It is currently Mon Mar 16, 2020 10:21 pm

All times are UTC - 7 hours



Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 42 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3
Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3
Author Message
Post subject: Re: Strat - Art
Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 10:04 am
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2015 6:57 am
Posts: 2238
Location: UK
danagos wrote:
..I don't know about 3D Art...but that sounds more like Human Trafficking to me! :shock:....



So pretty much like the choosing of any girl to be used in a promotional image, film or video. :roll: (Sorry that isn't meant to diminish the absolute abhorrent inhumanity of human trafficking - and the two obviously aren't the same).

It's a funny thing when asked to do a video for a client and you know having a (socially deemed stereotypical) attractive girl will lift the video but, in these days of PC, you can't say that. I find it all a bit hypocritical.

I come from an age where it was accepted that "Sex sells". Now we all know it does but no one wants to admit it. and tries to pretend it is irrelevant.

This is a proper art thread now .... we are now into weighty subjects. Best pour out the Absinthe and pull up a chair. :lol:

_________________
John

After all this time I should be better.


Top
Profile
Fender Play Winter Sale 2020
Post subject: Re: Strat - Art
Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 11:16 am
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician

Joined: Sat Aug 23, 2008 2:01 pm
Posts: 1598
Hey John,
Your points are well taken regarding your background and your typical use of 3D software. That said, I would honestly urge you not to sell yourself short from the art aspect. I have seen a lot of work over the past few years from people trying to pass themselves off as artists that really doesn't compare with yours. If anything, I feel you have a wonderful sense of composition that many "commercial" people tend to lack.

I would also like to apologize if I came of sounding like I was being derogatory towards DAZ and Poser...I do in fact use both myself on occasion. If anything, I find doing character animation about 10,000% easier in either of those programs than I ever have with Maya...the walk cycle and lip sync generators in Poser are a real blessing compared to working in Maya. And you're 100% correct in that it can be a REAL b_tch trying to move work between various platforms, LOL!!! OBJ/Lightwave, FBX, 3DS...you'd think that someone would have come up with a "standard" (ala .jpg) by now. Base models aren't too bad using OBJ...give or take some funked up textures, but try getting a Poser animation into Maya...OYE!!! Actually, that's how I got acquainted with DAZ...I had done some character animations in Poser (Pro v. 10) and I tried to step them thru DAZ to get them into an FBX format for import into Maya...it worked for a VERY basic walk cycle, but not great. If anything I really look forward to the day that someone comes up with a 3D package that has the power of Maya, with the user friendlyness of Poser/DAZ.

I hadn't mentioned the render engine you were using as I really had a strong suspicion you were using DAZ. I haven't really messed with rendering in DAZ at all because I do about 95% of my rendering in Maya Software..although I have dabbled in Mental Ray on occasion (great results, but REALLY expensive in terms of render time...although not nearly as bad as trying to work in Vue, LOL!). For most of the work I do...mostly artistic in one form or another, the Maya Software rendering engine does very well for me...decent results and reasonable render times (although the DOF control leaves something to be desired). That said, I don't think ANYTHING out there really compares with Pixar's RenderMan...the ONLY reason I haven't tried the new non-commercial version is simply that I'm just not ready to upgrade my OS yet (still running XP 64 on my primary graphics system). In any case, since I haven't worked with rendering in DAZ, I didn't really want to make any comments either way there as my suggestions would be limited at best.

With all of that, in this case I guess I have to admit that yea...I'm a bit of "gear snob" when it comes to Maya, LOL!!! I'm sure part of it is simply that with 3D I really cut my teeth with Maya...that's what I was initially trained in back in college and I didn't really start playing with Poser or DAZ until later when I started messing with character animation. I'll certainly admit that Maya has got to have the steepest learning curve of ANY software I have ever used...the number of sub menus alone is truly mind boggling! LOL! I've been working with Maya for over 3 years now and I've barely scratched things like particle physics and such. That said, you can really do soooooooooooooo much more with Maya when compared with the consumer level packages. As you say, you use what you have available, but having "grown up" with Maya, when it comes to modeling, textures, rigging and animation, I can just do A LOT more than I can in other programs.

