Help, my Brain is tricking me!!!
Masterstroke
Posts: 2,313
This is a matter of reception and how your eyes and your brain is tricking you, when looking at your own art.
this is not DAZ studio or CG only, I ran into this issue, whith pen and paper also.
The situation:
You create a model and you think: "Great, she looks exactly the way I want her to look like."
You put it away and look at your artwork an hour later and you think:
"Wait, her head is way to big."
So you correct it by making her head slightley smaller.
"Perfect"
Later, you look at her again and you think:
"Oh darn, her head is way to small now."
Making it bigger, but the next day... ect, ect
I just can't get out of it. It just never stops. Even with measuring tools like Measure Metrics, I cannot put astop to it, because the results never look just eqally right to me.
It must be either the eyes or the brain or both playing tricks on me. It just can't be just the CGI, because I ran into the same problems before, when all was pen and paper.
It's driving me nuts. Is it as bad for you too?
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Comments
I know the trouble, happened in pen and paper days to me as well, what helps is to put an opject next to your figure, which gives it relation (a car, a broom whatever)
Also it helps to know that humans have a tendency to like bigger heads, so giving in to that a little bit is no problem as long as they don't turn out to be chibis when you wanted normal humans
This exact thing happened to me with a recent render. It was a lookalike of Poppy, the singer. I made what I thought was a decent approximation of her face and figure. Rendered it out very quickly and thought: actually, her features are too small and soft here.
So I made her cheeks a little thinner and her nose a bit bigger and her jaw a little wider. Rendered the final image for a long time, posted it in the gallery, and thought all was well. Then I happened to catch a glimpse of the first test render and realized that it looked much better. But I had saved over those settings, so trying to get her to look the way she did originally was a total nightmare. Finally, I got something kinda close, but it still wasn't the same. Now, whenever I change her face in any meaningful way (I'm working on another Poppy render now, this one circa 2015), I save it as a new scene.
At some point, you just gotta quit messing with those dials and hit render.
In On Writing, Stephen King recommends putting a first draft away for six weeks and resisting the urge to peek at it, until it feels like something you vaguely recall picking up at a junk sale. Only then will you be able to judge it clearly.
I don't wait that long, but I do find that putting a scene aside for a day or two, instead of tinkering constantly, helps me see the flaws better. Sometimes I even end up scrapping it and doing it over.
The advantage of CG of course is that we can compare our work to real-world reference material, so we know exactly when a head is too big or too small.
Yeah, but sometimes I look at people in the real world and think "Gee, that person has a big head" or "That person has short legs for the size of their torso". Or at least I did when I saw people in real life.
There's some wiggle room with human proportions.
I think it's a good idea to put away your results for a few days, then go back to it with fresh eyes and make adjustments.
Making adjustments again and again every few hours is less productive, I find.
My problem is with writing. In these forums particularly. I attempt to write in full sentences, with proper punctuation, careful choice of words, "proper" spelling (except when imitating accents or dialogue) and clear meaning. I'll post my message (usually with three or four immediate edits) but then come back a few hours later and realize that I'd left out a piece of information to make the situation clear. So, I add it in, then that boogers up the wording, requiring additional editing. My attempt is to use only as many notes as necessary (as said in the line in the movie "Amadeus". But I often fall prey to the "too many notes" complaint. It isn't until two or three days later that I'm actually satisfied with my post, sometimes by removing whole paragraphs or sometimes by creating another whole post to explain more backstory. (*sigh*) Too many notes. And in the end, none of it matters and nobody cares. I'm just entertaining myself.
(See my signature line below.)
Similar thing with my images. I work for days getting a picture just right. But I rarely publish them. Although I have sold a few. But in the end none of it matters, nobody cares and I'm just entertaining myself.
I think its always important to have an objective set of eyes take a quick look. No vested interest, just the straight comment. Make adjustments if necessary. It goes something like this. "hey hon, have a look. Whatcha think?" The answer usually keeps you humble. And then you work at it again.
