[AvatarGenerator] Implement AI-driven avatar suggestions

Almost exactly 2 years ago, I started game development. I had just came out of a very shitty health/career situation. I was determined to make money without needing anything or anyone (yeah, I know, onto a bad start already...). I was VERY confident. I had 3 years of learning Blender under my belt, more 3d modeling experience from mechanical engineering and I always been a fast learner with good grades and just good with technical work overall. I got into Unreal Engine and learned and managed to build things VERY fast with their pre made solutions and easy to use blueprint programming. I was also making heavy use of AI to supercharge learning and it worked to some extent. Became super fast at building things. But ended up accumulating a lot of bad practices and technical debt. I made many small games and prototypes. But i'd scope creep. Naturally. Coming from Blender, i'd also make all the art myself. But on Every Single Project I kept running into that same wall: Content creation hell. I could prototype well. Build systems and gameplay very fast. Make them one asset or placeholder each. But then came game progression and i'd need to 10-50x the assets that took me months to make... And it'd only get worse as i'd get better making assets as it would become more time consuming to reach that level of detail/quality. I realized that making games simply requires too much art workload to fill up gameplay systems for one person. But I was determined. I NEEDED it to work. So I had a lot of art and code to produce. Art and programming takes time. So I had to free time. And that's where my life REALLY started going downhill. I needed time. To build the game. I cut EVERY time consuming things in my life: \- Job \- Gaming \- Movies/Series/Entertainment \- Friends \- Family \- Gym \- Reduced meals \- Reduced sleep \- Cut off basically anything that wasn't either Blender or Unreal Engine \- I only kept computer science classes but i'm the type where i don't do homework much i just go there and harvest good grades. While my mind is on game dev 24/7. And you know what? It worked. It worked real damn good. I got SO far. For one guy. I built things I never thought I would be able to build. I almost got to a point of AAA looking graphics with souls like gameplay and bosses all by myself. One dude. In his bedroom. I mastered/learned 3D modeling, sculpting, retopology, UVs + trim sheets, shader node graph editor, attributes, geometry nodes, VFXs, texture flipbook VFXs, niagara VFXs, texture stacking realistic shading, texture baking, normal map multires sculpting + baking, blueprint programming, animation blueprints, cpp, perlin noise algorithm, marching cube algorithm, animating, rigging, skinning, souls like combat, basic state machines, basic cinematics, procedural generation and many more things that aren't coming to mind right now. But again, content creation hell. Must. Make. More. Content. Again. And. Again. Forever. My biggest project, I worked 6 months non stop i'd estimate it at 60+h per week at least. Only for 15min of linear souls like boss fight gameplay. No game progression. I'd burnout and get overwhelmed again and again and again. Blasting motivational and discipline and rage music and David Goggins and Alex Hormozi videos in my ears tryharding. I NEEDED this to work. And eventually, I would end up quitting. Mostly because of financial pressure. My first game was released for free. My second almost didnt make any sales. And i wasn't able to finish the other ones because of content creation hell. I'd get overwhelmed by scope and asset workload and get insecure about past failures so i'd start over a lot. I was scared the idea wasn't good enough. I didn't trust myself. And so eventually I had decided to stop. I failed. I'm not that guy. The thing is, after two years of tryharding game development and cutting off everything else in my life, sure, I developed many skills. But I became VERY isolated. I had almost no human contact with anyone. I literally lost the ability to hold eye contact. Now, when I look at someone, Idk which fucking eye of theirs to look at anymore so I switch between the two and it fcks with them and they stop interacting with me. Thats just an example. But I basically lost all my friends bc I stopped talking to them. My savings burned down a lot too. My energy levels got destroyed I became very unhealthy. David Goggins is right that you can push yourself hard and achieve a lot more than you think. But there's an afterwards cost... I basically crunch cultured tf out of myself. I tried one last game project. I told to myself that if content is too much for me to produce, that then I would make the computer do it for me. I will be honest; I tried everything. Even AI workflows (which was the worst experience I had with game dev i'd take uv unwrapping and retopology any day over this shit). With AI being just quite literally garbage, I turned to procedural generation. Think Minecraft and Deep Rock Galactic. I tried to leverage powerful algorithms and made a procedural and entirely destructible world generator (perlin