As far as my lighting comments go, specifically "high key", I guess the best way to think of it is like this; high key is where you basically flood the scene with light...things become rather flat with minimal shadows and less definition (where as "low key", except for a few highlights, most of the scene is dark/shadow). Your images aren't really high key specifically, but they do lean rather heavily in that direction. I suspect a great deal of it is simply my photography background and specifically that I consider myself as an "art photographer" (as apposed to photo journalism), but with scenes such as yours, I tend to feel that a more dramatic lighting tends to give a scene a greater sense of realism. With a couple of your pics for example...the car and legs shot and "Careful with that Axe", I might have approached that from a single primary light with some well placed refractions (i.e. light "bouncing" from other objects in the scene) in order to provide a more realistic looking outdoor scene. That said, I would also admit that it depends on the work as well. In the case of the commission I did with the 81 lights, I was in fact trying to replicate the hallway of a specific building in order to reproduce the actual lighting in that building. On the other hand, if I were doing a single character (say for a demo reel or something), then I might default to a more traditional 3 point lighting instead (although my " 3 point" lighting tends to use at least 4 or 5 lights anyways, LOL!).

You are correct in that for many years, a lot of people did try to "fill the scene with light". I could be wrong, but I actually think this comes from earlier days of film and television as a lot of D.P's use to try and light EVERYTHING. Not really sure if that was due to the nature of film or early video work or what not. Not sure how experienced you are with film photography, but they used to have the expression with film where you "exposed for the shadows" so I think a lot of that mentality might have come from really trying to blow out all the shadows in a given scene. On the other hand, I also remember an interview with the great Annie Leibovitz where she was talking about the Bruce Springsteen "Born in the USA" cover she shot. She had commented that they had used some ungodly number of lights and technicians to shoot the cover, NOT because it was needed, but simply because that's what the client (the record company) was paying for. She had said that she probably could have shot a better cover using just a few lights, but that's not what the client wanted. In any case, modern media tends to have a broader exposure range (latitude?) and while this is likely just a personal opinion, I think taking advantage of shadows can often provide some really great results. In artistic terms, assuming you're not already familiar, take a moment to look up the terms "tenebrism" and "chiaroscuro"...I think you'll see what I'm getting at.

Considering your response, I would very much like to add one more comment/suggestion. You had made the comment "I just didn't see the point in getting too carried away as, to me, the figures aren't that important" (as well as a couple of later comments). Something to consider is simply this - if it's going to be included in the image/composition, it's important. While any given element in a composition may be the singular focal point (as in the guitars with your work), everything else in the composition should equally contribute to the composition. In other words, if you're going to put that much work and detail into the guitars, it's well worth putting the same effort into anything else that's gonna be seen in the picture.



Anyways, again...don't sell yourself short. Even if it's simply for your own amusement, you have some good stuff there and I really feel that with a bit more effort, it could be really brilliant to say the least...I'd really love to see you keep at it.


Top
Profile
Post subject: Re: Strat - Art
Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 11:43 am
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician

Joined: Sat Aug 23, 2008 2:01 pm
Posts: 1598
danagos wrote:
I don't know a durn thing about 3D art...but these snippets stood out...I've crossed out the company name for potential legal issues:

John Sims wrote:
Hi Lomitus,...You are right in that the girls came from XXX...They are a bit stereotypical, but then so is society.... XXX, over the years, has become quite powerful ...one of the girls as I occasionally use her...I either bought the girl... :wink:


Like I say...I don't know about 3D Art...but that sounds more like Human Trafficking to me! :shock:



While I strongly suspect that comment was intended, at least partially, as tongue in cheek, it's worth mentioning that the majority of the human 3D characters that you see for programs such as Poser, DAZ, Maya, Max, etc., are computer generated. Think of them more as virtual Barbi and GI Joe dolls more than anything else. You can purchase them (or in many cases download them for free), pose them, manipulate and animate them, light them, etc.. As such, the way John's comment was phrased, is essentially correct.