Yeah, weird stuff happens like that. There have been times I am working with a piece of wood and thought to myself "Who the hell made this texture map, it looks horrible and fake"
I always have my Life drawing students hold their drawings up to a mirror- this helps to be able to see the errors. You can also google the basic porportions for the average human- and use that to ensure your porportions are within reason.
I use to be bothered by that sorta thing, but after years of that I realized my brain is an annoying jerk that's always making trouble or giving bad advice... it's always like "it's not hot, touch it..." or "those wasps aren't angry they just want to be friends..." and don't get me started about what it does when it gets a little alcohol in it or too much caffeine...
I probably shouldn't soak it in coffee or rum, but sometimes you need to, to get out the brain mites... but that's not the point... at some point you have stop listening to your brain or you'll never complete anything.
I have a version of the "Too big a head - Too small a head" dilemma... sort of but not really...
My thing is I'll start a project and always add too much detail... a good example is a "simple" model of an ornate stone gazebo I started making... first it was just a little marble Greco-Roman looking thing... that got bigger and ended up on top of a precipice, that turned into a separate island kinda rocky outcrop with an ornate bridge leading to it, at this point it's got opening windows and doors, a staircase leading to a lower room and it's connected to a hilly cliff terrain by a long LOTR/Gondor type ornate marble bridge.
That, or this space freighter I started that has multiple crew quarters, detailed cockpit/bridge, multiple removable exterior panels with technical details underneath, engines that are removable and that have removable panels for maintenance shots, cargo bay doors and gangway that operate, a cargo elevator, landing gear, etc... I started adding air ducts that one could use to if they wanted to do an "Alien" thing, and eventually I end up with this massive model with more crap on it than anyone would ever need that I get to the point of moving it to DAZ or Poser and I lose interest in exporting so many different parts and sections, not to mention fixing textures and stuff like that and I put it away until I think one day I'll get around to DAZing it up or Poserizing it, writing a Readme (which is a whole other thing) and putting it up on ShareCG.
I can't not do that... I made my wife a temporary desk since she is working from home during the pandemic, and I added secret compartments to the drawers... I dunno, in case she joins the Illuminati and needs to hide a treasure map or something?... she was like "why?" and my brain was like "Because!" and I was like "uh... I dunno?"
Every time I put something away to work on other more important stuff, I come back and just keep adding stuff to it.
Then there is the thing with real life projects where I'm build something and suddenly I look at 97 gazillion parts and sub-assemblies and I'm like "holy shi... "
I know I know where everything goes, I know it all fits and works, but suddenly my brain who's been f_ _ _king off the whole time watching cartoons or something comes in and it's like "Aaaaah! What the hell is that? How are you going to put that together? I need a drink! Quick soak me in rum!"...
I guess the point is... sometimes it's okay to listen to your brain, but sometimes it's just an annoying jerk and you need to be able to figure out when it's just playing you or not been paying attention or when it's actually trying to be helpful like when it offered the suggestion of not using Rainbow Looms to make a bungee cord, or that eating a green pork chop that wasn't colored that way for Saint Patrick's day probably wasn't a good idea.
Brains can be useful sometimes.
Yes, happens to me too lol. But IRL, some people have bigger heads than others. Sometimes I’ll notice on TV or in a movie that one actor’s head is a lot bigger than the others. I notice on pictures of my mother that she had a disproportionately large head lol.
Try hiding the hair. Sometimes the hair can make the head look too big so you make it smaller only to discover that the head was originally the right size. I’m not sure if it’s the mixture of morphs I sometimes concoct but often my G8 characters seem to have a huge forehead but I like the lower face morph so I choose a hair with bangs or leave bald to paint hair in Photoshop later.
I lost several of my own characters a few weeks back during a data transfer to a new SSD (not my fault), and I've been trying to recreate her ever since. But nothing is going right.
