Didn't expect to see something I made on HN while my wife is trying to find something to watch on TV.
So about the site in case anyone is interested. I made it with a friend who was studying multimedia. He helped with the data and I did the coding. Took about a week or two.
The site was originally Flash (remember that). But I ported it to HTML5 a few years ago. It still has those Flash vibes I think. Posted the code to GitHub when I ported it. I did this mostly to keep it alive for old times sake.
So about the mobile support. I planned to do it but got sidetracked building a custom WebGL map renderer because phone performance was poor. However I never finished, life finds a way to get in the way and all that... I have some mobile designs lying around.
The other issue was when I first built the site YouTube didn't really play ads much at all, just those little text ads, and you could embed the player really tiny. So it worked better. In the original flash version I actually hid the video player. But that got the site blacklisted from YouTube, I asked a Google engineer on a dev forum to put a word in and they removed the block, very different times, this was back when Google was a different beast, and you could chat to real people online and the dev communities were much smaller.
I have a illustration of a much bigger map in my sketchbook. It has a lot more subgenres and interconnected things like historical events and so on. But it's huge unfolded, like 2x1.5m or something ridiculous.
I miss those days when the web was full of weird and experimental stuff. I grew up with Newgrounds and Geocities, I'm sure it's all still out there buried under a giant pile of SEO optimised refuse.
Younger people would never understand how amazing the internet was back in the 90s. Particularly before ads and SEO became an industry.
Also Flash, most people don't realize what we lost with Flash. The amount of non-professional multimedia content available was so great. It was a cooking ground for people to experiment with animation ideas. Very low hanging fruit.
HTML5/Canvas/CSS just don't have that accessibility.
Now the internet is a complete different beast. There are 10 main websites that everyone sees only, and everyone wants to monetize. All content is full of "antipatterns" to maximize monetization. It's very very sad.
Aaaanyway, sorry for the rant. I love your website. I'm a Metalhead myself, and this year I'll go back to Wacken for a 2nd time after 15 years!!
Amen! The only things that made the early web bad by comparison were popup ads and the lack of tabbed browsing. Popup windows that didn't rely on user interaction were always a bad idea and should never have existed. But besides that, yeah, I miss those days. I miss the days when I was a kid and I could stick some HTML on a server and people would actually find it. No SEO, ads, or shameless self promotion required.
Have you open any US news website in 5 years? Usually there are 2 or 3 layers of popups: subscribe!, cookies box, and news video stream playing on top of everything.
Seriously. EVERY game style that is now on the app store with ads between levels was completely free and hosted on sites like kongregate, ebaumsworld, or other flash game sites. Incremental games specifically were available in droves. It was a pretty cool time.
Creativity is still there, it's just on other platforms and / or through other media besides the web - tiktok, youtube, roblox, podcasts, fanfiction, art sites, etc.
It's still there, but you have to look AND be interested in it. Many of us were only interested in e.g. newgrounds and ignored deviantart. Many of a younger generation are only interested in e.g. tiktok and ignore tumblr.
Overall, I think it's fine, and / or the kids are alright.
> Now the internet is a complete different beast. There are 10 main websites that everyone sees only, and everyone wants to monetize. All content is full of "antipatterns" to maximize monetization. It's very very sad.
This was going to happen regardless of if we had Flash or not
> Younger people would never understand how amazing the internet was back in the 90s. Particularly before ads and SEO became an industry.
I don’t even think they’d value it to be honest. The culture of putting stuff out online now is to view everything as a potential revenue stream. If you can’t monetize it, why do it?
Thanks so much for this write up. It’s not often thought of that when you put something weird and experimental online just for fun that you’re signing up for years of careing and feeding. But that’s also kind of nice, it makes you go engage with your cool thing long after your impulse drove you to make it.
This is a cool thing. I hope you enjoyed remembering about it again today.
Very cool. Explored a lot of nodes, rekindled some old bands. I was wondering how this was vibe coded, since it was done so well, art wise. Then I read your post. This has such a different feel for whatever is usually made today, I really enjoyed it. Cheers
This is absolutely incredible. I've gotten much more into metal this year; unfortunately this only further enables that!
One disagreement: punk rock island should be a lot bigger in my opinion!
