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...being someone who spent a good part of my life with oil and watercolour painting, the different brushes are used for different effects and styles, not to make any one painting any "better" than another which is what I get from the OP regarding production of CG art. For oils I had about a dozen and a half different types of brushes of different widths, softness, and shapes, each that lent itself to a particular aspect of creating the finished work (much like the brushes "toolbox" of a 2D programme). Some were perfect for creating fine lines, some for clean hard edges, some for making bold textured strokes, some for blending, and some for creating soft or diffuse effects. With watercolours it is not only the brushes, but the paper itself that also lends to the quality and style. Hot press reacts differently than cold press, same for rough and smooth, machine made or hand laid. Again as with oils, none of these dictates whether a painting is "good" or "inferior".
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...while I have more time being retired. it is the financial aspect that has the biggest impact. I am working on a system that is over five years old. In computer terms it is a dinosaur as pretty much everything in it is now "legacy" hardware. As I mentioned on another thread when I built it I did so to get the most performance fro 3DL as that was all we had at the time (yes there was LuxRender through Reality but render times were on what seemed a geologic scale). On the other hand it is woefully insufficient for photo real rendering in Iray. As I am on a very tight fixed income, I don't have the funds to build a new system or even upgrade to a high VRAM GPU (thanks to the recent price spike) so I decided to just stay with 3DL as my system can still handle it, I have many more years of experience working in it than in Iray, and I have a larger investment in 3DL utility, lighting, and resource content.
Now I know that 3DL in Daz cannot match up with Iray in the "realism" department, and I'm perfectly OK with that.
Unfortunately one scene I posted was critiqued for not having proper "realism" elements like bounce lighting or SSS. Well I already was aware of that, as evne with UE 3DL falls short of photo realism. As UE also involves extremely long render times (like CPU mode in Iray) I rarely use it to begin with since even render tests take too long to complete which has a negative impact on workflow and thus increases the discouragement factor as I feel I am getting nowhere.
...well I will admit that the taste of tempura is far superior to that of deep fried wax or oil crayons. ;-)
Hahaha oh my brain.
yeah.
...I had the fortune to play on an authentic 18th century Stradivarius during a master class. The feel and balance was so much nicer while the sound was impeccable compared to the 20th century built instrument I was learning on. Some things just don't lend themselves well to modern manufacturing techniques, acoustic musical instruments are but one category.
Oh and glass bottles were not only returnable (I remember collecting pop bottles to turn in for the 2¢ deposit when I was young), but much easier to recycle into new glass as well as didn't leach chemicals like BPA into what you were drinking.
...but I digress, back to the getting the train on the tracks.
...this was done in Daz 2.0 on a 32 Bit 4 GB notebook (before we even had UE). I think it came out very well.
I use 3DL for all my cartoon/anime/comic book renders.
Unfortunately, a lot of the time, what's considered to be "good" art often relies on the popularity of the artist, not their tools or talent. If someone reacts favourably to your image, you visit their gallery. It would be rude to respond by saying "your images are terrible", so you'd either tick the 'like' button or say nothing. Now, imagine that on a larger scale. Suddenly a really terrible image becomes incredibly popular. And, due to human nature, if it's popular, it must be good.
The Daz top images gallery - they're not necessarily good (far too much photoshop, for my tastes), but they certainly are popular and, invariably, they're the sort of image that Daz/Poser users are judged on.
I'd have to say that it is the artist and not the tools. A truley talented artist can make great work with any set of tools they are familiar with. I had a friend who was a great sculpter (in physical clay) but could not afford tools, so he made his own with pieces of wood and paper clips. His sculpts were really amazing.
The part where the tools comes in is simply, better tools let the artist reach the desired outcome faster, not neccissarily better. As with anything though, the artist needs to know how to use the tools for them to be of any use.
