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I think another aspect is that if, for example, someone spends a week or two making a render of a car, and tweaks the shaders so it really looks like an awesome paint job, and tweaks the emissive lights to give cool reflections, and models the tires with a lot of detail in the treads, and then does an 8 hour render and then shows it to someone walking by on the street...
What's that person gonna say? "Um, okay, it's a foto of a car...". It never occurs to him that viewers couldn't care less if it took him two weeks to make that image. That's irrelevant. They've seen thousands of car images, and this is just one more. It doesnt' affect them or tell a story or hold any interest.
And then he gets upset cuz they didn't tell him how awesome the image is. Dude, what did you expect?
If you want people to love your work, you have to first understand where they are coming from, and what THEY are expecting.
One more point FWIW....
I'm certainly not even close to knowledgeable on art-related stuff in general, but after seeing something like a zillion CG renders over the years, and doing the slightest bit of investigation on some artisitic principles and such, I think there are a few key things that seem extremely common in "poser-style" or "amateur" renders that immediately cause others to dismiss the work. Feel free to disagree, but IMO these are extremely common:
For whatever reason, we humans like to focus on ONE thing in an image, so it's clear what the point of the image is. If our eyes bounce around all over looking thru all the in-focus stuff in the foreground and background, we don't understand the point of the image. As a result the image is almost painful to view, and very uninteresting. This is like one of the major principles or whatever in making images.
This is extremely common, IMO. In fact I was poking thru one of the other threads and some of the color choices people use in their renders give me a headache. Color wheels and what matches is a big thing in art. And different colors have different emotions and all that stuff. It's real important.
There are more, but IMO those are two of the big ones.
Art... good... bad... opinions... what is art... anecdotal evidence... beginner... professional... hobbiest... subjective... objective...
Dead Horse... flog flog flog.
Perhaps, but after a year of posts and 6,500 views apparently a lot of people are interested in the subject.
Including you, apparently
It's not a matter of saying artists are better or what they do is superior or anything like that. It's a matter of different goals and interests.
Artists might want to discuss and develop and hone techniques. A nonartist doesn't.
It's not a value judgement, it's a recognition of different interests and language.
And more to the point I'm trying to recognize and validate the hobbyist by saying it's not wrong when they say something like 'eh, lighting isn't important,' it's that they are having a fundamentally different conversation.
True, as long as people recognize that when they don't care to follow some basic artistic principles (ie, the principles that cause viewers to enjoy and react positively to the image), they shouldn't be surprised if there are others looking down their noses at the result. Because those who look down their noses don't necessarily want to recognize the different goals you're talking about.
Which was the original topic of the thread.
I made an analogy on this thread a while back, perhaps it was a little crude and offended someone. It was deleted. But you make the same point more politely. Non-artists are drawn to Poser or Daz because of its accessibility. They would never pay $1,000 or even $500 to create their work. Therefore Daz has a large quantity of users who are not trying to make art but just satisfy their curiosity or hobby. They approach Daz from a different standpoint. It stands to reason that their work will be seen as inferior. Any endeavour with a low cost of entry will have this issue developing from its casual users. The more casual users, the lower quality of output. The higher cost of entry, the more users with higher aspirations and ability, thus the higher quality of output.
A point I made at some point previously goes further... since Daz can make recognizably realistic stuff easily, it can actually be hard to figure out what to make better, and easier to go 'welp, that works.'
Like, lighting. It can be really hard to figure out what's wrong with an image, assuming you can even figure out that's why it looks so flat. It certainly continues to be hard for me -- I'm constantly checking myself and trying to remember to play around with lighting more.
Heck, photographers do far better than me because they've had the artistic technical training to understand lighting.
On the flip side, if you are using a pencil? It's really really obvious, fast, if you are new at it.
I was fortunate to have the artist Wayne Thiebaud for a painting class. His advice on critiquing other artists work was to concentrate intensely on finding what you like in it.
