Quote -   Spell Checker

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea
Eye strike a quay and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong or write
It shows me strait a weigh
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can putt the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong
Eye have run this poem threw
I am shore your pleas two no
Its let her perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew

 

this  should be in the poetry forum lmao. ...this more than pays back for the wheels hehe

billy

"hear here on the twoll thingy. from experience i've found that if one is to troll it's best if one doesn't use the troll word. if you wish to keep this up why don't you take it off the board and mail me in private so i can block ya lmao"

Why should I? You chose to troll in a public forum and expose your own complete ignorance regarding the technical aspects of 3D programs. Deal with it. But at least you made a new friend in ponytail boy, so it wasn't a complete loss for you. That is if he is a new friend and not someone you knew and PM'ed for help.

"Please define an "erroneous criticism" or perhaps give an example of one."
**
erroneous criticism:

**erroneous: 1. Containing or characterized by error; inaccurate: "erroneous conclusions"

**
**criticism: 1. Disapproval expressed by pointing out faults or shortcomings: "the senator received severe criticism from his opponent"
                2. A serious examination and judgment of something: "constructive criticism is always appreciated"
                3. A written evaluation of a work of literature: Critique.

I find the whole brand loyalty thing a bit odd. Personally, I'll use whatever I can. I'll throw everything I've got at the screen if it get's me the image I'm looking for. Some people actually look down on postwork, like it's a bad thing. Hell, even the term 'post-work' itself is an odd one. It's all artwork, It's just a matter of doing what it takes to get the art out of your head and onto the screen. By hook or by crook. Posers just a tool and simply learning how a tool works does not make good artwork. Composition, lighting, colour, drama, these things make good artwork. It's not that some images "look Poser" per-se, it's just that some images have been rendered without any thought to traditional knowledge of what makes good art (like Composition). I think some people frown upon 'Poserish' artwork, not because it was produced with Poser, but because a lot of images look like the artist has simply opened Poser up and relied on the software to do all the work for them. If you're artwork suffers because it "looks Poser" chances are you don't need to flip though the manual or find another light tutorial, chances are you need to get your butt to a public art gallery, look at some oil paintings, do some research on art in the library, and put a pencil in your hand, Sketch some ideas. You don't need to be great with a pencil, just sketch some crude compositional sketches, then think about opening the software to start an image. When I look at other peoples images I'm not bothered if it was created in Poser, or Painter, or Photoshop, or Carrara, or Bryce (apart from technical artistic curiosity of course). I'm only really concerned whether their image is good art, powerfull art, something that grabs my interest. It's all about producing good artwork. It doesn't matter how you get there or what tool you use.

Thanks dphoadly,(I always enjoy your definitions)

I'm aware of the definitions as they are separately.What I was going for was what the 2 words mean when put together and how they relate here.

I also requested an example.

I mean,if it's been established that beauty is in the eye of the beholder,then how can any critique be erroneous when it comes to art?

Tom

Attached Link: WordWeb

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Thanks

BTW,What's another word for thesaurus?

Tom

IMO, the biggest drawback to Poser is not even the lousy render engine.  It is the lack of actual artistic skill needed to make a render.  If you don't know basic composition, lighting, and HUMAN ANATOMY how can you presume to artistically portray the human figure?  And, then there is the lack of realisation that skin, or anything else, for that matter has channels.  A 4048x4048 color .jpg just doesn't do justice to the actual nuances in skin.  People have fun with Poser.  It is inexpensive.  Good.  But no one has to really take the time to learn about edgeloops, or s curves, or diffusion channels, and, most folks don't bother.  I feel that there is a general assumption in the Poser community that if something was purchased, it must be of good quality.  I see so many textures, specifically, that are anything BUT convincing.  And, those folks who slap a Vicki in the middle of a scene and surround her with a ton of pre purchased photoshop actions....well, that isn't as bad as the folks who oooh and aaah in the gallery and say...."NOW THAT'S ART".  The community is also a good part of the Poser problem.  Why does no one ever say....centering your figure and pointing the camera dead straight on may not be the most effective composition?

