A few years ago, Aleksander Caban, the co-founder of Carbon Studio, a Polish VR game developer, noticed a major problem in modern game design. He had to manually create rocks, hills, paths and other basic elements of video game environments, which often proved to be a time-consuming – and laborious – process.
That’s why Caban decided to develop technology to help automate the process.
He teamed up with Michal Bugała, Joanna Zając and two Carbon Studio co-founders, Karolina Koszuta and Błażej Szaflik, to launch Auctoria, a platform that uses AI to generate 3D video game assets from scratch. Auctoria, based in Gliwice, Poland, is one of the participants in the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023.
“We founded Auctoria out of a passion for limitless creativity,” Zając told TechCrunch in an email interview. “It was created to support game developers in their work, but anyone who wants to create can use it. There aren’t many advanced tools for professionals; most are aimed at hobbyists and amateurs. We want to change that.”
Auctoria uses generative AI technology to create a range of different model types for video games. One of the platform’s features attempts to generate full 3D game levels, complete with paths for players to explore (albeit quite simple ones), while another turns uploaded images and textures of walls, floors and columns into 3D equivalents of that artwork .
Users can also enter text prompts to have Auctoria generate assets, à la DALL-E 2 or Midjourney. Or they can provide a sketch, which the platform will try to convert into a usable digital model.
![Authority](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/s1.jpg)
A 3D video game level created with Auctoria. Image credits: Authority
Zając claims that all the AI algorithms that power Auctoria, as well as the data used to train them, are developed in-house.
“Authority is 100% based on our content, so we are not dependent on any other provider,” she said. “It is an independent tool – Auctoria does not rely on an external engine and does not use open source solutions.”
Now Auctoria is not alone in the emerging market for AI tools to generate game assets. There are the 3D model creation platforms 3DFY and Scenario, as well as startups like Kaedim, Mirage and Hypothetic. Even incumbents like Nvidia and Autodesk are starting to dip their toes in the space with apps like Get3D, which converts images into 3D models, and ClipForge, which generates models from text descriptions.
Meta has also experimented with technology to generate 3D assets based on clues. That includes OpenAI, which last December released Point-E, an AI that synthesizes 3D models with potential applications in 3D printing, game design and animation.
The race to bring new solutions to market is not surprising given the breadth of the possibilities. According to Proficient Market Insights, the 3D modeling market could be worth $3.57 billion by 2028.
But Zając claims that Auctoria’s relatively long development cycle (it has been in the R&D phase for about two years) has resulted in a “more robust” and “comprehensive” tool set than some rivals offer.
“Currently, there is a lack of AI-based software that allows for the creation of complete 3D world models,” says Zając. “Existing solutions typically consist of 3D editors and plugins, but offer only a fraction of Auctoria’s capabilities. Our team started developing the tool two years ago, giving us a ready-to-use product.”
Of course, Auctoria, like all generative AI startups, will have to deal with the legal challenges currently swirling around AI-generated media. At least in the US, it is not yet clear to what extent AI-generated works can be protected by copyright.
But the Auctoria team – currently a team of seven employees, plus the five co-founders – leaves these questions unanswered for now. They are instead focusing on working with game development studios, including Caban’s own Carbon Studio, to test the tooling.
Ahead of Auctoria’s general availability in the coming months, the company hopes to raise as much as $5 million to “accelerate the process” of creating back-end cloud services to scale the platform.
“The money would reduce the overall computation time required to create worlds or 3D models with Auctoria,” Zając said. “Creating an infrastructure for a software-as-a-service model is one thing; the other is improving the user experience, for example by making it easier to onboard with a simple user interface and good customer service and marketing experiences… We are going to keep our core team small, but we will hire a few more employees by the end of the year.”