As a person who has taught life drawing and painting for years, I will say that there is plenty of badly made, beginner 'fine art' being made every day. Many struggle to learn and progress, many are just enjoying themselves. Most beginning painters do not have the resources or desire to post their early work like Daz users do tho!
And yes, the majority of Fine Artists that I know think anything 3 d is commercial crap. And, hahha, they don't care if you made it in Z brush or Poser- it's not 'Art' to them.
I have never liked listening to arguments about what is and isn't art---the easiest example of why that is futile, is Van Gogh. His work was considered hideous, a joke, unsellable. Google how many paintings he ever sold! If he had listened to what other's said- he would have never created his masterpieces.
Heard of Matisse? His work was so reviled and caused such an uproar that the movement he was in was given the name Fauvism, which means ' the wild beasts' - that was not meant as a compliment!
I think that what 'Good Art' is, is so fluid,so dependent on what you have been exposed to, so dependent on what you have heard, read,or looked at, that it just can not be pinned down- or not for long, anyway.
I agree that what is considered good is highly subjective. Van Gogh and Matisse were ahead of their times, but I don't think that anyone has argued (validly), even in their era, that they weren't artists or that they weren't creating art. So art has a lot to do with intent. If I am making a sand castle for my daughter on the beach, the intention is a lot different than if I were in my studio creating a sculpture of a castle seige. My grandmother's old house reveals its art in the handmade woodwork and moulding design. I might not like the style, but I can't deny its artistry and that it's nothing like the tract houses with moulding bought from the local hardware store.
There are certainly many critics who object to art that is 'too much like photography'. As we seem to be striving in this hobby towards greater 'photo realism'. Weird world.
Along the the aforementioned "Kleenex" and "Coke" there's Xerox for any copier, Scotch Tape, Super Glue, and a host of others.
On the issue of "Poser Art" meaing inferior, essentially yeah, there is an undertone of that. Machine limitations back in the day made any 3D generated art look like 3D generated art. CGI meanwhile has come into its own, I imagine most of the pictures getting the "Poser Art" sneering are really old, even rank newbies can come up with a pretty realistic picture in a short amount of time. At worst you can correct the deficiencies in Photoshop. Or whatever ;)
Wow, so you're sculptor too? You should post some fotos of your sculptures, we'd love to see.
I am not a sculptor, I am a filmmaker. It was just an illustration.
I don't think they think light's not important, they think it's natural and they are expecting that to be part of the DAZ rendering environment and the way 3D models are created. I think they also expect that when they place an object in the viewport that it will set or lay on the nearest surface like in real life. That might seem like asking a lot and very silly to someone that is more familiar with 3D art but how things behave in the real world according to their own experiences in in fact the only point of reference hobbyists and noobs have.
That doesn't mean that in the future DAZ Studio won't behave like hobbyists and noobs expect according to their experience in the real world, as those are very reasonable expectations, but it just doesn't now.
I always enjoy a good flogging from either end of the stick.
This thread is going in circles because it lacks 'the right words'.
I know all these concepts because I've been through them in the music world.
I just don't know the terms that apply for the artworld. ----------------------
It's the difference between saying "I play guitar" and "I'm a guitarist". The "ist" part says you have a dedication to that instrument.
The same difference between a person who "makes music" and "is a musician".
For the EXACT approach the definition is "a person who plays a musical instrument, especially as a profession, or is musically talented."
THIS is what Will Timmins is getting at, which is AN IMPLIED SKILL or TALENT. So you don't get to say "I make music, therefore I am a musician".
It's not just that you create, but you create with a certain level of knowledge and understanding behind your craft.
EVERY subjective thing that follows is WHAT KIND OF MUSICIAN/ARTIST you are.
There are bad musicians. That amounts, not to a lack of KNOWLEDGE, but instead "bad" JUDGMENT.
You make a poor lighting decision, NOT THAT YOU HAVE NO CONTROL over your lighting.
You choose bad colors, not that you don't know a thing about color/tone.
The implication is that you have CONTROL of the medium. After that, it's all about your decisions.
