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Back when I was in college, the professor who taught painting became very ill just a month into a semester and he was replaced by a woman who insisted that all of the students had to strech, gesso and frame their own canvases and that, even though we'd started the semester using acrylics, we all had to switch to oils because "acrylics weren't real paints and REAL artists used oils." Needless to say, this resulted in the students having a lot less time to actually PAINT, and a whole semester spent hauling toxic chemicals around between classes, not to mention that most of the students ended up buying a full set of acrylics under the first teacher and then having to buy everything again with the shift to oils. It didn't take long for most of us to realize that she wasn't a particularly good teacher or painter and that she ONLY knew oils, so this was her way of putting us in the tiny box she was comfortable with herself and when I thought to follow up on her many years later, I found that she'd abandoned painting completely soon after and went into making jewellery.
So, all that said, there is a certain challenge to trying to get everything to work in-render, but anyone who's worked as an artist professionally knows that time = money, and not only is it much faster to render everything out at a median level of exposure and color saturation and then fine tune in post, it also gives you a lot greater ability to go back and make creative changes after the fact. That's how photographers have have worked for over a hundred years and it's how cinematagraphers have worked for the last 30, since digital grading made it possible. Heck, on a very crude level, that's the whole reason for doing pencils before you go back and work in ink. But in the the end, the path that you follow doesn't really matter as long as you accomplish what you set out to accomplish and the important thing is getting the images in your mind out of your head and into a medium where others can see them.
My guess is from the art-work I see in the DAZ Gallery that isn't noobs, people trying for realistic portraits, or occasional hobbyists the overwhelming majority do do postpost. Talk about 'God Rays' and Ron's Brushes and Photoshop are amount the most common subjects in the forum.
I'm right there with your girlfriend. My husband and I were at a photography exhibit at the Minneapolis Musuem of Art, and I what I thoguht was the most striking piece in the exhibit, turned out to be a photoshop composition of about 4 different pictures. I still liked the picture after I figured that out. In fact, I liked it a little better knowing the skill that went into it. The transitions were excellent. But I wish it had been labeled as photography plus, or digital manipulation or something. Another work in that exhibit my husband thought also might have been a digital composite, but I figured it was a multiple exposure by triggering the flash unit.
Photographer's have always had their ways of doing postwork too. My #3 red contrast filter lived in my enlarger. Under developing or over developing your film or prints, using burn and dodge tools, and multiple exposures are all things I have done myself.
I love postwork, and the painting over a render so that none of the original render is left. I love looking at the work of those that are much better at it than I am. I also love when a beautiful render, perfectly lit with great materials comes out the program and doesn't need to be touched.I mostly render promos these days and those will have zero postwork at all. (OK, there was that one time I spent 20 seconds to clone out some pokethrough instead of re-rendering for 10 hours.) It doesn't matter to me how people get the picture they want out of their head and onto the page, screen or canvas.
As you often see renders posted that say "no postwork" (I don't mean product promotional images, where that absolutely has a purpose), it definitely seems to be that some people consider it to be a matter of pride. I kind of understand that as I have a tendency to think that it's something of a failure on my part that I couldn't do everything I wanted in the pure render. On the other hand, some things simply cannot be done in the pure render, and surely it's the end product that counts. It's great if you can just publish your render hot out of the rendering engine, but I don't think people should agonize about having had to touch it up a bit here and there. I do post-work on every render, I couldn't do without Liquify in Photoshop, and often use Nik Tools, Smart Sharpen, Clone tool, Smudge, Dodge and Burn, and numerous other PS tools. Thats not even counting the compositing of multiple renders and spot renders to get around memory limits in my GPU.