In that sense, buying a girl (or a guy) for DAZ (or other programs) is no more "human trafficking" than buying your kid a Barbi at your local Walmart. In this case, the Corvette just looks A LOT better! 8)


Top
Profile
Post subject: Re: Strat - Art
Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 11:45 am
Offline
Rock Icon
Rock Icon
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jul 13, 2007 1:10 pm
Posts: 13467
Location: Palm Beach County FL
Stratifying work.... :oops:

:D :D :D

Doc :wink:

_________________
"Another day in paradise!"


Top
Profile
Post subject: Re: Strat - Art
Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 1:12 pm
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2015 6:57 am
Posts: 2238
Location: UK
Thanks again for the comments Lomitus. I do feel like kicking my feet and saying "Oh shucks." It is because I know the images aren't perfect that I don't really consider them as anything more than 3D doodles.

I will certainly consider throwing in some accent lighting in the future though rather than being lazy and just using HDR'is .

I agree that it is frustrating when the likes of DAZ do things easier than your commercial software because you then consider doing things in DAZ and don't have the power of many of the tools in your "proper" software. At least DAZ doesn't stop doing tools in subsequent releases. I was not best pleased when Autodesk stoped including Reactor in 3DS Max. I had sundry rigged suspension models that became redundant unless I used the earlier version. :cry: MassFX sucks in comparison. Its great for dropping things in heaps (which works well for me as I don't do much animation) but otherwise :evil: ( https://youtu.be/0SrSUHB48G4

I have exported a walk cycle into Max myself https://youtu.be/obpRQvcrPr0 and was then annoyed that I used it as was and didn't review it in the curve editor. I wish I'd done something with her ankles and toes as they obviously didn't map them in the original MoCAP :-( The hair and the poncho were both sorted with a cloth modifier and I am relatively pleased with them.

_________________
John

After all this time I should be better.


Top
Profile
Post subject: Re: Strat - Art
Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 2:13 pm
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician

Joined: Sat Aug 23, 2008 2:01 pm
Posts: 1598
Hey John,

Ok...while I'm not tryin' to hijack the thread and while there's no Strats in any of these images, to give ya an idea of how anally retentive I am about "detail" and just a fraction of what I've been learning in Maya, here's a few stills from an animation project I'm working on (and yes, this one is "just for fun"). This is actually a re-visitation of a project I did a few years back as the final for my 3D modeling & animation class (the video of that project can be found on my Youtube channel). Even though it was my first semester with 3D, there were always a few things in that first project that just bugged me, so I decided to do this project as a comparison to show how far I've come since 2011...and perhaps even show how far I still have to go.

I would mention that the lighting and many of the textures are actually more basic than some of my work as this project was intended for animation, so as far as stills go, it's actually a bit lacking in detail (by my standards)....my render time was up to an average of 8 minutes per frame and I had around 12,000 frames total to render, so I didn't really dare add any more detail....

Image

Ok...ok...so it's not Barbi's Corvette. I think a '57 Bel Air is way cooler anyways, LOL!!! Please note that the cars you may see in various images (including the '57 Chevy seen above) were in fact royalty free downloads (except the '32 Coupe which is mine). That said, several of the cars required some rather extensive work (particularly regarding textures) in order to use them in this project. Likewise any human characters, including "Alyson", my roller skating waitress, were created using Autodesk's "Character Generator", although a couple were further modified using Mudbox and except for the shirts and fishnet stocking, the waitress outfits were completely made from scratch. In other words, while the vast majority of the work (models, textures, etc) seen in these images was created by me, there are a few models and textures here and there that were downloaded from a variety of internet sources.

Image

BTW...the bit of landscape you see in the background was actually created from a Google satellite photo of an area in Arizona, so that really is an Arizona landscape you're seeing there 8)

Image

Image

I'm particularly proud of these next couple of models...the vintage Wurlitzer jukebox and the National cig machine...and yes, the jukebox is animated in the final project.

Image

Image

In the bandstand shot below, the upright bass, sax and drums were all downloads (although I did some extensive work on the drum kit) and the semi-hollow, piano, mic and amps were all created by me. I had originally planned to use a vintage blonde Tele on stage, however the geometry was a flippin' mess, so I just did the semi-hollow myself as I think it works better with the scene anyways.