When the Poser gallery gets more images like this one http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/attachment.php?attachmentid=35943  I'll play in Poser again.

I think Poser does have problems, and they can be split into at least three sorts. First are the basic technical problems such as the memory management. Second are the problems with the way Poser handles the virtual world it models. In this I'd put things like nostril glow and the bending of elbows and knees. The third group are as much down to the user as the software, and include using standard poses, standard faces, and a lot of other such stuff. And maybe a fourth category is entangled with the quality of the documentation. It's maybe a good thing that Poser 6 isn't the leap that Poser 5 was, but you can spend more on computer graphics textbooks than on Poser before you can properly understand the manual. Those shader nodes nedd more explanation than just a listing of the names of inputs.

Still more good comments! I personally think Poser all by itself (with a good user) is fully capable of absolutely stunning images. It's also capable of complete crap also.

I have some of the other bigboy graphic packages also but for some reason Poser won out overall. I will be the first to admit that my early attempts at anything artistic with ANY of them would be deserving of all the disdain anyone could throw.

I think any of these packages can produce images that rival the best that any of the others can produce. The trick is that the user has to use the application to the fullest. I can create a mountain in Bryce that looks like the Vickie everyone here is talking about. Or, I can make a mountain scene that rivals any postcard avaiable...with no other tool necessary. It's all there if it's capitalized on. Same with Poser.

Too many Poser users don't take their work (or know how to) to what Poser is really capable of. I myself am still learning and I've been at it for....quite awhile now. :-)

Cheers,
Samantha

:bored:___ me thinks this thread needs a separate forum.

:huh:_______ maybe a Poser forum ...

:blink:________ Oh, wait, we're already there ........................ nevermind.

:lol:

Question: BTW,What's another word for thesaurus?
Answer: synonym finder

     And now would the THREE of you PLEASE quit this immature and childish behavor?!  It is definately not edifying.
David P. Hoadley

Edifying??? .......... or Edit-fying ... ????????? We need more edits ......... no?:lol:

"Edifying??? .......... or Edit-fying"

Dear Dr. Geep,
    Ave Amicus!
    Neither Edifying nor Edit-fying, but rather Edit-frying.  I like to fry my Edits sunny side up, my wife prefers hers flipped over.  But no bacon, not Kosher.
David P. Hoadley

:blink:____ You mean they don't make Kosher bacon? (jk-oc)
;=]

NOT in Israel, they don't!  (Albeit, they do have a way of smoking turkey that comes close.) ;-D
DPH

BTW, do you have a Setup Room tut, and a tut on adjusting th JP's in the hip?  I've created a figure out of odds and ends, but when I bend the thighs to the side, funny things happen between her legs.

Attached Link: Resting

Does an art degree mean much when applying for an artist position? I'd tend to think that the portfolio is all that counts and that the degree is somewhat meaningless. It would be cheaper to hire somebody, without a degree, who has roughly equivalent talent. In fact, I'd lean to hiring the person, without the degree, because that person has demonstrated more initiative and innate talent by being as good as a graduate with four years of advanced artistic training.

It would probably be fairly safe to say that most Poser users aren't major fans of what passes for art in the last half century. I don’t care how hard somebody tries to tell me that a couple geometric shapes represents something profound about man's role in the universe--I'm still not seeing the emperor's clothes. Nobody will ever convince me that dripping paint from a bucket onto canvas is art. Unfortunately, the art world is full of people that have glib tongues and the ability to make crap seem like gold and people with lots of money are silly enough to spend millions of dollars on stuff that those, without the benefits of a fine arts education, consider garbage. I create the art I want to see and thankfully don't have to rely on that artwork to earn a living. I doubt I'd ever have the stomach to spin the kind of BS necessary to be considered a critical art fave.