Garage and heavy metal definitely inspired the OG British punk rock scene, but they also inspired NY Dolls and Ramones (who formed specifically in response to the rising popularity of heavy metal, if memory serves), two massively influential bands that progenated several subgenres (pop-punk, which created Descendents, Green Day, Blink 182, etc; Ramones-core; melodic punk). DOA and Black Flag, both of whom are mentioned on the map, also helped inspire the whole Nardcore/West Coast thrash scene (RKL, DI, etc), which was happening, almost rebelliously, at the same time in the East Coast (Gang Green/Jerry's Kids, Proletariat, basically everyone on the "This is Boston, Not LA" album, which is fantastic and still holds up IMO).
I'm going to stop there because if I go any deeper, I'll have to start talking about emo, and that will for sure crash your map.
Anyway, metal is helping cleanse that part of my life; going to spend a lot of time going through the playlists in this map. :)
I interpret each of those outlying islands as representing an external influence to metal that is not elaborated further. Of course that island needs to be bigger, but so should the hard rock and psychedelic rock islands -- and they should extend into the 70s and 80s as well.
But this is a map of metal, not a map of music. If one were to draw a map of punk, metal would also just feature as a few small islands I gather, along with islands not mentioned here such as surf, reggae and hip hop.
Do you disagree with hardcore punk influence as being one of the key disambiguation between thrash from speed metal? Personally at least that's what I feel. I do understand this means for example a lot of Metallica won't count as thrash but I like to say if you slow down Metallica it sounds more like Black Sabbath while slowed down Slayer or Anthrax sounds quite different, so I feel there may be a hard physical evidence for my theory. I found it a bit odd you didn't have this aspect written in the statements about differences between speed metal and thrash metal.
I do like and agree that you put Slayer - Necrophiliac under the development of death metal. Though by those same accounts I'd have moved Kreator - Ripping Corpse from the thrash column to the death metal column, but that's just a personal line.
I also feel your tech death is biased too much toward 2000s rather than stuff like Sadus, Demilich or Disciples of Power.
Absolutely loved the inclusion of death n roll, one of my favorite substyles.
Well, sped-up Cathedral sounds like Bathory so... I don't know what that's physical evidence of? But I accept your theory as a valid theory, just because there's a test for it, even though I don't understand what the test shows.
I think Cathedral is closer to death metal structure in my personal view compared to classic Black Sabbath, so that should not be too surprising. My test is simple, the history of thrash itself shows a lot of it coming from combining hardcore punk influence directly to metal, a lot of old thrash feels to me having mild to overt hardcore sections or riffs at points. And I think that's the aspect that gives thrash its political themes and more direct lyrics compared to the more fantasy or generic bragging style of older metal.
That's the theory I know, too, but there are counter-examples. Quorthon for one always maintained that his influences were rock and glam. He may well have been taking the piss, but while most people insist he ripped-off Venom, his early stuff (Bathory, The Return, Under the Sign Of the Black mark) sounds nothing like Venom, it's just the titles, and the lyrics that are clearly ripped off.
But Bathory is Black, so a bit by-the-by. Venom (whom I count as an early thrash band; they have nothing to do with Black Metal except for that one song title), seem to have been more influenced by Motörhead, Motörhead, Motörhead, and Judas Priest. I believe Venom were a major influence for all European Thrash bands.
Speaking of Motörhead, they were also a major influence to at least Sodom and possibly other early Thrash bands too. So I personally think Motörhead are a more likely Thrash influence than hardcore.
Then again Metallica do have their Garage Days Revisited album which is probably a good catalogue of their influences. Maybe. Tbh I don't hear Sabbath in Metallica. And I've listened to oodles of both religiously as a teenager.
Back to European Thrash, Kreator and Destruction that I also listened to as a teenager, don't sound very hardcore-influenced at all. They are just harder, dirtier, Speed Metal bands with more violent lyrics.
Come to think of it, maybe there is an American vs. European Thrash divide. American bands more influenced by hardcore, and/like Metallica; European bands more influenced by Speed Metal. And Motörhead.
