Westlake Publishing Forums

Stuart, always brilliantly executed!

garage is looking good 

Very very nice indeed. I love the regulators on the gas tanks, they look just right, and the cylinders look like they are in pretty good nick compared to the ones we get delivered at work.

Very, very nice!
I'm going to copy that torch cart someday!
MJinTN

This is an inspirational build. I want to build your gas station full size for a shop.
I have the welding cart, just need to make everything else...
Regards
Marty J

Quote from: Marty J on December 10, 2025, 07:00:06 AMThis is an inspirational build. I want to build your gas station full size for a shop.

That would be wonderful Marty. I would love to see it when it's completed.  I only hope it doesn't take you as long to build a full size version as it has taken me to build my 1/12th scale model.

Stuart

Bloody Brilliant Work... as usual!

I've recently been playing around with AI and seeing what I could come up with by adding photos of my incomplete gas station and asking AI to place a background, landscape and even a figure representing Luke, the gas station owner.  Here's the result.

I have always envisioned the location of my gas station model to be in Southern California, near the orange groves of Redlands where I raised my family.  I think this image does a pretty fair job of suggesting that. 

That looks good, Stuart.

This is the photo I began with.

I like the realistic background in the lower photo. Oh, silly me.

Seriously, though, did you use AI via Photoshop or did you use something like ChatGPT? Did you use a free or a pay version? And did AI get it right the first time or did it take a lot of follow-ups?

Russ

Russ --

I used chatGPT, the paid version.  I subscribed because I have been working on a project for my son.

And NO, it took many attempts for AI to get it close to being what I wanted or asked for.  The orange orchards, distant mountains and gravel foreground were not much of a problem but trying to get the figure in the right place and scaled the correct height took much effort with rewording and careful descriptions.  I also discovered that when trying to tweak an image multiple times with new instructions, the original photograph begins to deteriorate.  Consequently, I had to begin afresh at least half a dozen times with new wording to finally wind up with an acceptable result. But even still I am noticing things about the above version that are distortions from the original photo.

Stuart

As you, I have noticed shortcomings and errors when using AI. An article by the CEO of an AI corporation says in just a couple of years it will be vastly superior to what it is now. He urges us to take it seriously. He explains it is now at the stage COVID was when we first heard about it and how, two years later, everybody was in lockdown. His point is that all of us should learn to use AI or, among other things, we'll risk losing our jobs.

I embrace positive change but hope, since we can't prevent its growth, in the future we would use AI judiciously and with caution.

Russ

I think that analogy with COVID was unfortunate. Two years after we first heard about COVID, many of us were dead. Using AI massively increases a person's or an AI's productivity, so there won't be the need for many jobs for carbon lifeforms in the future, despite what the CEOs say.

On a brighter note: as well as backgrounds for models, AI can do the modelling too. I asked chat GPT if she could create files to send to a 3-d printer for a HO-scale 1920s petrol pump. She replied that she could and:

To design it properly, I need:
Printer type:
- Resin (SLA/MSLA)
- FDM (filament)

Detail level
- Basic layout (good for layout distance viewing)
- Highly detailed (visible rivets, embossed panels, hose coupling, etc.)

Specific prototype style
For example:
- Gilmore Oil Company visible pump style
- Texaco visible pump
- Shell early visible pump
- Generic 1920s "visible gas pump" (glass cylinder top)

Separate glass cylinder globe?
(Many 1920s pumps had the tall visible glass measuring cylinder.)


I was impressed.

ChatGPT can be part of a workflow to 3D models but won't generate the model.

It's handy for generating the images that other AIs can use to produce models though.

Meshy, Hitem3D and Tripo (and others) can produce models.  Below is the ChatGPT image when asked for a 30s female passenger standing waiting for a train.  You can refine this as needed by asking for whatever suits.  Using this image in the other AIs produces the 3D models illustrated.  These are all high poly watertight printable models.  Not perfect by any means but perfectly acceptable in scales less that 1:64 and easily refinable in larger scales.

This was all done with free/demo versions and one could viably get to a printable figure in 5 minutes.