..I used to stretch and gesso canvas routinely when I was back in college, It cost less than purchasing pre-stretched prepared canvas as I use to get my frame components at the local lumberyard instead of a high priced art supply store and raw rolled canvas was fairly affordable. It also allowed me to work outside the "standard" dimensions and sizes for pre-stretched canvas and those "canvas panels". I liked painting "big" as well as in odd dimensions. I preferred oils over acrylics back then because they didn't dry as fast so more subtle mixing and on canvas blending was possible. Such was possible with the acrylics available then, however it required various "extender" mediums that also involved less than "friendly" chemicals. (granted, over the years since my college days, they have changed to become almost be as "workable" as oils out of the tube) . I did find acrylics great for bold an bright works, but when I wanted something softer and more subtle I turned to oils as well as watercoulors.
For me, most of the work/time is, by necessity, trying to get the render closer to what I wanted in the first place.
That said, Rons brushes promos always set me to drooling; like the Underwater Air brushes I purchased recently for a specific project idea I had. Using those brushes looked like a lot faster than trying to figure how to render the splendid, beautiful effects shown in the promos. For me, turns out not, time-wise anyway.
Having figured out how to use those brushes in the free editor Gimp, I find myself wasting big chunks of time trying to get the postwork time and effort to actually improve the rendered image. Should be simple, but the results are drab and dismal.
So, beyond the basics of using postwork methods, like brushes, in general, which I can manage, I find myself really frustrated by the lack of targeted "help" information to go with the postwork products themselves.
For example, Underwater Air comes with a pdf, which is just a doc with the specific brushes imaged. No idea what that's for, or how to use it, or why I'd want to, over and above the abrs. But its included, presumably for some good reason. I just can't intuit what that reason might be.
That, for me, is about what postwork boils down to. Steep, sometimes unscaleable heights of learning curve. I don't use postwork to "fix" renders; I fix the scene, and render again. But the artistic potential of postwork seems obvious, and some folks, like Ron Deviney are masterful at it. Given the lack of concise instruction about getting great results with products like that, I really just don't have the time to invest. Frustrating.
The pdf I think is just to show large scale what brush images are included.
Some of Ron's brushes have a short video or directions. I know one of his flames one does and his rips and tears brushes do as well. I watch a lot of you tube videos, you can learn to do anyting on you tube lol.
I postwork a lot; specially with shadows, smoke, fog, rain, rays, light, water splashes, ripples, opacity, reflection, blend mode, intensity, saturation, fading, and such. I can't achieve what I wanted depending on Daz render alone. The magical wisps and gushes are hardest to do even with fractal brushes (but it has to be of higher resolution). I got it best by changing the blend mode and opacity, and using puppet warp and gaussian blur. I still don't know how to do these things with Daz. It is another learning curve...
I like to do as much as possible in rendering, but have slowly started incoporating a bit more postwork to give the image more "pop", enhance lighting, and have even added smoke/fog in post. I'm not great at postwork, but there are times when it definitely helps. I do almost always adjust levels in post though.
I love seeing and admiring what people create in Daz or Poser but waiting for something to render drives me crazy!
People talk about waiting for hours and even days for a render but when the urge to create hits me I don't want to wait hours or days for something to render as I get my kicks out of postwork. Postwork is a time when I can relax and enjoy creating something. Daz and Poser have always just been a vehicle to have models and props so I can work them into whatever I feel like creating.
As I recall, there were certain mass-manufactured sizes that were actually cheaper to buy pre-made than DIY, but the real issue for me was the amount of time that was wasted doing prep work and then having to cut off early for the extended clean up process for oils, since we only had access to our canvases during the actual class hours but we had to take our paints and solvents with us or they would 'disappear'. Fortunately I was going to the occasional comic convention back then and was able to get some great tips on speeding up the oil process from this up and coming artist guy named Boris Vallejo (I never did tell the instructor that my "turpentine" can was actually filled with a paint thinner made for house paints.) Of course, prior to that I'd already picked up an incredibly simple way of extending acrylic work times from these other artist guys I met at a con, the Brothers Hildebrandt. Their big trick was that rather than using standard mixing pallettes, they made trays out of aluminum foil to mix in, frequently misting the top with a fine spray of water using spray bottle, and then folding the foil over on itself to form a perfectly sealed envelope when they weren't actively painting. Amazingly, you could go days before the paint finally dried out.