Honestly. A lot of European Thrash sounds to me like Motörhead. For example:
I suppose its my bias speaking but at the end of the day there has to be something that distinguishes thrash metal from speed metal or heavy metal of course. Its in our "guts" so to speak but it needs teasing out exactly what the difference is. In the branch of thrash or partition perhaps that I gave the distinction is clear: hardcore of some sort or scene as the influence. For German thrash, I can see clearly there is a difference, as Sodom and Kreator in their early era feels like black/death metal structurally so it isn't just sped up Motorhead. While a lot of Metallica sounds like thrash, there is an element of rock music to Metallica's sound. Your example with that Sodom song is a good one. In my view a band that considered itself thrash when doing the "odd one out" song for an album, would never write something like For whom the bell tolls, they'd do a Discharge cover instead or a east coast hc style short song. Perhaps its my finding rock music grating that biases me to leaning toward some of Metallica's work not being thrash. For German, we can see it by asking what is the difference between Rage or Angel Dust and Kreator/Destruction (here of course even Rage and Angel Dust are already absent of any rock feeling even though they are supposed to be the older so called "speed metal" style). In both my examples and much of German thrash I think for me, if I look back and see, I think its that whatever path they took the rock aspects have completely gone from them by that time.
Yeah, you catch me out here, I think I know Violence and I obviously know Anthrax but the rest I'll have to listen to a bit to see what you mean.
But I do see what you mean in many places, e.g. the structural similarity of Sodom and Kreator with early Black. Including Bathory again! It isn't just sped up Motorhead, and the Sodom track is indeed a bit out of the ordinary, but they're still a big influence I think.
I don't know if I agree Metallica have a rock element. Hmm. Can you point to a track more specifically where you hear that? I can't think of any. Unless it's in the Black Album or later?
>> I suppose its my bias speaking but at the end of the day there has to be something that distinguishes thrash metal from speed metal or heavy metal of course. Its in our "guts" so to speak but it needs teasing out exactly what the difference is.
Well, yes, and then, maybe it's a bit of an affectation. It's only something you do once you've listened to a bit more metal than the ordinary person (which is not much: AC/DC, Metallica, maybe Slayer, end of). I of course had endless debates with my friends as a teenager and I may or may not have written angry letters to the editors of the only Greek language Metal magazine when I was growing up (and I think the only one still?) to protest the clandestine placing of a band in the absolutely wrong category in this or that article of theirs.
Maybe kids these days will get over that sort of thing. Maybe not. It's all good.
I meant for whom the bell tolls itself as an example, while it uses thrash metal chugs, something about how its laid out feels a bit off like its trying to be written like a rock song.
One thing I just realized is that compared to early thrash metal, some speed metal bands had already gotten far more militant, stripped down and free of any remaining rock feelings. Think of Exciter, Rage, early Helloween or Agent Steel.
Again speaking to my bias of course but for me thrash starts getting truly exciting when it started growing toward death metal, its the most "fun" form of metal to me in a way nothing else gets, its in some ways the most spiritually "hardcore punk" like form of metal in the sense of instead of just including this or that hardcore guitar phrase or drum beat in a song, their approach of writing and playing was very pure, heart worn on sleeves and egging each other on fun. The complexity level was increasing rapidly but I feel due to this hardcore sensibility it doesn't just start sounding like prog rock as this hardcore like minimalist thinking keeps the melodies elegant and flowing, its probably one of more legato leaning genres of metal.
But yes, genres are not mathematical structures, trying to find a really hard scientific dividing line would keep leading to moving in circles forever. I have my preferences of course, death thrash and OSDM mainly.
>> I meant for whom the bell tolls itself as an example, while it uses thrash metal chugs, something about how its laid out feels a bit off like its trying to be written like a rock song.
Hm. OK, maybe. I haven't ever thought of it that way tbh. It does kind of Deep Purple though, in its general rythm so maybe.
I think I agree with your point about Thrash moving away from Rock, very much, despite my feeling that Motorhead was a major influence. I don't know if there's a contradiction there. On the other hand, one of my favourite bands is Entombed (though I can't say I like everything they ever recorded) and I like them exactly because they have this kind of boogie groove in their death-thrash. Then again I think that is one reason some people just don't like them.
I'd say some Thrash bands definitely veered too close to prog. Annihilator? Over Kill? Megadeath... Some Death bands too. I remember reading reviews about this or that Death record and the journo would write about the sudden changes of tempo and the complex riffs and so on and I'd always be like, I don't care about that. I like my Metal simple tbh. Give me one riff that will blow me away and I don't care how technically accomplished you are.
Now, I remember a friend of mine who distinguished Metal from non-Metal based on whether a song had a guitar solo, or not. If it did, it was Metal. If not, it was something else, probably that sus hardcore stuff that our common friends liked. I guess that goes to your point about the similarities and therefore at least cross-pollination, if not outright influence, between thrash and hardcore.