R_Hatch has done a good job of summarizing the common faults of a lot of Poser artwork. The only thing that I would disagree with is equating time with quality. Creating a great Poser image takes a lot of time, from concept to refining poses, to the time consuming render-adjust lights-render process to fine tune the differences between what lights are doing in the draft mode and with final shaded renders, and final postwork tweaking. The best Poser artists produce better work than the worst because they are better artists in all senses of the word. Who knows how much time an uninspiring piece of Poser art took? It could have been ten minutes. It could have been ten hours. It's hard to say.

It's probably fair to say that there isn't a single artist showing a gallery to the public that didn't think they were showcasing something worthwhile. Who would take the time to upload an image that they thought was junk? It's the reason that, if I leave a comment, I say something about what was right with the image. I figure, over time, as they continue doing more and more work, they'll improve and see what was wrong with the older effort.

A nice thread, a while back, asked artists to show their first and latest works to see how much they've grown using Poser and give some encouragement to starting artists the humble beginnings of many others.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2641035

In some cases, the differences were relatively minor and mostly showed the limitations of earlier models and rendering features. In other instances, the differences were much starker. One of the artists that showed the most improvement was Jenay.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?user_id=10631

The two images being contrasted, at that time were the first and "Girl in an Abandoned Rusty Corridor". The thing that hit me most about viewing those two images was how much Jenay improved as an artist. Poses were more realistic. Camera angles were more dynamic. The newer figure had some expression and not just a blank stare. Jenay's artistic skills dramatically improved over the years.

For chuckles, I decided to give myself a challenge to create an image wholly out of freely available products (except for Victoria2), using existing poses, and not tweaking anything (other than hiding some body parts to avoid poke-through). I don't consider "Resting" a great image or anything, but it's not horrible. Even by trying to do something as fast as possible, it still took three hours to create. There was about an hour finding all the props and items to put into the image and adding them to Poser, another hour composing the scene and adjusting camera angles and lighting, and another hour playing with renders and lighting, and then a quick color adjustment in Photoshop. The textures in the grass didn't hold up to being magnified and that's not surprising because Traveler probably never figured anybody would try to magnify the grass to that extent. Overall, it's not an awful image even though it's the quickest I've done. For anybody interested, I provided links to all the free items in my comments (all links were good a year ago, but I haven't checked to see whether they're still good).

Here's the link that made me question the value of criticisms from artists who aren't as good as the artist that they're critiquing.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=219323&page=1&pp=15

Although an artist doesn't have to be DaVinci to critique a work, it means a lot more when the critic has demonstrated considerable expertise with their own work. When an artist, like ernyoka--who's a bit better than me, leaves advice on something I've done, I take it more seriously than somebody whose work is a few years behind what I'm currently doing. It doesn't mean that the other criticism isn't valid. It's like a lot of unsolicited advice we get in our lives. Generally, the last thing I need in life is somebody, whose life is a walking trainwreck, telling me how to improve mine when I'm not unhappy. All I want to tell them is to get their life in order and worry less about mine because that person is obviously not spending enough time cleaning their own house. That's how I feel about a lot of critics. Spend more time improving your artwork and less trying to improve what others are doing.

An artistic skill is like any other. It improves with practice. When I said that a person, who, gave up art when they stopped coloring, probably doesn't have as good an artistic eye as somebody who never stopped drawing, I wasn't denigrating what can be created with a crayon. I was talking about the distinction between the practiced skills of one person versus another who gave up too soon. That latter, person, inspired by picking up Poser and getting back into art, has catching up to do and has to make a lot of artistic mistakes before they can get better. The last thing I ever want to do is chase them away by telling them how much is wrong with what they dared to post in their gallery.

I don't have a tut, but perhaps fiddling with the orientation dials of the joint editor dialog box will do the trick. I'd have to see what the problem is in order to see if I had a solution for you and it would also help to know what you did to get the figure to whatever point you're at.

I included a pic that is of a figure created from five figures, 2 shoes, shirt, pants and human figure. I only exported the groups from the human that where needed, hands, forearms, head, neck and shins. There's hardly any geometry under the clothes. The shirt was fitted to the original figure in the cloth room. Exported it, imported it and then used the setup room to create the figure using a .cr2 from the library. The key is in the export dialog box. Check only the Include existing groups in polygon groups box.

