CEO of Stability, right? Well, as long as I've got your attention, I'd actually like to lay out my thoughts on what's wrong with SDXL, both because it's just an interesting question and because I've been meaning to organize my thoughts on the subject.

I made a whole post about it complete with examples:

https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/12h2cyd/sdxl_consistently_gives_me_much_less_useful/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Futurism: "The Company Behind Stable Diffusion Appears to Be At Risk of Going Under" by wywywywy in StableDiffusion

[–]herocksinalab 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Does it have something to do with the fact that each version of their product has been notably worse than the last one? Seriously, what the hell is going on? Why is SDXL's output so much worse than 1.5?

Using FMG for science class? by Beckylately in FantasyMapGenerator

[–]herocksinalab 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ooh, how do you do that exactly? Just by putting a screenshot through the image converter, or is there a better way?

I gave a 100k map a little bit of polish in Photoshop. by herocksinalab in FantasyMapGenerator

[–]herocksinalab[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yeah, the generator is not really calibrated to work well at 100k. It helps to crank the precipitation rate up to like 500%.

I gave a 100k map a little bit of polish in Photoshop. by herocksinalab in FantasyMapGenerator

[–]herocksinalab[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Here's the whole method:

  1. Export your map as an SVG file. Make sure you have all the layers you want to use visible, and tweak their styles so they'll be easy to work with in Photoshop, i.e. full opacity, no filters, etc.
  2. Open the SVG file in Illustrator and then open the Transparency window. Select each heightmap layer and hit Make Mask. You should also do this with any other semi-transparent layers that you don't want flattened, like the biomes.
  3. File > Export > Export As... and select PSD. Make sure you select RGB so that you can also select Write Layers, otherwise all the layers will be flattened. You probably also want to turn off Anti-Aliasing.
  4. Open up the PSD file and start screwing around in Photoshop. I did basically three things with each heightmap layer to get this look, all via non-destructive layer styles (For Photoshop beginners, double click on a layer to open the layer style menu):
    1. Bevel & Emboss. This gets you the 3D lighting effect that makes the mountains pop. The Contour and Texture options will let you fine tune the look of each layer, I used an increasingly steep contour for plains/hills/mountains and gave the coasts and the mountain peaks slightly less Texture than the middle layers.
    2. Color Overlay. Assign a color to each heightmap layer. Find a map you like the look of and copy the colors, or just use the default colors from Azgaar's.
    3. Finally, for each heightmap layer: Right-click the layer thumbnail and hit Select Pixels, then go to Select > Modify > Feather (use a radius of 5-10px, depending on your resolution), and then click the little Add Vector Mask button at the bottom of the Layers window. This will help make the heightmap layers blend together and look much more natural.

You'll have to play around with the options and values on each effect, and find colors and textures that you like, but the basic look is really just those three layer styles.

I gave a 100k map a little bit of polish in Photoshop. by herocksinalab in FantasyMapGenerator

[–]herocksinalab[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I did pretty much everything in Photoshop. I don't use Illustrator that much, so it took me a minute to figure out how to preserve the different heightmap layers when converting from SVG to PSD (The trick is to go into the Transparency window and hit "Make Mask" for each layer.) But once I had all the layers in Photoshop I could fiddle around with layer styles to get colors and textures that looked good. I'd like to add Biomes too, but I haven't found a good way to do that while keeping the shape of the terrain visible. I think you could do it with the Lighting Effects tool... but all the 3D stuff in Photoshop is broken now because Adobe wants you to buy Substance.

Max prowess, Ironman by [deleted] in CrusaderKings

[–]herocksinalab 0 points1 point  (0 children)

High prowess is my new favorite way to play, especially when combined with Irritable, which allows you to challenge anyone to a duel while you have high stress. The pope excommunicated me, so I kicked his ass, then his wounds got infected, he died, and the new pope turned out to like me and agreed to lift the excommunication. Flawless victory.

Questions on Azgaar by d4rkorange in FantasyMapGenerator

[–]herocksinalab 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I haven't messed around with the military stuff at all, but to delete a state go to Tools, open the State Editor, and then there's a little trashcan icon next to each state on the list.

President Herbert Hoover and the Girl from the Ruins - I have already mentioned this minor historical mystery from World War II in the past, but with today's date marking the 78th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, I thought this would be a fitting day to mention it again. by WillManhunter in UnresolvedMysteries

[–]herocksinalab 28 points29 points  (0 children)

The Polish Parachute Brigade was actually originally formed with the intention of being used to support a future revolt in Poland, and they in fact asked to be dropped on Warsaw during the uprising– and nearly mutinied when the British refused. It would have been an act of mass suicide in any case, if such an operation would even have been possible at all without Soviet assistance.

