I need a new creative approach
RenderPretender
Posts: 1,041
As DAz's capabilities increase and become more resource-heavy, I find myself inable to keep up in terms of meeting hardware requirements. Hence, I'm feeling the need to "economize", cutting back on geometry in scene composition and trying to focus on my characters and the interaction between them, relying less on props, sets, and various implements. This will require the adoption of a new way of thinking about creating 3D visual art... for me, at least.
I'd be interested in knowing whether any other artists here have ever felt as if they are becoming a sort of "wayward consumer" of available tools, as opposed to a creator of art based on a truly independent objcective. I'm not sure if I'm expressing my query with sufficient clarity, but I feel that a seismic shift toward more simplicity is in my future in terms of the art I create.
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You can get around this quite a bit with composition post work in photoshop or gimp. Compose the scene including the lights, and cameras the way you want them, save it, then knock out the characters and render the environment. You then render the characters separately and put them back in the scene in post work. Since you have the same camera angles and lighting, you end up with pretty much the same picture as you would have if you rendered the whole thing in DAZ. Since I tend to use a lot of characters in my scenes I do this quite often.
On the other hand, if you are doing comics, sometimes less clutter in the background helps the comic. It all depends on the result you are looking for.
That's a great suggestion, but the problem is that, coompositionally, I still find myself relying too much on props and scenes. I'm aiming (in my mind's eye, at least) for a more "elegant" result that showcases human physical appeal, and I am inclined to return to a much more basic scene composition these days, with the focus on the character(s). Lately, I have been feeling like more of a hapless consumer of content than a producer of anything of artistic merit.
Reduce texture sizes and rethink materials and detail levels
https://www.daz3d.com/scene-optimizer
https://www.daz3d.com/resource-saver-shaders-collection-for-iray - this even has some useful hints in the pop-ups on the product page
See, here's a perfect example: I can't use the deenoiser because I'm rendering on CPU and have no intention of going out to purchase a computer that will support it. I typically have renders that are acceptable after as little as five iterations and become quite nice after massaging them with a professional photographer's denoiser. There is a point of diminishing returns for me in terms of "chasing" the 3D industry. I need to define my own cretive terms again as my wherewithal can support them... not the converse.
...nothing wrong with keeping things simple;) And limitations can be useful, because you have to use your imagination (or use a bit of magic) to make things work:)
I've been doing sound recording for the last 30-35 years. When I started as a teenager I had a 4 channel analogue tape recorder and learned the basics, then got an 8 channel recorder and I was in heaven. Now with the digital audio workstations I have access to an unlimited number of tracks, I can load as many plugins as my RAM can handle, and it's a LOT, etc. Am I being more creative now? Definitely NOT!
i think overall it means to use older products to increase efficiency. We used to get a lot out of V4 ... iray seems to be a resource hog overall. I use it CPU only machine myself but find I end up just doing portraits all the time. The newer models need greater resources.
Or .. as stated, develop techniques to use what we have. I'm still learning for sure.
(that was sure a useless paragraph of repetition of past words.)
This post was brilliant, and right on the money. Thank you.
Interestingly, I still find myself occasionally digging out some V4-based characters because, after all this time, they still fill certain compositional bills!
Thanks... might be a useful tool. I have had scenes that would not render at all, almost certainly due to resources choking my machine half to death.
I'm also sticking with DS 4.10 as long as possible. every upgrade results in higher equipment resources. Can't afford it. well, I could if I quit buying stuff here for awhile. One year and I could buy a nice power system that would be close to obsolete
I made the mistake of upgrading to 4.11, but I guess I'll have to muddle through with judicious content choices from here on.