Quote - Here's the link that made me question the value of criticisms from artists who aren't as good as the artist that they're critiquing.

The problem here is one I've experienced when I've critiqued writing.

"What gives you the right to say that?  How many published novels have you written?"

The problem is defining "aren't as good as the artist that they're critiquing".   How do you measure that?  And does it include specifics or the whole image?

What I mean by that is assume someone does a beautifully artistic NVIATWAS image and calls it something like "Assyrian Warrior" or whatever and describes it as their impression of a female Assyrian warrior getting ready to go battle the Egyptians or something.

Someone points out that the facial features/skin colour/whatever is wrong.  It's a John Wayne Playing Genghis Khan thing.  Real Assyrians didn't look like that.  Their temples didn't look like that.  Their swords didn't look like that.

Does the artist (and supporters) get to dismiss that criticism just because the person doing it, who might have professional expertise in Assyrian culture, hasn't produced a render of equal quality (or any at all)?

I'm a geologist and a volunteer firefighter/EMT and used to be a soldier.  Now I don't have the skill to direct a big Hollywood movie, nor probably write one, nor do the special effects or the acting or any of the other elements involved, but does that therefore mean that I can't criticize the laughable science in "Volcano", the horrifyingly bad portrayal of firefighting in "Backdraft" or the ridiculousness in any number of war/action movies featuring the circular firing squad or similar weapon-related stupidity ("Total Recall" being a particular offender in that one)?

Same for writing.  Same for art.

Quote - NOT in Israel, they don't!  (Albeit, they do have a way of smoking turkey that comes close.) ;-D
DPH

BTW, do you have a Setup Room tut, and a tut on adjusting th JP's in the hip?  I've created a figure out of odds and ends, but when I bend the thighs to the side, funny things happen between her legs.

:glare: ____ Hmmm, ... that kind of reminds me of an old girlfriend.
(sorry, couldn't resist that one.)

Setup Room tut ? >>>>>>>>  Try this one.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

For what it's worth..Study of Dr Geep's tuts has proven far more useful to me than the manual ever was. I like his sense of humor, and irreverence..as for art for art's sake..(Yawn) who cares? do what comes naturally and if folks don't approve..tough. I use poser as a hobby, and get a lot of pleasure and enjoyment out of the program..I'm not trying to make stuff for the Louve, or the Hermitage, anyway.  "Artistic mistakes?" Har. I have profited greatly from those fellow artists who have taken the time to help me get organized, learn better lighting, work around Poser limitations, and show me better ways to present my material..and this only happens when I make an "Artistic Mistake" so those who want to get the most out of Poser..see, read, and practice what Dr Geep has in his locker before you give up. He's my hero! (along with Zell, fls13, and DPHoadley) and yes, I do post upon occasion, have a gallery, and access to high powered 3d programs, but Poser is what I feel most comfortable with, and that's what I use.

:blushing: _____ Gawsh ........ thanks.

just to agree with sparky8 - geep's tutorials are invaluable. p.s. billy - now you see what I mean about trolls, as I had used the dreaded term early in this thread. in the context of any forum related to poser, a troll is somebody who sez negative things about a poser render. right or wrong, they're feared by some to the point of irrationality, and there's often an attempt to incite a lynch mob to punish the troll for his attempt at exercising his freedom of speech :lol:

____ Thanks Nance.

BTW - I just (re)posted 2 more tuts ... "Backgrounds" & "UVMapper" in the "Now Playing" section.

Enjoy and view 'em in good health.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Quote - The problem is defining "aren't as good as the artist that they're critiquing".   How do you measure that?  And does it include specifics or the whole image?

I guess it comes down to the purpose of a critique.