*edit*
so yeah, in a way both artist and the tools
It's funny because I go to Siggraph every year it is in LA (or Orange County) and there are distinctive differences among the people who attend and you can actually tell who they are by how they look. There are the creative, arty people (like me) and then you have the programmers and computer geeks (not like me, but I wish I had their skills!) and then the sales people, company employees, owners, etc... And to have a good computer programmer also be artistic or vice versa is rare. So in a sense we are a rare community. Most here may be better at the geek stuff or the arty stuff, but are at least capable of doing both. I know that some PAs work in tandem on projects, each doing what they excel in. But some manage to do everything themselves, are equally good with software as creative ability and I admire those people. I really want to learn to model so I can create all the ideas I have in my head but learning all the software can make my brain explode! On the other hand, when I get into Photoshop, I can play for hours, lose track of time, and next thing I know birds are chirping and the sun is coming up, Still I really do want to learn to model, and tackle all the 'secret" or hidden aspects of DS if only there was one comprehensive MANUAL, but I'll stop harping about that.
In any case, both good artists and good tech people are amazing and can create amazing things no matter what tools they use, but to be capable of doing both well, that's almost genius.
most artists are always thrilled to find great tools, and always have two eyes wide open for them. craftsfolk, too.
3d is a tough space for both, because few have the capability to build their own tools.
but i'm kind of uncomfortable with the confrontational stance implicit in the OP's thread title and the content thereof. i feel like it's a riposte to something, but what and why i have no idea.
i've seen skilled artists do amazing things with really primitive tools. and i can't see for the life of me why anyone would want to throw any shade at that.
flipside is, really, you can have a superb hammer, which i personally consider one of most wonderful and useful tools ever devised, and still spend a lot of time bashing your own fingers with it, no matter how well it's balanced. experience and vision do count for a lot. time spent on a learning curve.
j
As the saying goes: If the only tool in your bag is a hammer, then everything else becomes a nail.
Tools DO matter.
Wolf Wolf Wolf! I agree with you once again as if you were reading my silly mind. You seem to care a bit about the underlying psychology people apply in their discussions and I tend to do the same thing, which has admittedly made me unpopular from time to time. Ways of thinking that don't actually help people are a problem and helping people to think more clearly is a service to them and we ourselves, since we are all askew about some subject or other at some point in time or other. Thanks for all you posts and observations!!!!
"Artist matters more than Tool" reminds me of the "Free Will" discussions. Tools actually do matter, and human will is NOT free. Just because you cant isolate or identify exactly what has influenced your choices doesnt prove unequivicoally that your will to make those choices was "free."
There is this highly mistaken tendency I find in life where some people choose to believe that "human will" literally outpaces all other considerations. That if only people could just commit fully enough, that absolutely anything is possible at any point in time. I think that people might do this because they find the idea highly unsettling that they do not have control over anything in life that really matters, and that fate and random luck alone determine more about our existences than our own daily decisions; I get it. I find it unsettling too. But from a getting real standpoint I find that such assumptions of will matters most to be quite unreasonable and flawed. Too many people feel responsible for things that are out of their control becuase they tell themselves that their will was too weak to make that important thing happen. Bad Bad!
Knowing the constraints one is working within is an essential step in determining how and what to do next. Some constraints are not real, and are only perceived, we must be careful not to allow ourselves to be constrained by imaginary influences. But failure to recognize real contrainsts is equally as ill advised. If you truly have all this free will, then please decide arbitrarily to float 12 feet above the ground with no effort or assistance of any kind. Use your powerful mind to tell gravity itself to release its grip upon you. Unless you can do that, your will to move about freely in three dimensions isnt completely free, so dont pretend to be in total control.
Artists, like humans living on a gravitationally bound planet, are goverend by the contrainsts they find themselves within. Whether or not an individual perceives the constraints doesnt matter, they are still there. Software applications are limit setters. They apply constraints upon the artist who uses them. More on that in a moment
Great example....
Do sharpened knives cut better than dull knives?
Simple answer is YES
I guess the real answer however is determined by your definition of "cutting better."
If by "cutting better" you mean to imply that some blades requires less force ("will" if you will) from their users to accomplish the singular goal of separating two previously connected halves, then indeed sharp knives do "cut" better.
That isnt to say that a user with access to more forceful handling of the knife (or greater will) couldnt get a similar result with a dull knife. Its just that the likelihood drops exponentially the more dull the blade becomes until it essentially reaches 0.
