Seattle-based Charmed plans to launch a new AI-powered game design tool this month, which allows for rapid generation of 3D character models from scratch.
It’s also raised over $500,000 in a new funding round, led by Tacoma Venture Fund.
Charmed’s overall goal, according to founder Jeremy Tryba, is to build “the first end-to-end 3D AI platform,” in order to allow game designers to quickly progress from an initial idea to a playable prototype.
“Charmed is building tools that help 3D artists work in parallel to dramatically shorten development times,” Tryba said in an email to GeekWire.
The new tool for Charmed is made up of three parts: a Geometry Generator, a Texture Generator, and a Character Animator. When used together, they allow a user to input prompts that will create a character model; a set of textures to clothe and detail the model; and equip the model with sample animations.
The generators are the latest tools in Charmed’s portfolio, alongside Dream Dungeon, which rapidly rolls up an isometric-view mazes with user-defined floor and wall textures; a quest generator for quickly coming up with jobs for a player to do; and an AI texture generator that provides colorful skins for 3D game objects.
Tryba, speaking to GeekWire in July, has been careful to describe Charmed as a toolbox for the rapid generation of concepts, blueprints, and prototypes. It’s not intended to be the entire ball of wax for no-code game design.
“If you’ve got a good idea and you do bring your own creativity to the table, these tools can help you create cooler things, faster and more complex than you could do on your own,” Tryba said. “But you know, garbage in, garbage out. If you shove a lot of garbage through these tools, you’ll get what you deserve.”
Tryba founded Charmed last year after spinning it out from Madrona Venture Labs, which also provided Charmed with its first round of funding that year.