Art is subjective. I think everyone can agree with that statement. In regards to post work, I do whatever is needed. Sometimes, it is a simple color correction, other times I may add a dramatic effect. I am not up to the level that some have with post work, and I feel, at this time, it isn't needed. My art can be photoreal, or surreal. I enjoy photorealism in my art, sometimes others.
As for the "no post work" comment on art pieces, I use it as informative tool for other artists in case they study my work and have questions. But I only use it in certian circumstances .
Just want to clarify something about when I use the labels "no postwork" and "postwork includes..."
In my case, it has nothing to do with being a purist or fan of particular software or anything similar. The rules for various forum events vary. Here are some examples from events I have participated in.
...envious that you met Mr. Vallejo. John Byrne (X-Men Fame) was probably the most famous artist I met at a con (authors are a much different story, but I digress in my derailment)
Guess I was a little more fortunate in that we had 16 hours a day 7 days a week access to the four studios in our arts building. Class time mainly focused on discussions or demonstrations of technique, critique, as well history of the medium. After that the studios were open for personal work time. We also had dedicated classes for different media including oils, acrylics, watercoulors, pencil (including coloured pencil), pastel/charcoal, ink drawing, and photography. The benefit of being at a college with an extensive fine arts curriculum which offered several degrees including including Bachelor/Masters in General Art, Art Edcucation, as well as Gallery Administration, and Commercial Art (No Digital Art as back then computers were still those big mysterious machines which resided somewhere in the basement of the Math and Sciences building).
Theft wasn't much of a matter as we had lockable carts for our paints, brushes, and supplies, and surprisingly, class members respected each others' property. I never had my WIPs disturbed or vandalised, nor anything stolen.
As to prep time, I would usually build stretch and prepare my canvases outside of class. The largest pre-stretched canvas I could find at the campus bookstore or art store in town was 32 x 24" and cost about as much as making one twice that size. They were also the standard aspect ratios for landscapes or portraits. Again I didn't purchase the pre cut, mitred and dovetailed stretcher frame bars, I used raw clear lumber (which cost far less per linear foot) usually 1 x 2, but for larger frames 1 - ½ x 4, as well as added internal bracing to keep it from warping when the canvas stretched taut after gesso application (granted, it helped that I had a little carpentry skill as well).
My oddest dimension was a pair of two 12" x 98" canvases, one with a C¹ and the other a C¹# English Diapason organ pipe (8' octave) painted to scale in fairly realistic style. I had to place each of the canvases sideways.on the easel.to paint them. They were meant to frame a doorway.
I despise the very concept of post-work - but as was already said; not when it's done well by others.
I spent endless hours scrolling through menus of rack-mounted guitar processors so that my sound to-tape was what I wanted to hear in the final mix, and that hard work paid off. I had a consistent, replicable series of tones for multiple styles of music that did not need to be tweaked in post-production because it went in "right" to begin with. I even ran cabinet mics through pre-processing so that the sound to-tape was finalized.
Let the audio engineers fiddle with stray drum rattles, phantom hums, and other nuisances, but nobody ever had to tweak my guitar sounds.
But then, at that time, all post editing was destructive, and if anything changed too drastically, the track had to be re-cut entirely. Pre-processing eliminated that possibility.
For imagery, while I have spent a lot of time in Paint Shop Pro since I first bought it in 1996, and have gotten satisfying results using the built-in Effects and Adjustments ( I even had a published tutorial on making glass and metal text using only multiple instances of the Hot Wax Coating effect on one of the old PSP sites), I've worked on applying my previous experiences with musical equipment to both Poser and D|S renders so the final result was rendered in one go. Obviously things fall short when you don't have all the elements to bring your vision to reality, such as dynamic hair and cloth and proper liquid effects, but now that those 3 main issues have been largely addressed in D|S, everything can be set up in pre-production so that when the render completes, it's a finished product.