Sharp knives are not only easier to use for most people when cutting most things, they are also safer to use and often faster as well. This is in most cases, but there are always exceptions. Don't let a few rare exceptions like your personal favorite artist to throw you off the trail of the general trends. Know an exception when you see one and don't let it skew your observations too much.
"Tools" determine the upper and lower limits (thresholds) of what the artist will even consider trying to accomplish with a given tool. This is then factored with the goals of the artist and their technical grasp of said tool to realize those goals. Like gravity determines and decides for you that you will remain on the planetary surface, such do tools like software determine the type of things you will try to do with them. By simply chosing the tool you are choosing to deny as many unknown possiblities as you are enabling.
I stated years ago that DazStudio has a certain type of mindset that goes along with it. If you "get" the DS mindset, which is combining premade assets revolving around human figures as the focus of every scene, then great. DS banners and ads tell new users to jump into "3d Art" but what they show you are a bunch of promo images of human fiigures. Sorry DS mindset, but 3d is more than just about humans, but the DS mindset doesnt want you to realize that since DS can't help you to make much more than humans. If however like me you came from other software backgrounds where human figures arent an assumed focus of every render then the DS mindset can seem extremely limiting
If you have a dull blade, chances are you're not going to get the thin slices of prosciutto New Yorkers love so much on their sandwiches. Dull blades just dont serve that type of purpose and only in the hands of the most exceptional knife holders would this statement become untrue.
Tools are what tell the artist what things they can say YES to and which things they must say NO to.
Tools set the stage, and the stage is a pretty important part of the whole production if you ask me.
I think this shows that everyone will not agree what makes art let alone great art. For example I prefer heavily photoshopped images and these butch doesn’t care for.
You're doing some really weird inverted version of strawmanning or something here, where you make a strong claim and then try to back it up with reasonable obvious truths, but those truths don't actually add up to the claim they're trying to support. "Artist matters more than Tool" is wrong because tools actually do matter? that doesn't actually follow logically. Just because tools matter doesn't mean something else cannot matter more. Free will isn't real because we can't levitate? Obviously we can't levitate but that has absolutely nothing to do with the ability to choose one's couse of action, you can still choose to try to levitate there's no part of the definition of free will that guarantees outcomes,
Also if you're sliching prosciutto that thin you're not likely using a knife at all... just sayin' ;)
Tools matter to me. I used to stonecarve / sculpt. For years I lived in a house with a garage studio that included pneumatic tools and a compressor. The Great Recession hit and I moved to Las Vegas into an apartment - no place for loud compressor and tools! I tried carving with hand tools. What a joke that was! After about 5 years I realized that part of my life was over since I would never be able to afford another house or loud art studio space. It made me sad to send all my tools to a friend.
A couple years later I ran into Daz. I am happily making art again. It's not as great as my sculptures were, but I'm having fun and that's what counts.
I totally agree. The idea that the tools are unimportant is a very romantic notion. And while it certainly holds some truths, a lot of things are different in the CG world.
I'm not sure this was mentioned, but the single biggest advantage of good tools for CG is time spent learning. Let's just look at Daz Iray, and how brutal it is on hardware. The faster your GPUs are, the faster Iray renders. Now some people may say, "well, I've got time to wait", except this overlooks one very basic fact: Art takes PRACTICE. Lots and lots of practice and learning. And takes practice? Time, lots and lots of time. If one person starts out on Iray from day 1 with four 1080ti's, they have will have a massive advantage over someone who has just a cheap laptop. Because the first user here would be able to make render after render in a matter of minutes. They will be able to quickly discover what works and what does not. But the laptop user will take hours to render the same scenes. Even the window will be slow to display anything, meaning it will take a while to see that something is wrong. It will take them 20 times longer to notice "oh darn, my lighting is off". Then they have to fix it, and start all over again. It will painful.
So even if the cheap laptop user is highly talented, they will quickly lag behind the quad 1080ti user. Or any user with a decent GPU for Iray. Give these 2 people 6 months at Daz Iray, and the user with the better machine will almost certainly be well ahead of the curve the vast majority of the time.
And I have seen this in action. Some people have started with pretty bad hardware, and then bought new hardware. Almost overnight their works were improved. In Iray, being able to render a larger scene matters, and one can get more ambitious with better hardware and more VRAM.