>> But yes, genres are not mathematical structures, trying to find a really hard scientific dividing line would keep leading to moving in circles forever. I have my preferences of course, death thrash and OSDM mainly.
Yeah, mostly classic Metal, Doom, Black, Thrash, and a bit of NWOTHM here. OSDM is cool too, I need to dig more into it.
Death, I'm kind of 50/50. I like some Death bands a lot, like I played the first two Death albums to er death. It's a bit hit and miss for me though. I like Grind bands more consistently, Cannibal Corpse and Last Days of Humanity.
When I was a kid, adults told me Metal was a passing fad, it would go away in a few years, and I'd grow out of it.
>Now, I remember a friend of mine who distinguished Metal from non-Metal based on whether a song had a guitar solo, or not. If it did, it was Metal. If not, it was something else, probably that sus hardcore stuff that our common friends liked. I guess that goes to your point about the similarities and therefore at least cross-pollination, if not outright influence, between thrash and hardcore.
Have you ever asked what he thinks of black metal?
I would like to clarify if you meant Entombed as in the Left Hand Path era or Entombed as in Wolverine Blues. I believe boogie has a very specific meaning and the LHP era pages crustpunk and hardcore rhythms which to me is precisely one of the main antiboogie elements that metal learned from hardcore. Its a continuous flowing "square" beat that enables the guitar to center stage rather than a swinging beat that needs the drum to make room for guitars like in a lot of rock.
By prog I meant just classic prog. Complexity in metal is a bit orthogonal to being prog, I think simply "normal" death metal like Morbid Angel is far more "prog" that prog due to death metal's own native sensibilities which in part as I said tie in to the hardcore lineage. I haven't yet given it proper thought, but it's my theory that the hardcore beat and the different way punk/hardcore uses power chords from general rock music is what enabled thrash and ultimately death metal. I love Sadus and Atheist, and you will see people call them "technical" death metal not "prog" death metal, it may hint that subconsciously or consciously people are aware that death metal achieves "prog" goals without actually necessarily using classic prog techniques.
From what prog I have heard, I think its amazing, and an admirable development for the time. It's a big part of why metal is metal, early metal sensibility in my view is very strongly derived from prog. The prog bands were already using less "swingy" beats and more guitar centric writing. It's just that hardcore had to finally put the final piece of the puzzle that enabled these tendencies to achieve their full fruition. Direct prog had a tendency to sometimes wander too much. Hardcore firstly checked this by being hyper minimalist, and secondly that undeveloped theory of mine regarding hardcore having innovated a very different way of playing guitar and the drumming technique letting guitars room to breathe achieving a much more naturalistic and flowing method of creating hallways of riffs.
>When I was a kid, adults told me Metal was a passing fad, it would go away in a few years, and I'd grow out of it.
Partly imo this again ties in to the influence of hardcore culture on metal. Punk groups I think were doing xeroxed art and fliers and garage recorded and dubbed tapes quite early. A punk musician named Paul Halmshaw was irritated at the lack of infra for punk and hardcore music due to mainstream infra not deeming it worth it, so he fielded his own infra. Most people know of Peaceville as a famous metal record label today.
edit:
>Cannibal Corpse
I am not aware they had any grindcore/deathgrind albums. I haven't listened to their entire discography so I could be wrong.
Oh and yes I'd say Entombed and a lot of that branch of swedish death metal comes mostly from crust and hardcore rather than thrash. For thrashy swedish death, you could try this for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNTJ7n5LeCI
>> I would like to clarify if you meant Entombed as in the Left Hand Path era or Entombed as in Wolverine Blues. I believe boogie has a very specific meaning and the LHP era pages crustpunk and hardcore rhythms which to me is precisely one of the main antiboogie elements that metal learned from hardcore. Its a continuous flowing "square" beat that enables the guitar to center stage rather than a swinging beat that needs the drum to make room for guitars like in a lot of rock.
Wolverine Blues and even more To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak The Truth. They've gone back a bit since then I find.
>> By prog I meant just classic prog.
Oh, right. I actually haven't heard a lot of the. Blue Öyster Cult and Rush etc? I of course acknowledge the immense influence of those bands on Metal, but that's the part of Metal I don't like that much. I think the influence was the focus on guitar technique and general musical quality which is something that's not really there in crusty punk and hardcore bands, I guess it's even anathema to some. You could even argue that a lot of Metal bands play the same music as hardcore bands but take the craft of music-making more seriously. This of course goes against my argument that thrash/death/black aren't descendants of hardcore/punk.