If I can't recreate her in 3D, I might go back to trying to recreate her in 2D.
Spent all night rendering an image. Woke up. Immediately hated the way I posed her with her mouth open. Sure, she is supposed to be singing, but I'm not sure that is properly conveyed. So now I'm rendering it again with everything but her face hidden or deleted. I wish I had the patience to wait a few days after setting up a scene before trying to finish it, but I'd probably just lose interest and move on to something else.
I think I read something about spot rendering where you could save the spot render to a new file and it would be in the same place as the same geometry in a full render.... tried looking it up but couldn't find it. So a full render with hidden/deleted geometry it is.
sometimes it helps to flip the image horizontally to refresh your eyes.
I do a test render and then stand up & step back a few paces (or metres) fom the monitor. I find the different perspective helps me alot.
Great... I tried that and fell backwards out the damn window... luckily there was a rosebush below to break my fall.
This really should only be done in an open field not near railroad tracks or lava pits.
To do the spot render you need to select the spot render tool up in the top (right next to the render button) and then go to the tools tab and switch it to render to new window - if you don't have the tools tab already open its just another tab like your content library or parameters
its a grea feature but definitely a bit hidden - honestly I wish I could figure out how to make render to new window the default.
Nice! Thanks.
But were the forearms enormous? With anchor tattoos?
It's "Poppy, the singer man."
What you describe is perfectly normal. We mentally resize things based on how important they are. It takes a while to learn how to draw a neutral base figure that you can draw your specific figure over. Then you only deal with the "mental deltas": how the final figure deviates from the neutral base. (DAZ studio is a great tool for creating those neutral bases, BTW. It's in it's DNA. Years ago there was a program called "Poser" whose primary role in life was to serve as a "digital artist's dummy" for people who were drawing or painting. It was years before programs like that evolved into something you could render usable art in, directly.
Things that can affect proprotions and overall size include if you like a character, if you approve of their actions, if you believe them to be handsome/beautiful, how tough you think they are, and how frustrated you are with the whole creation process (which is why you perceive a figure differently when you come back to it a day or two later).
Try "Poppy, the singer, man," and say it with a stoned accent. I think the tattoos will come once she gets married. Her fiancé is covered in them. Anyway, it's done now. Time to move on to her new goth phase!
I think the tips about taking a literal step back or flipping the image horizontally will be helpful. Will have to try that next time.
Thanks for sharing, guys :-)
"Try hiding the hair. Sometimes the hair can make the head look too big so you make it smaller only to discover that the head was originally the right size."
Yes, yes and again yes. As great as OOT hair is, it's worst with OOT-hair.
"We mentally resize things based on how important they are"
Oh, good point, thank you.
Just as often, it isn't even a case of the proportions of the figure, but rather of camera distance, camera vertical position and/or figure pose. Especially when the camera is nearby, like, within roughly 10 feet or 3 meters, it will make a huge difference if the head is even slightly closer to the camera than the rest of the body is. So, first thing to try, before going through the hassle of tweaking your figure, should actually be making a copy of your camera, moving it back to twice the distance of your original camera, and zooming in by changing the focal length. This does come with some drawbacks on its own though, the most obvious one being, that you'll capture a smaller area of your background within the shot, and that at some point the character may seem detached from the surroundings.
What? No pictures? o'common!
Show us the big/little headed baby you created!
Oh, and I thought it was just me. One thing I noticed - I look at the figure I have just dialed-in and think, the head looks too big so I scale it down a bit. Right, that looks ok now ... the character is used in several scenes.
Then I notice that, compared to another character, the head still looks huge although, in isolation, it looks in proportion. By that time I've already rendered 15 scenes with the "huge" head.
I guess some of it has to do with camera angles and perspective but I find it really difficult to judge proportions. Another annoyance is hands ... a G3M character pats G8F on the back but his hand covers most of her rear torso. Giant hands! But they look in proportion when he is standing alone.