The cost of entry into CGI can be quite punishing. IMO, this is the single biggest reason it is still so niche. If you want to paint, well you can find art supplies practically everywhere around you. If you want to take pictures, basic cameras are dirt cheap, and smart phones have very decent cameras built in these days. You can also buy zoom lens attachments for a variety of smart phones. In this case, smart phones can trump unwieldy SLR for the simple fact that you probably always have your smart phone. You can't take a great picture if you forgot your camera! Either way, there are cheap ways to get started in most artistic fields. But CG is wholly different. And because it is generally limited to a desktop, it is not something that ravels real well. Odds are you are not going to take your rendering machines with you. While you can certainly get some high end laptops, these laptops are super expensive, so again, a very high cost of entry.
But there is a very easy way to see this in action. Just look at old CGI! It so happens that Twitch had a marathon of the CGI series "Reboot". Reboot has a special place in history, it was the very first 30 minute TV series made entirely with CGI. It began way back in 1994. Whoa. It came out before Toy Story did! (1995) Anyway, the people involved with this show were quite talented, and back in the day, Reboot was cutting edge. It doesn't look so cutting edge anymore! So here is a clear case of where the tools matter. The tools they had were top notch in the 1990's, but those same computers would not cut it today.
Would people accept this quality of animation today? Even though Reboot did the best it could?
A paintbrush never really changes. They have served the same purpose for centuries. But art based on technology constantly changes, and this impacts how it is done. Would you use Michael 2 to try to create a photoreal image today? I rather doubt it (though I'm sure somebody has tried.) You need better tools than that.
While tools matter, it's the artist that makes the difference IMO. You can give any artist the best tools in the world, but if they lack the skill and knowledge to use them effectively, then it is pointless. How many users here have access to the most powerful 3D tools there are, Maya, Max, MODO or C4d and have no idea how to get the most out of them or only know how to use less than 10% of the functions. I have seen some amazingly detailed models done in Blender, but no matter how I, or many others try, we can't model a simple prop.
I too disagree
I follow a Blender 3D group on facebook who's work is utterly stunning and well beyond my ability even though Blender is free.
I think they give the Autodesk software users a big run for their money!
j cade,
I see where you're coming from. There's no attempt at being unclear in my previous post. My mere point is that just like the force of gravity both enables and constrains our physical movements on Earth's surface so then can there be influences that enable and constrain our decision making, as artists, such as the tools we decide to use. Our direct observations of these influences is not required for them to operate upon us, they don't need our permission any more than gravity does. It would be highly presumptuous to assume that our minds are any freer than our bodies. Tools matter EQUALLY along with the artists because if the tool says NO then there's very little the artist can do to overcome that beyond a certain point. True; Most tools can be extended to some degree beyond their original design, but only to a certain degree.
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...but when you cannot afford those sharp knives (whether it be software or hardware or both) you have to make due the best with what you have.
...I do not have a steady hand anymore, so detailed postwork and digital painting is out of the question for me. Therefore I need to get the most I can out of the render pass and 3DL lets me do that with all the effects utilities it has available. Yes, it takes more time in the setup phase but is a lot easier on my nearly crippled hand and wrist.
i still don't understand the whole dichotomy thing that seems to be going on here.
and i also very frankly disagree with the dismissive idea that if the only tool you have in your hand is a hammer, then everything else you have in your toolkit becomes a nail. the hammer is not a tool that encourages oversimplification. metalworkers forge amazing things with hammers....and have the coolest hammers sculptors working with stone rely on hammers to dish kinetics out to chisels. you can flatten and old-school tenderize meat with a hammer, if you're cooking. and our useful friend the sledgehammer could just as easily knock down a thousand structures without ever touching a nail as it could be used to drive a thousand railroad spikes. and back on the basic carpentry front, most of the really amazing japanese and chinese architectural constructions of eras gone by were constructed using really wonderfully crafted jointwork (welcome, saws, to this party!) and wooden dowels which while being hammered upon were in no way nails.
and there really is no getting away from the truth that if you want to frame something, then the people who're doing the framing appreciate their tools when they're doing the grind. so where is there really a conflict here? i always think it's funny and sad to be scrapping about stuff like this because i'm a peaceful person, but oh well.