>> I am not aware they had any grindcore/deathgrind albums. I haven't listened to their entire discography so I could be wrong.
Oh, I see. Wikipedia calls them straight Death Metal. For me and my friends they were always either splatter/gore or grind. Different definitions I guess.
What I was saying is that it's both. Before thrash, and especially for early nwobhm there is a lot of prog to it. Prog was actually trying to remove the rock/blues earlier than nwobhm, and even if such and such nwobhm band said they hated prog, their structure is much more like prog than hard rock. No swing, square beats, linear and through composed songwriting, etc.
NWOBHM tried to streamline it of course and they succeeded to an extent but as I theorized before, it took hardcore to actually invent the tools to finally achieve that goal completely and result in chromatic labyrinths. Ie its not hardcore alone, nor prog alone, both had to be part of metal's dna to result in death metal in my view personally.
Quorthon of course like most artists is a diva and notorious liar, for example having never heard of Manowar before, so any statement made by him can be dispensed with.
Eeeh, one should never speak ill of the dead, unless it's the desecrated body of Christ. Anyway yeah he was a bit peculiar.
I really don't think he copied Manowar though. People point to Hammerheart, but I think they forget Blood Fire Death, which is the true first Viking Metal album and sounds nothing like Manowar. Hammerheart also sounds nothing like Manowar to my ears although one reason for that could be that I haven't listening to a lot Manowar post-Hail to England. Maybe it sounds more like epic-Bathory after that?
The Viking theme of cousre is neither Quorthon's nor Manowar's invention.
Wow! I didn't expect to see mapofmetal on HN, and I *definitely* didn't expect to see the author's response.
I just wanted to say thank you for making it, it was really important for me when exploring music back in 2010s. It was also great to see the "big picture" of metal genres, and start the long journey down the rabbit hole.
In a fun turn of events, I showed this to my wife just a few days ago, to show what I was up to when I was younger. And now less than a week later this is submitted to HN. Fun coincidence.
This is an awesome visualization. I have always enjoyed 'structural taxonomies' as a way of visualizing data relationships. I appreciate you keeping it alive.
Your map was very formative for me when I was exploring metal, thanks a lot !
I would love for this Map to be expanded to modern subgenres. There are lot's of subgenres that completely changed in the last decades (notably, the *cores and the tech* ...)
I was looking through this, seeing the years radius and having my expectations validated/refuted was really fun! Lots of yeah but no, or no way but yeah? The curation of it is really respectable no matter my own taste and that is something that is in real low stock. Thanks for making my day and I'll add a few respectful issues when I can
Ah man, thanks so much for making this. Metal is not my main favourite genre, but this site definitely helped grew my understanding and admiration for it a lot. I come back to this site every now and then for years since the flash version. So cool that you ported it! Was it a big task?
Incredible work and yes, it really captures a Flash vibe.
My only note would be that I'm surprised that Order from Chaos isn't featured anywhere; I feel like they are kind of a Rosetta stone for so much of what happened in the 90s/00s with black and death metal converging on each other.
Absolutely fantastic project! I completely understand you've got other things going on, but for me on Firefox mobile, I'm seeing a YouTube pop-up window for Black Sabbath and I don't see any obvious way to close it.
This was hugely influential on a younger me! I remember tracing forward and backwards from the bands I liked, finding and checking out new bands at every stop. Thank you!
I am very sad to see NSBM and bands with problematic members being promoted here. We have so many problems with right-wing structures and people (mostly male band members) who think they can do whatever they want in this world. Giving them a platform and advertising them will show that metal communities are more exclusive than they are promoting. This is especially concerning given that the metal community seems to be very tolerant, but I think 'ignorant' is a more accurate description of accepting murderers, racist and molester. Yes, a significant proportion of the metal history is problematic persons and bands, but I cannot find any warnings, FAQs or contextualisations. It's a shame. As a result, the metal community will remain old, white and male.
We're on the hunt for a frontend engineer to join our team of product and engineering people spread across Australia (our home base is Melbourne but you can work from anywhere).
What you'll be working on is pretty exciting - we're building with React and TypeScript, including canvas-based interactions and custom domain-specific language editors, we have lots of challenging UI work to do.