As Will is saying, an artist CARES about EVERY aspect of their art. They care about details- even if the care is to understand when the details matter and when they don't.
What rules to follow and which ones to break- when it's time to lean back on lessons and when to experiment and see what happens.....
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On the flip side, we had this battle over terms like DJ and producer. Kids would say "I make beats so I'm a producer" and Producer was a formal term implying work.
And kids wanted to change the definition.
If you're a producer, where's your product?- cause THAT'S what you're judged on.
It's only AFTER you have proven your diligence- by your FINAL OUTPUT that people care about the HOW.
That's when you're supposed to go into the tool box.
HOW is the most important question for anything in the universe.
WHAT is your sensibilities. HOW is you as an artist or whatever word you want to call yourself.
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So the key word here really is CONTROL.
Do you have control?
Do you have enough skill and knowledge of your craft and its tools to have control?
Craft is whatever kind of art you're making....NOT GENRE, but medium.
The tool is Daz Studio...
The difference between craftsman and artist.
Artist is a broad brush (ahem)
What kind of artist?
A commercial artist?
Are you a CGI artist?
A 3D artist?
I think those phrases are more specific and, is going to need actual output for a qualifier.
It's the "Oh, you're an artist, let's see your art"
"Oh, you're a producer, let's hear your record"
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I could go on, but now I'm scrolling to remember what I said too. lol
POSER art, means the TOOL outshines whatever you did with it.
There's no question of HOW because there's nothing (remarkable) to wonder at..
That's why they can look at your work and TELL YOU what your tool(s) were.
If they're fully right, a slight problem.
If they're wrong, a huge insult.
- if it's a peer, you haven't pushed the tools hard enough.
-if it's a lay person, you haven't pushed yourself hard enough.
-- you shouldn't be able to look at any art(work) and tell what the tools were. You're supposed be be wowed by the message conveyed through the skill and attention to detail of the hand at work.
- the handy work. What did you do? Not what the TOOLS did, what did you YOU DO- with the tools?
...however there are some of us with extensive backgrounds and experience in visual art who just don't have the financial resources for the big bucks software . I'd love to have Photoshop 6, the latest versions of Painter, Modo, and Marvelous Designer, but sometimes you just have to be continent with what you can afford particularly when you are on a very tight income. While people are buying and building all these new machines with the latest and greatest components, I need to nurse my 4+ year old system along and be satisfied that the best I will be able to do is just upgrade the memory to 24 GB and maybe get a 1070 when the prices come back in line.
It would be a shame if Daz ever ceases to support say W7, or pre Kaby Lake CPUs.
Yes, traditional art tools and media also cost. However, the tech curve involved is a lot shallower as you don't have to worry about a roll of canvas brushes, case of paints, a sketchbook, or set of pencils suddenly no longer supporting what you do and requiring a very expensive upgrade (unless of course any of them run out).
Personally I am disappointed that film based photography has become a "waning art" with everything going digital. I have a decent investment in my photo rig and with Kodachrome (no longer available since 2010) and Ektrachrome (discontinued in 2012) it took exquisite photos. This is why I like making my outdoor shots look as if they were photographed with those films (and use the 35 mm aspect ratio for wide shots). I almost wish that Iray had a tone map library of different film types like LuxRender does. Guess it just means more research to mimic the look.
...I was part of the "photorealist" school when I painted in oils. Trust me, it is really, really, really, difficult as you need to catch all the nuances, reflection, refraction, AO, bounce light, SSS, texture, shadows cast on uneven ground/surfaces, and background depth. We didn't have the benefit of computers and software to calculate most of these factors like we do in digital art, we had to simply "eyeball" it. Yeah a lot tougher than slapping a few colours on the canvas and calling it "art".