i speak from experience, and there are a fair number of vintage multi-cultural quotes that i reckon back the concept up pretty well, but it's a poor craftsperson who blames their tools for the work not turning out, or for hitting themselves with their tools. you can totally wish that the perfect tool were out there someplace, but at the same time, you'll be happier and better off if you recognize that even flawed tools can and have created wonderful things that you could not have created, and try to get some handle on how that happened instead of grousing about stuff.
i am still having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that artists have created wonderful work with hexagon. it's not a tool of learning-curve choice for me, but clearly it's several excellent artists' tool of choice. why shouldn't i respect that?
the whole tools-versus-artists or artists-versus-tools scenario is just goofy. pretty much the entire history of humanity as tool-using creatures has been about our struggle to make the best we can of whatever we can get our hands on when we need to do something. starting with rocks and sticks and working our way up. recognizing the limitations that we're dealing with when this is happening and trying to figure out what we ought to do next is part of the fun and the learning curve.
don't be throwing that stick and that rock away because you're frustrated that you haven't build a palace with them yet. chill out and figure out how you can join them into. a hammer might be helpful.
j
...the same happened to me with regards to painting and drawing (as well as playing classical keyboards) after crippling arthritis set in. That was one of the reasons I ended up in this pursuit so I still could maintain a creative outlet.
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why do i always have the feeling in these kind of discussions of 3DArt we are some hundreds of years in the past compared to classical painting/sculpting ?
now compare this to the music scene
where some people called DJs compose stuff from samples and get famous all over the world
they have learned using tools to make music without playing any classical instrument
and most consumers do not know how their music was done
they just got used to it
Mmmm... I started out with 3D because my drawing skills were non-existent. Even with the most expensive pencils and rubbers on the finest paper, you'd wonder if the image was drawn by an extremly untalented 5 year old.
Then came DS... Oh, look, it is supposed to be a human! I can recognize it as a human!
My 3D renderings slowly become more acceptable, as i learn and understand DS better, and Iray. I dare to do things I didn't dare when I started out (like, messing with textures, doing small morphs, doing the very simplistic own modelling). Babysteps. As such, I think I can look at my progress as a 3D artist and say "time and money constrains considered, I think I'm slowly getting better as a 3D artist".
But then, in comes my co-author. She's not from the 3D render community and doesn't have the narrowing view of "I understand how much effort went into this". She gives the images for the comic a look-over. So I show her the image i have spend day on, setting up, testrendering, tweaking... and feel that, hey, I really did better!... and more often than not says "not bad. But this and that doesn't really look... good". And then I have to explain to her that, yeah, with my tools available, we can't do this and that she thinks is needed to make the image look better in her eyes. And try to find a workaround to achieve at least a little of that result.
A better tool (better pc, software with better options) would get better results in the same artist.
So yeah, as much as I hate it, both artist and tools matter.
That said, if you have to work within limits, that doesn't mean your artwork becomes bad because of that. I've decided for myself that, yeah, there is a limit to how realistic my people can look, and such things, but that is incooperated into the style of the comic I'm doing. Make your limits work for you rather than against you, and never, ever let anyone tell you otherwise.
(@kyoto kid, I know that feeling very well, when you heart just bleeds because you can't do like you want. But you are doing great work within the limitations you've been set by circumstances. Michelangelo, Rubens, Picasso, van Gogh - they all used paint and brush within the limits given. They each coined their own style and made their art memoriable. You are doing that, too. And never ever let anyone tell you otherwise.
)
I feel a differentiation needs making between 'better' and 'more features'.
More features in a product allow one to accomplish more. You may like it better, but that doens't necessarily mean it is better. Liking it better is due to familiarity, it fitting with your workflow - and brand loyalty. (Brand loyalty is important imo.) Other factors also come into play I expect. Better, of course, can also be subjective, whereas a list of features are not.
A poorly programmed product may have more bugs and be more prone to crashes and other errors.
A lack of features can force one to learn new skills and develope; this in turn can result in different ways of using new features when they are added to the product, or even intrinsicly disliking some new feature.