We are a well funded, profitable company, with 20 years in ICM, we have a global customer base across Australia, Asia, Europe, and the US in 25+ industries.
Oh! Very grateful for the correction. I do feel that’s a third-degree burn waiting to happen. Are you saying heat the pain to high, then put on the oil? Doesn’t that splash painfully?
Probably the ideal workflow would use a reference image via something like IP-Adapter since a simple colour palette wouldn't really give enough control (see https://x.com/P_Galbraith/status/1716405163420963196 for example). Typically you have the character design done in a flat perspective. So it would be nice to have something like an IP-Adapter input as well as a detailed line drawing and a rough paintover.
You would also need to provide a way to give lighting control (i.e. control over light sources and direction) as well as multiple characters etc... for it to be useful in complex compositions.
They used LoRa. Alternatively you can use IP-Adapter and ControlNet, there are models for face, style, composition, lighting, etc... Search for "ComfyUI IP-Adapter workflow".
"NTOSKRNL.EXE + debug symbols + IDA helped me understand how the remote break-in is supposed to work. I knew that something in the remote break-in code path before the first debug packet is sent is going to reboot my machine. So I patched "JMP SHORT $" instructions into the relevant code-path. If I placed it before the crash point, the machine hangs. If I placed it after the crash point, the machine reboots. This allowed me to "bisect" where the crash is happening."
-----
Here is a Chat-GPT breakdown of the comment:
NTOSKRNL.EXE: This is the kernel of the Windows NT operating system. When people refer to the "Windows kernel," they're typically talking about this executable.
debug symbols: These are additional pieces of data that describe the internal structures and functions within a binary (like an EXE or DLL). They make it much easier to understand what's going on when analyzing or debugging the binary.
IDA: IDA (Interactive DisAssembler) is a popular disassembler and debugger used by security researchers and reverse engineers to analyze binaries.
how the remote break-in is supposed to work: It sounds like the commenter is trying to understand how a specific feature or vulnerability related to remote debugging (or "remote break-in") operates.
something in the remote break-in code path before the first debug packet is sent: There's a sequence of events or a code path in the kernel related to the remote debugging feature. The problem seems to manifest before the first debug packet is sent over the network.
JMP SHORT $: This is an assembly instruction. The JMP instruction is used to jump to another part of the code. SHORT refers to a short jump, meaning the jump target is relatively close. The $ symbol refers to the current address of the instruction, so "JMP SHORT $" will cause the program to jump to itself, effectively causing an infinite loop.
patched "JMP SHORT $" instructions into the relevant code-path: By inserting this instruction at various points in the code, the commenter created intentional hangs in the system. This helped isolate where the crash occurs.
bisect: This term comes from the world of debugging and means to divide the code into smaller parts to determine where a problem is. In this context, the commenter is using the hang (from the JMP instruction) as an indicator. If they inserted the JMP instruction and the system hangs, it means the crash hasn't occurred yet. If they inserted the JMP instruction and the system reboots, it means the crash already happened. By moving the JMP instruction around, they can get closer to the exact point of the crash.
In essence, the commenter used a mix of reverse engineering tools and clever debugging tricks to narrow down where a crash was occurring in the Windows NT 3.1 kernel when using a remote debugging feature.
Not sure why this is downvoted, the comment is on point. Is it because it is partly gpt-generated content?
I wonder if patching memory worked in the debugger, if not this would have to be done by manually editing the kernel file with IDA or something, and rebooting the machine. But in either case this is a good way to find the problem.
If you don't want to be seeing ChatGPT generated content here, you should downvote it to discourage the poster from doing so. This is a perfect use of a downvote IMHO.
If you don't mind or care enough, obviously don't downvote, and if you love it, upvote it. That's how we get our community to develop some shared standards of communication.
FWIW, if someone wants ChatGPT content, they can just go to ChatGPT too.
True, although in this case the ChatGPT explanation seems to be mostly accurate.
The one dubious point is the definition of "bisect". The definition is completely accurate in this context. But the sentence after the definition starts with "In this context,", implying that the definition itself should be relatively context-independent. Yet the term "bisect" in programming is more commonly used to refer to something slightly different: dividing some code's commit history into parts, not the code itself.
Also, several of the explanations are wordy and uninsightful, though not false.