I know there are certain filter effects that are available in image editors that give certain stylized looks, but I've been working on achieving similar effects in D|S using primitives stuck in front of lights and cameras in addition to the built-in Render settings. While the technique is not ready for prime-time, early results are promising.
Does pre-pro take longer than post? Meh, I doubt it, because if your artistic vision or mood changes while you're working, everything goes back to 0 anyway. My brother used to say that post-work is where an image becomes art, and he loved sitting for hours with his Wacom tweaking and finalizing a 2-hour render, only to find he had to go back in and fix something that couldn't be fixed in post. Meanwhile, I spent that same amount of time sweating the details in pre-pro and watched my final vision draw itself on the screen while I played video games. But then, I was never really the "pen and paper" guy that he was, so those "classical" concepts were already ingrained for him.
...and then there is this...wow
When you can cut out the side of a Yak and make a kilt...then you are a post-work master. (see about 19:10 and later)
Depends what I am in the mood for. Sometimes I will paint over every square inch, just using a render for shading reference purpose, other times I am doing almost a raw render, just fixing any pokethrough or ambients shadows I don't like from clothes edges, and using things like levels to bump up the contrast a tad etc.
My target objective is the final product - BY ANY AND ALL MEANS NECESSARY. If the raw render cuts it, then that is the finished product. Sometimes a render is just the 'napkin sketch' for the final product. I've never understood the snooty purists that insist you are garbage if you can't do this or that the way THEY claim you should. (HA HA!!! You take your snooty opinion a little too seriously, in my humble opinion! I'm sure you drive, or ride in, a car that you neither farmed the rubber for the tires, nor processed the raw ores for the engine and body yourself, so get off your high horse.)
WHEW! I think we found my Raw Nerve Button! HA HA!
Now get out there and create something - any which way you can!
I use no post-processing aside from mCasual’s denoiser, and even then only sometimes. To me, fixing things in the render is just the more interesting problem to solve. I’m still in the early stages of learning 3D art, and I want to improve on the fundamentals before I rely too much on post. Even great postwork is limited by the quality of the initial product, after all.
I’ve also never been that good at image editing, and haven’t taken the time to figure out Photoshop CC’s interface, so on the rare occasion that I even try to do something in PS beyond just compressing my renders, it usually takes a whole lot of searching through the menus, expanding every tool, checking the menus again..
This is a fantastic video, thanks for sharing it! :D This kind of style where the raw render is basically a starting point is what I'm learning to do, both because I really enjoy postwork and because it adds a lot of flexibility. Most of the techniques I've picked up have been from concept art and matte painting because they make heavy use of photobashing and 3D models to create really lovely, evocative pieces. I'm a storyteller first and my art is a supplement for that, so I think that's why I find concept/production art more compelling than the final product in a lot of cases. It's meant to evoke feelings, tone, and mood very quickly and intensely.
Currently none. I did once that I remember. I see no reason not to if it works for you. One big disadvantage is that all the work is lost if you have to fix something and re-render that got overlooked, so be very sure you're done and never need to hit render ever again before you start postwork. If your goal is to show what an application can do (rather than to create art) or you have some sort of restriction like a contest that only allows minimal postwork that might be a barrier. Or if you value your art critics who intensely dislike postwork I suppose that might be a reason to avoid it, but otherwise it's just a tool like any other tool to be used as you see fit.
I feel post processing of CGI output makes a huge difference and opens up a whole new world of possibilities. In Iray, this means rendering out a 32-bit canvas for proper HDR processing (including dynamic tone-mapping). I don't think it's possible to achieve the kind of dynamic lighting/tonal quality I'm after without post processing. Here's a couple of examples:
Using 3DL, this means a series of render passes sent to other algorithms for further NPR work:
It's important to note that in both instances, the post processing is completely automated. For me, there is a huge difference between manual post processing (that requires me to actually be at the computer driving) VS. automated post processing (scripted processing that requires no human time). It's more efficient for me to have computers working for hours than spend a single minute of my own time sitting in front of a computer actively working on something. I want to spend my limited seat time working on posing figures and scene composition.
