AI is Creating 3D Art in Seconds! Now, What?

A 3D artist’s honest reflection on fear, identity, and the quiet anxiety of creating in the age of machines

Today, I saw something I wasn’t ready for: An AI turned a single image into a fully detailed 3D model… in seconds! And not some rough base mesh either. It was clean, elegant, even beautiful. It felt like watching the future unfold in real time and realizing you’re not the one holding the pen anymore.

I didn’t freak out. Didn’t get angry, neither wanted to smash my keyboard nor think about quitting… I just sat there, letting the weight of it sink in. A quiet kind of fear. The kind that doesn’t shout, it just stays. Because this isn’t just about a new tool. It’s about something else creeping in. Something that doesn’t get tired. Doesn’t doubt and doesn’t feel pressure or creative blocks.

And here I am, someone who’s spent years learning this craft, fighting with topology, pushing verts, redoing UVs, trying to get that “feel” right.

So yes… I couldn’t help but ask myself: Where does that leave us? I’m not saying I don’t believe in what I do, really. I know how to see. I know how to choose what matters in an image. But for the first time in a long time, I felt like maybe that wasn’t enough.
Not in the face of something that can do in seconds what I’ve trained myself to do over the years.

This isn’t about adapting! (we’ve always adapted) to new render engines, plugins, pipelines. We figure it out. But this? This feels different. Like the ground beneath our feet is rewriting itself as we walk.

I found in my old PC this render I made back in 2006 while studying 3D. I thought it’d be fun to see if ChatGPT could replicate it. So I uploaded it and asked it to generate a similar image.

And here’s what DALL-E came up with… Scary! Huh?

Well… I’m not here to wrap this up neatly. There’s no lesson. No “this made me stronger” line. No silver lining. Just the truth:
I’m scared and I don’t know what to do with this feeling yet.

So Now What? I wish I had an answer. And it’s likely that I won’t have it tomorrow either.
In fact, this article does not have an end point. And this (like my relationship with AI) is a work-in-progress. But right now… this post is the best I can do. And like me, it’s unfinished.

I’ll be back when I have something else to say.

AI is Creating 3D Art in Seconds! Now, What?

A 3D artist’s honest reflection on fear, identity, and the quiet anxiety of creating in the age of machines

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