…Admittedly, this is all beside the point. ChatGPT output carries a high risk of being inaccurate, so even if it's accurate in some specific case, readers have no way of knowing that. Which means that you shouldn't post ChatGPT output unless you can personally vouch for its accuracy, but in that case why use ChatGPT at all? Still, in this case I'll retrospectively vouch for it.
I added the ChatGPT explanation after the fact because I thought some readers might not have the background to understand the original explanation and I could vouch for its accuracy.
Honestly didn't expect it to cause such a backlash in this forum...
Here is a test I did the other day of rough sketch (hand drawn) -> clean line work (AI) -> coloured (AI). This workflow gives 100% control over the output because you can easily adjust the linework in the intermediary step.
- Automatic1111 outpainting works well but you need to enable the outpainting script. I would recommend Outpainting MK2. What the author did was just resize with fill which doesn't do any diffusion on the outpainted sections.
- There are much better resizing workflows, at a minumum I would recommend using the "SD Upscale Script". However you can get great results by resizing the image to high-res (4-8k) using lanczos then using inpainting to manually diffuse the image at a much higher resolution with prompt control. In this case "SD Upscale" is fine but the inpaint based upscale works well with complex compositions.
- When training I would typically recommend to keep the background. This allows for a more versitile finetuned model.
- You can get a lot more control of final output by using ControlNet. This is especially great if you have illustration skills. But it is also great to generate varitions in a different style but keep the composition and details. In this case you could have taken a portrait photo of the subject and used ControlNet to adjust the style (without and finetuning required).
> However you can get great results by resizing the image to high-res (4-8k) using lanczos then using inpainting to manually diffuse the image at a much higher resolution with prompt control.
Diffuse an 8k image? Isn't it going to take much, much more VRAM tho?
For what it's worth if you actually want to get help on the state of the art on this stuff the best place to ask is the 4chan /g/ /sdg/ threads, and you can absolutely diffuse images that large using TiledVAE and Mixture of Diffusers or Multidiffusion, both of which are part of the Tiled Diffusion plugin for auto1111.
Here's an example using various techniques I've gathered from those 4chan threads. (yes I know it's 4chan but just ignore the idiots and ask for catboxes, you'll learn much faster than anywhere else, at least that was the case for me after exhausting the resources on github/reddit/various discords)
I'm not the guy who came up with this style! I just vacuum up catboxes and do a lot of tests/repros. I'm not at my main computer so I can't give you exact gen parameters, but the cliff notes version is:
- DPM++ 2M K or DPM++ SDE K w/ a high eta are the best samplers in general, the former was used here
- search seed space at whatever res is reasonable (512x704) before upscaling
- once you have a good seed hiresfix with ultrasharp or remarci @ 0.5-0.6 denoise (i prefer the former, ymmv)
- do a second diffusion pass in i2i on top of the hires, but with a simpler prompt focusing on high quality e.x. "gorgeous anime wallpaper, beautiful colors, impeccable lineart"
- for the second pass (this will be taking you from ~1k x 1.5k to 2.5k x 4k) you're gonna run out of VRAM if you're trying to diffuse traditionally so use the Tiled Diffusion addon with Tiled VAE enabled as well to conserve vram. DDIM seems to work best here though I've gotten good results with the two samplers above as well.
- using a style finetune helps a lot, Cardos Anime was used here
- when in doubt, search Civit.ai or huggingface, there are tons of great models/LoRAs and textual inversions out there and if you have anything specific in mind having some form of finetune helps a ton
Obviously you're going to need to know how to prompt as well which is definitely not something I can explain in a single post, just like any kind of art you just have to practice a bunch to gain an intuition for it.
P.S. I've recently started a patreon, if any of you'd like to support my work on this stuff. I'm a big believer in sharing all my knowledge, so most of it will come out for free eventually, but I gotta eat. [0]
Yeah :) Thanks for your infodump! I'm mostly curious how you achieve the insane amount of "clutter" in these images - is it done by referencing a specific artist or style in the prompt, or just by some difficult-to-find key phrase? I haven't been able to get anything near.
I think it's the tiled diffusion second/third pass that does it, because you're essentially doing many gens on individual tiles of the image there's a natural visual density that SD tends toward and since this is composed of many gens the density is increased in the overall picture, that being said it's not something I've tested super extensively and mostly only with this sort of style.