You're absolutely right that there is no reason why you or anyone else shouldn't be able to critique a work of art. Ebert and Roeper disagree about the merits of movies on a regular basis. These two critics hold regular jobs at newspapers and host a weekly TV show to critique movies. Companies are paying them to tell the public what they think about movies. They disagree about films almost as often as they share an opinion on a movie. It's not that they're always just shades apart where one is lukewarm about a movie and one mildly cold. There are times when one will say a movie is the worst they've seen this year while the other will say that it's one of the best they've seen. As far as I know, Roeper has had no involvement in the making of a movie while Ebert's experience was writing the screenplay for "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", a movie that didn't exactly garner worldwide praise. At a professional level, one doesn't have to have cinematic experience in the movie field to be a film critic. That says that one need not be a Poser expert to be a Poser critic. Ebert and Roeper's disagreements also say that there is no universal standard to measure the merit of a work of art. That basically says that it's an opinion.

What's the purpose of a critique? In Ebert and Roeper's case, it's to help save the public from spending money on a bad movie that has a better trailer than a plot. Renderosity galleries are free, so critiques aren't going to save any money. Most of the artists are hobbyists doing this for fun, not for money. There should be a different sensibility to critiquing a work that somebody is doing for fun for free and something that a movie studio spent 200 million dollars on. It's a little easier poking fun at a bad performance by an actor who got paid 20 million dollars than some small artist posting his gallery work. I don't feel bad beating up on somebody getting paid more for one movie that I'll earn in my entire lifetime--the actor can cry all the way to the bank. I don't feel like being critical of an artist that's creating artwork in their spare time and hoping it will find a tiny audience.

Since comments are left on the image, they aren't influencing anybody visiting that image. A person ha already have opted to look at the image to find the comment. Leaving a critique in a comment box is a fairly meaningless exercise because it has no impact on the number of people that view the image. The critique is seen after the image is seen. At that point, the viewer has already decided whether or not they like the image. That leaves any critical comment now being seen more as advice than anything. Advice is a tricky thing. Not everybody wants it. I don't know about most artists, but I generally don't intend to correct images that I've put in my gallery. I'd rather work on my next image. Any comments, about specific things that only apply to the one image, probably won't ever be acted on, whether I agree with the comment or not. The Work in Progress gallery is probably a better place to leave constructive criticism.

If you follow the link I posted to CGForum, you'll find a render that almost looks like a photograph. That portrait looks more real than half the photos I've taken. Looking at advice being offered by others (too waxy; needs more dirt, etc.), they're all looking too hard to find faults when there's nothing really wrong with the image. The critics are offering advice, but not solutions. For the critique that the skin looks "waxy", what rendering parameters need to be tuned to eliminate that "expert's" concern? The poster doesn't know how to provide solid expertise to fix his perceived problem. That poster hasn't rendered anything remotely as realistic as the image he's critiquing. It's not useful advice to the artist.

It's hard to leave a critical comment on somebody's image without either seeming arrogant or condescending or a bit of a know-it-all. It really doesn't matter if it's meant as being helpful. Anybody who tries to find fault with something always will. Sometimes it's better to "ooh" and "aah" something that's really nice than finding fault with it. There's no doubt that, if DaVinci were around to post the Mona Lisa here that somebody would find something wrong with it and suggest how to fix it and at least one person will offer that he lose the smile. There's an unintentional touch of arrogance to offer improvements to a master artist. As much as one doesn't have to be an expert to give an opinion or a critique, there are times when maybe it's best not to.

It's a touchy thing offering artistic advice to somebody who is inexperienced because they're too enamored with what they've produced even though it's fairly rudimentary. Is there any real value in commenting on something in an image that is so obviously flawed that it's hard to imagine that the artist didn't see it? The artist clearly should have recognized the problem and it's doubtful that pointing it out to the artist will make it any more self-evident. If somebody has a portrait with the default Face Camera fish-eye effect, worthwhile concrete advice would be how to fix the focal length. That's something that can be acted on by the artist. If the lighting is off and the setting would work well with a free light set, a link to those lights should be appreciated. Offering a link to a tutorial that would correct a problem should be good. Any other advice becomes questionable. Is the critique truly providing useful actionable helpful advice or is it just showing off one's professed knowledge base? 