Image

This is a shot of "stage left". On this side of the set, the pinball machines were downloads (as were some of the wall decorations) and the human characters were again created in Character Generator.

Image


Uhmm...yea...there's a full kitchen back there too, although I did stop short of doing the bathrooms because the computer was getting REALLY slow by this point...

Image

While rather primitive, as some of the animated camera angles show the exterior of this virtual "set", I even created a vintage Texaco station across the street from the diner as something of an homage to the classic "Back to the Future".

Image



Image

Even here, I re-created the Ketchup and hot sauce labels in Illustrator, as well as the menu that can be seen off to the side (based on the Mel's Diner work from American Grafitti).



Anyways, to wrap this up...when I think of going over-board with detail and such, this should give you a better idea of how I actually see things myself. Again this is actually a bit low detail in my book...if I had better computer resources (not to mention a render farm), I probably would have gone so far as to start creating electrical sockets and such on the walls, LOL! And in case you're wondering, the scene included 28 interior lights (not including 8 exterior lights and car headlights and such) and the project directory is already over 60 gigs, not including the render animation files from Adobe Premier. Don't even ask about the poly count, LOL!

I know...I really need a life! LOL!


Top
Profile
Post subject: Re: Strat - Art
Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 5:43 pm
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2015 6:57 am
Posts: 2238
Location: UK
Yup you are right, there is a lot of detail there.
I think you are very brave using Autodesk characters. I find them adequate for distant crowds but wouldn't want to use them for any thing else. They have the most bizarre hands if nothing else.

In twenty years of using Max on and off (like my guitar playing I should know more) I have learnt that poly count is king. Never use two when one will do and, if necessary, have multiple assets with varying levels of detail which you can exchange if it is a long shot or close up. If it isn't in shot, doesn't influence the light or reflections it doesn't need to be there.

_________________
John

After all this time I should be better.


Top
Profile
Post subject: Re: Strat - Art
Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2015 12:41 am
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician
User avatar

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2010 2:39 pm
Posts: 1340
Nice curves on the artwork John.
Should I be seeing only ten screws on those pick-guards or is it the light?
Maybe I cant count thats always a possibility too :D


Top
Profile
Post subject: Re: Strat - Art
Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2015 1:47 am
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2015 6:57 am
Posts: 2238
Location: UK
jimmy_james wrote:
Nice curves on the artwork John.
Should I be seeing only ten screws on those pick-guards or is it the light?
Maybe I cant count thats always a possibility too :D


Thanks for your comments Jimmy.

Well spotted on the missing screw - removed to avoid litigation :wink: It is also good to have something out of place so if the model ends up in the public domain you can tell it was yours....or I missed it. :oops: :wink:

A good excuse to revisit the car by the road image :D

I'm also considering swapping the bridge to one with retro bent saddles as I think that would be more appropriate. And perhaps some relic work wouldn't go a miss. Ah but then I'm back to screw numbers again.

Also, could someone give me some reference dims for a Tweed Champ as I think that could work well?

Outstanding ... I'm excited to do another image. :D

_________________
John

After all this time I should be better.


Top
Profile
Post subject: Re: Strat - Art
Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2015 11:50 pm
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2015 6:57 am
Posts: 2238
Location: UK
Image

Because some things just seem to go together.

_________________
John

After all this time I should be better.


Top
Profile
Post subject: Re: Strat - Art
Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2015 4:25 am
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2015 6:57 am
Posts: 2238
Location: UK
Will You be my Guitar Hero?

[snigger]

Image

_________________
John

After all this time I should be better.


Top
Profile
Post subject: Re: Strat - Art
Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 8:20 am
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2015 6:57 am
Posts: 2238
Location: UK
It's been a time so I thought I would post the following.

Vintage Jumbo Frets!

Image

_________________
John

After all this time I should be better.


Top
Profile
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 42 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3
Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3

All times are UTC - 7 hours

Fender Play Winter Sale 2020

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

Search for:
Jump to: