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I take long breaks quite regularly. It usually means I am involved for about half of the year then I get bored or frustrated and do something else. Every time that happens I believe that it is over for me as a hobby but I leave the software in place just in case. Then I pick it up again after a few months off. However, technology and prices might force me out anyway. I can't keep up in the graphics card race and can't afford to upgrade my computer every two years as I did when I was working.
Also, I don't consider what I do with this software as art. I'm not saying that goes for everyone, but for me it is just an outlet for my imagination. Kids do the same with Ken and Barbie dolls. I don't consider that I have any particular skills in this area because I don't create the models and I don't concern myself with the artisitc merit of a scene. I just imagine a story and dress-up some characters to populate the scenes I imagine. When I'm done, I keep it for a while, look at it a few times and then delete it and start another. The fun - and the frustration - is in trying to make the scene look as it does in my mind. The finished product is always unsatisfactory but then, artist or not, who has ever created something and stood back and thought, that's perfect?
To be honest, I do feel like walking away at times and again.
It all becomes to feel more like a video game than an expression or "artistic" pursuit.
Buy this character. Buy this promo. Buy this sexualized imagery, not really the product at all. Downloadable content.
Buy. Buy. Buy.
$ale. $ale. $ale.
It is hard for me to keep an artistic eye or feeling in such a toxic and money driven environment at times, I think.
It is too much like the world of today.
It drains not only the wallet but the muse, the joy and the passion as well.
That is usually when I take a break, unsure of when or if I will return again.
It is a feeling I have strongly with the recent turn of things.
Too much talk of formulas, markets and what sells ... not what inspires or broadens horizons and empowers visions.
Sounds like art. People put different parameters on what art is, but ultimately it's about human expression. It doesn't have to be "high art" :)
Here is a pro tip. Stop updating your software. If you don't update the software, your hardware will seem just as fast as it did when you bought it. The hardware doesn't get slower over time, you just install more stuff that is less efficent or more power hungry. Who says you can't use DS 4.8 for the next several years? Who said you need iRay or whatever else is the new fad. I tend to keep my PCs till they break :) I typically don't let software force me to update.
Those issues are unique to this store/forum and and in a lesser amount potentially the whole dazsphere. I would advise you find a niche somewhere else. You can leave the Daz forum and not leave CG behind. You can still use the tools even if you don't buy stuff all the time. There are other places where art is actually still important and expression is valued. But which communities work varies by person to person.
What Ippotamus says. I can never get to grips with one thing before the next innovation appears. I am still trying to get to grips with Iray and Genesis 3 appears, and I find I'm losing interest in the rollercoaster of buying stuff I need to get stuff working (shaders for Iray and morphs and utilities when G3M comes out). My limited free time is spent trying to learn stuff and not make pictures. Might be time to go back to 2D pictures for a while.
I want to stop just buying content and set about using what I have more.
I have become a content hoarder and collecter rather than a renderer and artist I feel.
Wendy I can not believe you could be a 3D hoarder that stops me in my tracks !!! all the work and movies you make.
You make my mum laugh so hard so times. You must be using it all.
I must admit I do go of track with 3D, and love making 2D games that's my hobby :)
there's more than one line about "nothing worth it is easy", every philosopher has weighed in on that little chestnut. But if your burning out in one app it sometimes helps to try something different; I couldn't do lighting in 3Delight, then Lux came along then I wanted to learn modeling failed at Blender, crashed and burned in Hex, then went back to Blender a 2nd time and it suddenly clicked.
I almost quit when genesis came out. Such a nice iteration over the X4 generation, but no support on poser! I was in love with Poser. I did'nt want to learn an entirely new system and it didn't have a cloth room. Faster forward to now, glad I changed because I love genesis and Gen2, and the workflow is much simpler. Still no cloth room, which still really irritates me. I've almost completely forgotten how to use poser.
Well, it took 16 years from when I bought my first copy of Poser until I actually learned to use some 3D software and began making pictures (still no NVIATWAS..I should get to that...) so I haven't really lost my enthusiasm yet.
I've had some breaks, especially with your #1...or more an ego based version of #1...I got moving pretty quickly and placed or even won in the first few contests I did...and then I didn't win a particular contest by pieces that I honestly felt were much lesser than my piece, both from a technical and a creative stand point. (I can easily admit when something is better than me..these just weren't)...but that was a bad ego knock (and truthfully, I'm dealing with ...real life...issues, and this is all a bit of therapy and release for me--so it was really just a compound hit.)...but after a couple of weeks of doing other stuff, clearing my mind etc, I started up again, entered the next contest, won, and all was right in the world :D
re: 3D hoarding...oof yeah...16 years I didn't know how to use it, didn't mean I didn't go on spees to get stuff that I thought "That is so awesome. I'll get that and then I'll make great pictures with it after I learn the program!" and, well none of the learning worked, so ....
(I just wrote a "how to be a new user" article for DS Creative, one of my bullet points is DON'T go buying stuff untill you know you like doing this!)