That's the logic train that I eventually took to providing compliments on what is right in an image if I'm going to leave a comment.

Dave-I'd pose the figure as you had it in the image you posted and start fiddling with the orientation dials of the joint editor dialog box. That should do the trick.

My view on our little debate here is I'm all for free speech, especially my own. If somebody wants to troll me, fine. Just don't cry like a b*tch when I fire back. And I'm one of Sparky8's heroes, so I can't be all bad. :O)

Quote - > Quote - professional critics and galleryholders usually don't have an academic degree on arts, or perhaps they are artschool dropouts, but they have an excellent eye how to promote or sell art.

considered a critical art fave.

 

Here's the link that made me question the value of criticisms from artists who aren't as good as the artist that they're critiquing.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=219323&page=1&pp=15

Although an artist doesn't have to be DaVinci to critique a work, it means a lot more when the critic has demonstrated considerable expertise with their own work.

i agree it would be nicer if a master modeller gave crit but....

a critique comes in two forms. one critiques what the picture does or does not do for the viewer by way of asthetics. does it look right to the eye. is it in proportion. is the left eye where it should be. is the shadow where it should be. anyone can do a  decent crit on these things because everyone has indeed had the exeperience of seeing these things as a common place feature of living in a world where they exist as a reality.  everyone knows what a face should look like. the reason  faces are much harder to do is exactly because something wrong with a face will be spotted much sooner than something wrong with a leg.. the reason being, we look at faces more than legs.. in fact we stare at faces for a large part of our lives. that we can't represent what we see onto paper is a matter of hand eye co-ordination or lack of it. in many cases a person can have a great eye for art and be crap weilding a pencil, in fact he can have a better eye than the artist. what people are doing here is  confusing the creating of art with the discerning of it. as an analogy. ...i get brought a great looking....i say it tastes rubbish...another four people in the resteraunt say the same thing...way too much salt...mistake or oversight bt the chef...who know, the thing is people who didn't create the meal were discerning enout to taste the extra amount of salt...these comments gets passed on to the chef  and the next time i eat there that dish has the right amount of salt.

the other way to critique is by comment on the craft. what was used, how was it used. in this case poser. these comments should only be given by those who know their craft. ie. poser and other apps.  to say post work is only done in a paint program is a bit like saying mechanical work is only carried out on a car in the a specific garage.  by craft i  mean the best render engine, light settings and all the other side of how you call things up and correlate them to get an end pice of art. i took a look at the url and wow. the quality of it blew me away. from a technical point of view. that said if i saw someone walking down the street with some of the things i saw from an asthetic point of view i'd have to take a second look.  is it artistic. yes definitely so from both aspects of critique.

billy

Quote - I too included the parts of the huma tha were visable, but i altered the height and length of the pants bwfore exporting, and now they don't bend to the side properly.

1. Casual Woman2 - the pants tear in the crotch
   DPH

The hip group needs to completely separate the two thigh/buttock groups. It doesn't.

Two fixes:

1 - int he Cr2, add a line that welds the the two groups (bad idea for pants)

2 - int he object file, create a thin line of polys through the crotch that are part of the hip.

Quote - Thanks

BTW,What's another word for thesaurus?

Tom

Godzilla. I'll let you think about that one for a while ;p

The "You aren't an [excellent] artist; what do you know?" argument doesn't fly. Most of us don't want only "excellent artists" to look at and enjoy our work. If you ask someone to look at something, you are stuck with dealing with their response. That doesn't mean everybody's opinion is equal, but it does mean listening to all your critics with a humble and open mind. If a beer-guzzling cracker looks at a picture of mine and says, "You got the Pearl label all wrong, egghead!" he may be right, and if he is, I screwed up.