As an anecdote to that last statement, when I was back in college and once was asked why I didn't do expressionistic/modernist work, I simply replied I could easily turn out ten, to fifteen paintings a month as I just didn't see the personal challenge in it. The bottom line was the style didn't really move me, didn't tell a story (at least one I could see), and I really didn't feel it would push my ability and technique at all. It's easy to trowel, slap or spatter paint on a canvas, it is bloody difficult to build a good basis using thin layers of paint over each other
...having been a lighting tech in the theatre, Light is what it is all about as it sets the mood amd evokes a feeling from the audience. When I worked in 3DL I found the basic Daz lighting system to have a sense of "familiarity" when compared to stage lighting. Light is a very powerful medium that many take for granted. Most of the time I spent on setting up scenes was setting up the lighting. It wouldn't be unusual for a scene of mine to have 15, 20,or even 30 lights (not using LDP of SLP either). A real pain as in OpenGL only I could only see the effect of 8, so it meant a lot of test renders. The one saving grace was being able to "look through" a light as if it were a camera (gee I wish I had that when I was doing theatrical lighting, manoeuvring a 20 - 30#, very hot light element, 30 - 40 ft above the stage on a narrow catwalk or tall shaky ladder was less than fun.
Iray pretty much changed everything as little of what I did in theatrical lighting translated over since teh engine uses real physically based lighting. So back to the learning curve again though my experience with photography and previous work with LuxRender does give me a bit of a "leg up". Just need to think in a different mode.
I hung out with art students in college, and the swathe of students who were increasingly common would disdain actually having to learn any techniques. It's ART, maaaan. My friends would be like 'dude, you have to actually learn stuff.'
Kyoto Kid: If you can get your hands on NIK tools (free for Photoshop, maybe available otherwise?), there's a VERY nice of 'photograph' filters set to various camera types. There's at least several different Kodachrome filters.
A lot of it is the SEEMING "Plug and Play" aspect of these programs; some people think they should just be able to push a button and have the perfect pose or lighting. It doesn't work that way.
Oh, I'm not saying that the hobbyists have no desire to learn things I'm saying the hobbyists have learned a lot in their day to day lives about how their vision and physics in the world works and that they, if the SW UI in a computer 3D modeled environment is intuitive at all as one would expect it to be, expect to be able to leverage that real world instinctive knowlege and instead focus on scene composition and story telling. The scene composition and story telling is ultimately the primary differenciator for their render compared to other renders. Or at least in the renders that I see in the gallery those are the renders I tend to like but they are far and few.
I know of one major website that definately considers anything Poser or Daz to be 'Not Art' and that is Artstation, they have a policy of not allowing or removing anything identified as using DAZ or Poser as the main software from their trending wall as soon as it is noticed.
I know this as I have it in righting from them when I queried why some of my images had been fairly high on the trending wall and then suddenly vanished. This applies even if you take out the Pro membership and are paying them each month! So that is one major site that openly discrimates against us.
This is the relevant part of the email response I got from their CEO:
More than that, many professional industry artists take issue to this kind of parametric/pre-made Daz 3D models and don't want to see it on the Trending wall of ArtStation. There are other sites that are better suited for this kind of content such as Renderosity. And yes, professionals do use Daz (e.g. concept artists use Daz to post characters that they paint over in concepts, etc.), these kinds of photo-real, sexy women renders, is just not a subject matter that we as a professional industry site want to promote. While there's no violation of TOS, and the works can generate a lot of visibility otherwise through your network, it's not something that we're going to be actively pushing to our audience on the Trending wall.
I understand if you might feel frustrated or cheated by this. This is just how we roll
So when you made a cool car model, want to showcase it and put Vicky at the steering wheel - oups?... Nice site.
Not sure I agree.
It's *their* site. They own it. They pay for it. None of us is entitled to anything from them. I know with the "internet mentality" we all think that everything's free and we are entitled to everything for free.
Keep in mind that somebody pays for the site. And it can be expensive. And they want a certain audience, for whatever reason. I dont' blame them. Maybe they get more income from a certain user base, and without that they wouldn't have enough income to continue. I don't know. But if YOU owned a website and needed to make income from it, you'd probably do something similar to make sure your business survived.
Keep in mind...NOTHING is really free. Somebody pays for it. And just like you and I, EVERYONE needs to make money to live. It's a good thing.