Do not start with me with this shit. Of course artists need to eat. I'm on the fucking internet essentially begging because I struggle with capitalism and the idea that almost all forms of employment force me to restrict my intellectual property, or assign it to someone else. Every time I'm forced to do it because the bank account is low I can feel it grinding down my soul. It is antisocial to prevent people from building upon my ideas (or any ideas). We should take every step we can to strengthen the commons. (see "Everything is a Remix"[0])
I dropped out of fucking high school and was homeless couch surfing in LA for years trying to break into steady VFX work, I don't think for a lack of skill/blood/sweat/tears[1]. I'm well aware artists need to eat.
The problem isn't technological progress, (jfc this is all open source!!! stability is doing god's work by undermining the value of ghouls who try to restrict access to these models for personal profit). It's certainly not that copyright is too weak in preventing people form building off the aggregate styles and work of artists. I learned style by fucking copying the masters[2]!! This is how art is supposed to work. The problem it's the disgusting economic/political system that has twisted copyrights and patents into a device to enable rent seeking for those who can afford to purchase/commission them rather than protecting the innovation and creativity that they were meant to.
While I'm strongly on team "train the AI on everything and reduce IP protections to strengthen the commons" as much as such a team exists, I think it's important to point out that this is a argument that misses the forest for the trees.
It's only relevant when taking a very logical/semantic view of the situation, when you take a more holistic view it breaks down. The scale and implications of the two things you're comparing are completely different. While I probably agree with you in general I think these sorts of arguments don't really help people understand our point of view because they sidestep the economic and social implications which are at the heart of this.
I appreciate it, I'm trying to be a great artist here so this isn't really my work, it's 90% stolen from anons on 4chan. ;) I post on twitter[0] a reasonable bit but SD art isn't a big focus for me. I also recently started a patreon which is another post in this thread if you're interested in supporting.
auto1111 saves generation parameters as text into exif/png data chunks, so you can re-create generations done by other people/yourself in the past. 4chan strips metadata from images, hence the need for catbox.
That confused me at first too.You aren’t diffusing the 8k image.
You are upsampling, then inpainting sections that need it. So if you took your 8K and inpainted a section with 1024x1024 that works well with normal ram usages. In Auto1111, you need to select “inpainted masked area” to do that.
Yeah exactly this. It doesn't need more VRAM since you inpaint small sections (~512x515) of the image manually. It takes more time but gives the best results.
The automated equivalent is SD Upscale or TiledVAE
To clarify when things are upscaled like that they typically mean a section of img2img in a grid pattern to make up the full picture so it doesn’t overuse vram.
Good luck! I have some workflow videos on Youtube https://youtube.com/pjgalbraith. But I haven't had a chance to show off all the latest techniques yet.
Well, it's possible to detect patterns and characteristics in the language used in the comments that can provide clues about their origin...
Here's some indicators that a comment may have been generated by an AI system:
* Repeating phrases or sentences
* Using generic language that could apply to any topic
* Lack of coherence or logical flow
* Poor grammar, or syntax errors
* Overuse of technical, or specialized vocabulary
I mean, these indicators aren't foolproof... and humans can also exhibit some of these characteristics. It's tough to be sure whether or not a comment is generated by an AI system or not...
So about the site in case anyone is interested. I made it with a friend who was studying multimedia. He helped with the data and I did the coding. Took about a week or two.
The site was originally Flash (remember that). But I ported it to HTML5 a few years ago. It still has those Flash vibes I think. Posted the code to GitHub when I ported it. I did this mostly to keep it alive for old times sake.
So about the mobile support. I planned to do it but got sidetracked building a custom WebGL map renderer because phone performance was poor. However I never finished, life finds a way to get in the way and all that... I have some mobile designs lying around.
The other issue was when I first built the site YouTube didn't really play ads much at all, just those little text ads, and you could embed the player really tiny. So it worked better. In the original flash version I actually hid the video player. But that got the site blacklisted from YouTube, I asked a Google engineer on a dev forum to put a word in and they removed the block, very different times, this was back when Google was a different beast, and you could chat to real people online and the dev communities were much smaller.
I have a illustration of a much bigger map in my sketchbook. It has a lot more subgenres and interconnected things like historical events and so on. But it's huge unfolded, like 2x1.5m or something ridiculous.
I miss those days when the web was full of weird and experimental stuff. I grew up with Newgrounds and Geocities, I'm sure it's all still out there buried under a giant pile of SEO optimised refuse.