@StratDragon: I don't think Dana Plato said the quote in your sig...she did see ""What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis?" a couple of times.
lol I completely forgot that NVIATWAS was a thing. I still haven't done one yet, either. I picture some nice fog and some rays of light. Could be good.
You need to ask yourself three questions;
Question 1: What is the goal that you want to accomplish in using 3D? And don’t just say creating art, or some other simple answer like that. You need think long and hard about that question, because the next two questions depend on your answer.
Question 2: Is your goal achievable? If the answer is no, then you need to rethink question 1.
Question 3: If the answer to question 2 is yes, then what do you need to help achieve your? Do what can to get what your need to accomplish your goal, and focus on your goal like a laser.
As you go though life you need a plan. If you have no plan you will wander from place to place and place and never accomplish any thing become disillusioned and give up.
Always start with a plan.
Also never ever compare yourself to other people or concern yourself with what they think. The most successful people have never been concerned about what other people though about what they doing.
Most of the people here are render artists, I'm more of a model maker, so I don't know if my answer counts the same...
I don't really talk much about the things I make (well, up until a couple of days ago when I made my own WIP thread), so every now and then, for whatever reason, I stop working on whatever project it is I'm onto and walk away...
Usually after a few weeks or days I will have some nutty idea and start trying to model it... Or I'll see an interesting shape and wonder how to model it... Sometimes a new plugin will come out and I have to see what I can make with it...
It's hard not to make stuff... There is probably some compulsive disorder or something that is at work.
I'm glad there's been some support for artists that are frustrated in this thread. My personal answer, though, is:
Never. I want to be doing this in fifty years, if I'm still alive. :)
This the best job I've ever had. It pays better than anything I've ever done. I have no boss. Even if DAZ is skeptical about a product concept, often they will publish it anyway if the renders are decent, and that has paid off for both me and them; a Published Artist has a level of creative freedom found almost nowhere in 3D.
My coworkers are the best. They are smart, creative people from all kinds of places. Even if we have a disagreement, we live on opposite sides of the planet, so nobody is in anybody's face. And when all communication is text-only, cooler heads always prevail in the end.
There is always something new to learn. New rigging systems. New rendering engine. New shader setups. New methods and new corners of the market I haven't yet tried to support. When I am tired of learning new things and tired of constant change in the market, I will be dead. I've had so many jobs where I was bored all the time!
I have complete control over my schedule. I can sit here for four hours in my bathrobe and then take a nap and work for four more if I want, or I can take Tuesdays off to clean the house and play tabletop because I know I can't stay away from 3D for an entire weekend anyway, even if I tried. No one's going to come to my desk and harass me for playing MineCraft while a long script or render runs. I have a cat on me right now trying to make me stop typing and pet her.
I just took up running with my sister Fuseling last month, to continue my health improvement project. I'm still overweight. Sometimes it's hard to motivate myself to keep going for another two minutes, another one minute, another thirty seconds. And when that happens, I think about my job. This morning I thought to myself, "Well, this hurts, but an hour from now I will be in Blender working on a fluid simulation!" And I sped up. That's how much I love doing this work.
I realised when I started that it would take me a couple of years or so before I really got the hang of DAZ Studio. I took up Iray when 4.8 beta was released and I reckon that I've come further since then than I did with 3delight.
I use Corel rather than Photoshop for postwork and then only for doing touch-ups. I downloaded Photoshop and evaluated it a few years ago and decided that life was too short. I chose DAZ Studio because I thought it would be much easier to produce something truly creative than struggle with Photoshop. I'm glad I did.
Cheers,
Alex.
I think I've largely quit collecting content, because I feel like I have stuff (or know where to find free stuff) to cover most contingencies and the Gen2/Iray/Gen3 rat race just gets silly. 3D art is something I play with in some moods and skip in others; my schedule is such right now that I don't have a lot of time in the weekday evenings to mess with it, and usually have other commitments over the weekends. I do religious art for my own purposes, and character/scene concepts for my fiction sometimes. I don't feel comfortable uploading the former to Daz3d/Rendo galleries, and the latter often don't get to a "finished" stage suitable for galleries. I don't have much of an audience, except for my occasional freebie uploads on sharecg.
I don't participate much in contests anymore, because I got tired of being that person who throws together a moderately competent G-rated/PG-rated image that meets the contest requirements but doesn't exceed them, and generally doesn't win. It wasn't helping me grow as an artist.
Get a piece of software where you can either create your own items, or use purchased content. No one forces you to use a program with no modeling capabilities. DAZ has two great titles in its software stable: Bryce and Carrara. Full disclosure here: I prefer Carrara, although Bryce is a very capable application as well- Just ask Chohole! ;-)
There will be a learning curve with both, but really, why should learning be un-enjoyable? I mean, if you think about it, the day we quit learning is the day we die, right? So if you're learning something, you know you're alive!
That being said, there is also a benefit from stepping back once in awhile and smelling real flowers instead of virtual ones.