noise 3D + marching cube). I also built a global map pathfinding system for 3D swarm pathfinding (3d bfs flow field pathfinding). I'd prototype them in blueprint and rewrite them in cpp with AI. But that last project taught me about hardware limitations mostly CPU compute limitations. It's a lot more limited than we'd think it is. It is not meant for runtime heavy algorithms if you want to keep frames (and yes, I did take a DS&A class to optimize). It's meant for selecting things with OOP design. That's where you'll get the most value for your game for the least hardware usage (most frames). And I couldn't gpu compute it because of Unreal Engine's CPU based collision system. Thats where I gave up on solo game dev for good. But I had developed many skills. I tried to monetize them. Built a portfolio, contacted studios. Not a single one responded. And what's pissing me off is I'd stalk linked in profiles and portfolios of people that were hired. Some of them were absolutely terrible. Total noobs. I get that I'm unhealthy and a no life but it was just so frustrating dedicating your life to something and seeing others not caring and having your dream job. Even saw some complaining about it on socials and so on. Made me so mad. I tried to instead network on game dev discords and forums and make myself loud online. But the only responses I got were from people on their first game trying to revenue share... I knew i'd starve with that. I did commissions. But they kept under bidding and lowering and lowering and lowering while asking for more and more and using friendly tactics and developing friendships to get free teachings and assets basically every people i did commissions with ended up trying to make me work for free until I had to ghost them. I always been fair though I always delivered even when i'd end up working for pennies/hour. And so this didn't seem viable. I tried to make assets for online market places. Basically not a single person bought my assets. So I made free samples to attract people to my profile. And now, I get a lot of downloads. But still no sales. My paid assets were 1.99$. I tried gumroad and their donation based earning method. I made a gothic castle generator geometry node and a chain generator geometry node. Also a WOW inspired basemesh with extreme good optimization for graphical fidelity. Barely made anything again. Idk what to do anymore. I feel so lost. My brain is completely broken. I'm having trouble learning/creating anything now. Everything feels like a dead end. Like starvation. Nothing pays. I lost confidence in my ability to do anything basically. Since nothing works. Savings keeps going down. Idk what to do anymore. I tried reaching out, joining others, working for others, making assets for others. Nothing works financially. Lately (past few days) I been thinking about making blender movies instead. Game engines are starting to really piss me off. In everything I ever used, the only software that doesn't give me anger issues is Blender. I was thinking maybe I can just quit game dev as a whole, get back on the job market for student jobs or smth just to survive since my career exploded 2 years ago and on my free time make blender movies just for myself and put out the assets on gumroad. It'd be realtime game ready assets too. Everything I make is very optimized with low triangle count and small textures and very low draw calls. And i thought making short films would be better since its smaller scope by nature while keeping very good entertainment value. And i can consume what i create while with games i cant really play my game im too busy making it. And i feel like films are less isolating because you can share them to others more easily. Compared to games where distribution, audience conversion and multiplayer deployment is a way bigger pain in the ass if you want to experience what you build with others. But even then idk. Like i'm such at rock bottom nowadays i'm scared to just open blender and make a damn plant... Idk what to do anymore I feel so lost. I still have some savings though. But man it's been going downhill for quite some years now... It has been a very humbling but soul crushing experience. I'm also thinking about just quitting it all and get into vrchat and just make avatars and rooms. Just to talk to people mainly. Socialize. Make use of what I learned there. Retire from all of this shit. Maybe make someone an avatar commission if i like them a lot and if they want to pay me a decent amount. Or maybe make 3d memes / caricatures / brainrot. I'm sure if i were to make short blender films of influencers they'd love this shit. Kind of like what MeatCanyon does but in 3d and less gross/horror more unhinged but respectful still. That's kind of the saddest option i think but hey... that's what people consume. I remember recreating the little taiwanese boat aura farmer and posting about it on r/blender and the post blew up so much. And it only took one evening to make. Maybe I should just do more of that. It's like I can see some paths. But idk what to do. I don't know which one to commit to. Idk if I should commit to one at all. I feel so lost.