Show HN: I built an app that lets you create and chat with 3D AI characters

[frank_grimes_sr]

https://www.heyastrocyte.com/

Hello everyone! I'm excited to announce the launch of Astrocyte, a web app that allows you to create and interact with 3D AI characters.

Whether it's video game heroes, anime characters, political figures, or even that obscure NPC from your favorite RPG, you can bring them to life and have a chat with them on Astrocyte!

Many users have already begun crafting their own characters on Astrocyte, and the conversations have been incredibly entertaining. I would be thrilled if you could give it a try and share your honest feedback. Thank you!

[vegancap]

I see someone's already created a topless girlfriend on there... might want to moderate the content, can see this appealing to the depths of male desperation otherwise

[frank_grimes_sr → vegancap]

My apologies, yeah, starting to moderate the content.

[Conasg]

Word of warning: I clicked on this, and the first page had a pair of exposed breasts. Might not be ideal to open this at work.

[frank_grimes_sr → Conasg]

My apologies. Went to sleep and woke up to those new characters, changed the photos right away.

[jsnk]

Fantastic work. I am looking forward to something like this being adopted in games.

Things are moving at a dizzying pace. I've been in tech for over 10 years, and went through many fads and trends, and had no problem keeping up.

LLM is challenging my comfort zone in an exciting way and I can't wait for the future.

[frank_grimes_sr → jsnk]

Thank you so much! Yup, things are moving quickly

[dutchbrit]

Flagging as it contains nudity.

[frank_grimes_sr → dutchbrit]

Apologies, I should have seen that coming and implemented some moderation.

[mousepad12]

Which model does it use on the backend? How does it differ from character.ai or sillytavern+model of your choice?

[egman_ekki]

Pretty cool, but it stopped responding after 3-4 questions.

Also, removing the text from the input after submit would be nice so that user doesn't have to erase it before typing the next prompt.

Good luck!

[frank_grimes_sr → egman_ekki]

Yep, ran into some rate limits lol, fun stuff. Should be fixed now. Sorry about that. And thank you so much for the feedback, that should be a quick fix!

[RugnirViking]

Pretty neat. Sidney's arms clip into her coat. I'd love to be able to see a log of what I said as well as them

[jimmySixDOF]

VRM supported ? Are there docs if I sign in ?

[frank_grimes_sr → jimmySixDOF]

VRM is supported. My apologies, no docs yet, just launched, but will plan on adding docs.

[Utkarsh_Mood]

super cool! what model are you using for this?

[hathym]

- close your eyes. - As a virtual avatar, I don't have physical eyes to close. But I can assure you that I am fully present and engaged in our conversation. How can I assist you today?

[anoy8888]

Any open source alternative for building AI 3D avators and mouth movements and perhaps gesture and body movements

[GeraltRivers → anoy8888]

I have open sourced a project where you can interact with 3D AI avatars - with gesture, body movements, mouth movements and text to speech:

https://github.com/jongomez/gpthangout

It should be relatively easy to create models in blender and then use them there. Also, if anyone wishes to use VRM models on the project - should be as simple as importing those models in blender, and then export them as a .glb file. I created a branch recently with some minor code changes to support this:

https://github.com/jongomez/gpthangout/tree/glb-models

[est]

Requires sign-in.

[frank_grimes_sr → est]

yep sorry about that, that's to avoid spam bankrupting me on the backend costs.

[pavlov → frank_grimes_sr]

Out of curiosity, how much is a HN front page appearance costing you on the back-end?

If you’re willing to share of course. I think many HN readers would be interested to know how “kicking the tires” traffic on an AI product like this compares to a traditional web app cost wise.

[mikercampbell → frank_grimes_sr]

I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Keep the sign-in!

But also a demo would be cool!!

[frank_grimes_sr → mikercampbell]

I built a Twitch bot hooked up to one of the avatars, you can try it without signing up (as long as you already have a Twitch account): https://www.twitch.tv/heyastrocyte

The idea is basically an AI twitch streamer, you talk in chat and they respond. In this case it's AI Naruto!

Thanks for the feedback! I'll put together a short demo as well.

[fartcanister → frank_grimes_sr]

Even a short YouTube video will be enough.