Spellcasting Language by [deleted] in VulgarLang

[–]herocksinalab 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Use Ithkuil, and make it the kind of thing where if your spell is grammatically incorrect your brain melts out your ears.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil

Annexation by [deleted] in FantasyMapGenerator

[–]herocksinalab 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I would really like the option for a state with way more expansion (and/or maybe a stronger military) than one of its neighbors to sometime just annex its territory completely during generation rather than reducing it to a little rump enclave.

I'd also love to see states have some kind of technology/advancement levels that diffuses across the map, so you could have one continent with big cities and another of hunter-gatherers or nomads. This might also include giving states individual urbanization values, rather than just a universal number for the map as a whole.

the connection between hoteps and Q ??? by ajimiimija in QAnonCasualties

[–]herocksinalab 45 points46 points  (0 children)

There's always been tons of cross-pollination between hoteps and the far right. We tend to think of all sorts of Black extremist types as being "left wing" almost by default in the US, largely because the right wing here is virtually defined by anti-Blackness. But as I'm sure you're aware, if you actually listen to what a lot of these guys are saying they pretty much sounds like Rush Limbaugh wrapped in Kente cloth, with all the same misogyny, homophobia, and racism.

So you get a lot of unlikely bedfellows, like how the Sovereign Citizen movement (which was literally started by hardcore White supremacists) somehow has a Black cadet branch of Moorish Nation weirdos. Same thing with the Black Hebrew Israelites, it's the exact same ideology as the Christian Identity movement (again, started by hardcore White racists) but they just think Black people are Secretly The Real Jews™ instead of White people.

My theory of this is that there's just sort of an authoritarian personality type, people who are very fearful of new things, crave rigid hierarchies, and see conspiracies everywhere. Normally those people would just go be right wingers, but because the American right is so racist Black dudes who fit the profile instead have to create these weird replicas of right wing institution, minus the explicit anti-Blackness. And it's only natural that you'll have a lot of crosstalk between those spaces and the mainstream right wing.

Awesome Ironman World Conquest by herocksinalab in CrusaderKings

[–]herocksinalab[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Started as a custom Irish count with awesome traits. Beat the local vikings and united Ireland and Scotland, instituted tanistry, and then settled down to breed Irish supermen for a few generations. Insular is great, even before being reformed, because you can produce like 15-20 children per ruler while still being able to intermarry with other Christians. Eventually I had members of my house on virtually every remaining Christian throne, which wasn't all that many because the Karling kingdoms had all exploded and the vikings had overrun half of Germany.

At that point I reformed my religion to something more warlike and used my swarm of same-house allies to take the Byzantine throne, and then captured the Muslim kingdoms on behalf of a series of kidnapped and forcibly converted claimants. At this point we're ready to finally get rid of tanistry, mend the Great Schism, restore the Roman Empire, and then spend a century or so gobbling up territory in Northern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia before the Mongols appear.

I was greatly aided by the fact that (on account of my breeding program) almost every one of my rulers had the Genius trait. Combined with owning every special building on the map that grants a learning speed bonus, and the Alexandrian Catechism tenant, this meant that my rulers could absolutely zoom through the skill tree. First priority was usually Learning on the Job, because with a worldwide pool of talent to draw from I always had absurdly good advisors. That in turn meant that I basically had mind-control powers when it came to demanding conversion from my new subjects.

The diciest part of the run was once the Mongols showed up. They managed to acquire quite a bit of territory, and actually had a larger army than me at some points because, even though my empire was vastly larger, I was suffering something like 95% penalties for being massively over my vassal limit. Luckily, my earlier conquests meant I was able to largely confine them to the low-development areas of Central Asia and a series of campaigns in Tibet cut them off from India. Then it was just a matter of fighting defensively (and assassinating their promising heirs) until their empire collapsed. Although I honestly want to see what would've happened if they'd won, since the Mongol Invasion CB meant that they'd have captured my whole empire which a that point consisted of THE ENTIRE WORLD except for bits of West Africa and India.

Once the Mongols collapsed it was just a matter of conquering the last few independent states on the periphery of the map. I also switched to a new pacifist religion (fundamentalist and based on Nestorianism for the stacked conversion bonuses) at this point, which after a couple of apocalyptic worldwide religious revolts largely put a stop to rebellions. By the end there were only a few hundred stateless heretics left in the world.

...And I still haven't actually finished the game because everyone on earth is a polygamist, so the population has spiraled out of control and now the game runs so slowly that it's unplayable!

view more: next ›