- Greg
ETA: 3D render engines work on a pixel level. When rendering a given pixel, they do take into account the entire scene in terms of lighting, shadows, refelections, etc. However, in general they are not really aware of what the pixel(s) next to them are doing. In my mind, this is what makes post processing necessary.
This discussin will certainly benefit with more BEFORE/AFTER images of post work implementation.
I really think it depends on what look the artist is going for and what that artist's particular skills are. I personally try to do as much as possible in Daz...but...I also envy people who can do tons of postwork such as overpainting. That just isn't in my wheelhouse of skills. Someone mentioned before/after...so I've attached a few of my own. I think some would be quite surprised at just how little postwork there actually is on my stuff. Some pieces have more than others, but mostly it's just a lof the same stuff I do with real-world photography...which is tone/color/contrast.
But either way, art is art to me...it doesn't matter if there is postwork or not. If you can do it in Daz, awesome...if you do it in post, awesome.
(As an aside...someone mentioned a photography exhibit where photo manipulations were presented as photographs and yes I totally agree that was in poor taste...those were photo manipulations...still art...but call them what they are and do not judge them against photographs. Real world photographers have used postwork since there was such a thing as photography, but tone/color/contrast, whether it be with chemicals or a computer, is way different than compositing separate images into one.)
Real-world photographers have been compositing for just as long. Look at this famous photo of US president Ulysses S. Grant:
Double post.
Here's an example where the Iray 32-bit canvas output was rendered 3200 pixels wide (resized to 800 pixels wide before uploading) with (1) the default tone mapping, (2) my color Iray canvas processing script, and (3) my B/W Iray canvas processing script:
The scripts have changed slightly since the images were originally rendered/processed in 2016, but they are largely the same as back then.
- Greg
That's all well and good, but it's still a photomanipulation...whether it be done digitally or in a dark room. Opinions on it will vary, but part of the challenge of photography, at least for me, is being out there and catching a still as it's happening...a bird taking flight or a historical figure on a battlefield or a soccer player kicking a ball into a goal...not creating something that didn't actually happen. But again, that's just my opinion. The creation is still art of course just as the finished composite is still art...but it never actually happened, and (in my opinion) it shouldn't be judged next to a single still photograph. (Though an extreme example but still apples to apples, it's kind of like putting ScarJo's face on the body of a naked chick...it's ScarJo's face and it's a naked chick...but it didn't happen. All innappropriate creepiness aside, if someone can do it convincingly, it's a good composited piece of art, but it's still not ScarJo and it shouldn't be passed off as such.) But that's getting off topic since we're talking about Daz renders here, haha.
Personally, at the moment, I absolutely LOATHE doing any postwork for my images. Simple reason, I work at a photography studio as a retoucher and spend 9 hours a day in front of Lightroom and Photoshop fixing up to 700 photos a day.
In general, whn I look at images in the gallery, I don't care if they've been so photoshopped that you can't see the original render, or if they are not photoshopped at all. If I ike an image, I like it.
DAZ, PhotoShop, Lightroom, GIMP and whatever else is out there are all valid tools to create art. It's what artists have been doing for hundreds of years. We love ancient Greek and Roman sculptures for their pureness, how the artist have managed to work the marble into something lifelike, but we forget (or don't know) that those sculptures were one painted. Artists mix acrylics and oils in their works, waterolour and pastels, they stick found objects onto their paintings. Mixed media art has been around forever, you use what you can/need to produce what you want to.
Whether you use acrylics or oils or watercolours or pastels or charcoal or whatever else in their pure form to create something, or whether you use a mashup of any of them, art is art.
Same with renders and photoshop. Use the tools you have at your disposal. Print out yor renders in large format and paint over them, draw on them, do what inspires you. PhotosShop the s#!t out of them, or leave them as they are. There is absolutely no right or wrong, there is just art, and that's what everyone is here for.
Don't look at something and wonder if it's pure or not. Look at it and feel what it says to you, how it makes you feel. THAT is the purpose of art.