I like reading intelligent comments about anyone's work; I learn from them. I think the thing I find the least useful in galleries is the wordful vote, positive or negative. "Awesome, Dude!" is no more interesting than "This sucks!" I'd much prefer that those comments came in the form of ratings, myself. Good criticism is tempered by an understanding of the person's expertise and values. If a Poser technician tells me the Mat Room settings he thinks will make my dragon's scales look more like the crocodile skin I ineptly attempted, I'm glad to hear it. If she also tells me that dragons don't look like that, I shrug. Most of the time, the real technicians are not exceptional artists, I've found. If an artist whose work I admire comments on my composition or the emotional effect or the colors and shadows, I listen, even though many times real artists are not the most coherent and articulate explainers. If a body builder or physical therapist tells me I got the muscles wrong, I listen

A couple of people have hit the nail on the head, regarding what makes "Poser art" bad. A good deal of the bad is in the user's failure to master the tools. We've all suffered from the shy offer of "art" by untrained amateurs who are not prepared for criticism. (For me it's "poetry," meaning ethereal doggerel that doesn't even have to rhyme, thank Walt.) They just want you to coo over their baby, and like most babies, it looks like a fat midget or a shaved monkey. And unlike babies, it isn't going to grow up to be Michelle Pfeiffer or Lance Armstrong. Good Poser art can come from a "primitive" approach (in the Grandma Moses sense), but it's more likely to result from study and practice with the guidance of someone more knowledgeable if not more "talented." Poser by its very nature encourages people to "make art." This is why I occasionally describe it to people as the ultimate bathroom wall pencil. You don't need talent, or even much money, or even a motive more interesting than jacking off, to use it.

"Most of the time, the real technicians are not exceptional artists, I've found. "

Absolutely. A lot of the people who profess to be knowledgeable about their medium of choice often have galleries that are mediocre at best. They may have the best UV mapped node-enhanced all-singing all-dancing image of the week... but the picture often lacks that which I ( and it might well just be my opinion alone ) consider to really make a picture... and that is genuine feeling.

It may well just be a romanticised view of mine, but being an artist is something that you carry in your heart, it's a passion, a way of life. You can learn an application inside out and upside down, but if you don't hold that fire inside you then it will always be technically brilliant, but artistically lacking.

Quote - genuine feeling .

If you mean "genuine" in the extended sense of "accurately represented," I agree completely. As a mediocre visual artist (my medium is words), the hardest struggle I face is getting the "feeling" into a picture. My feeling may be genuine, but my ability to represent it is weak.

Quote - You can learn an application inside out and upside down, but if you don't hold that fire inside you then it will always be technically brilliant, but artistically lacking.

No resolvling this paradox. Craft without art is no better than art without craft. The greatest artists struggle with the intractable tools of their art, but they struggle knowledgably.

I don't especially disagree with anybody's thoughts on critiquing artwork. I have my own philosophies of how I want to help others and prefer doing it by focusing on the positives. If there's an out and out technical problem that has an easy solution, I'll offer that. I don't really think it's my place to tell them what's wrong with their image. If the artist placed their work in a Work-in-Progress gallery or forum, I might feel more comfortable offering constructive criticism. When an artist puts something in their gallery, I think they're putting something there that they're happy with and I don't feel it's my job to poke holes in their dreams.

I've taken some quick looks at galleries from posters in this thread. I saw one with a Vickie with a badly contorted and ballooned shoulder and spaghetti twisted upper arm. I saw another gallery with comic panels that were unimaginatively composed with all straight on camera angles and minimal variations in camera distances. I saw a bunch with poses that, if the artist tried duplicating that pose in a mirror, they'd fall down. Other poses would require breaking bones and ligaments to force limbs into those positions. I saw tons of faces that didn't look right. There were galleries with bad composition. I saw all these things without even trying to look for faults. Imagine how many more criticisms I could find if I had my critic's hat on. Most of these problems stuck out like sore thumbs, sometimes even in the thumbnails. I could spend all day critiquing what's wrong with what I saw. Some of you might appreciate those comments. Some of you won't. Who am I to tell you what's wrong with your artwork? I'm not a Poser expert, but, as many are pointing out, I don't have to be one to tell you what you're doing wrong.

I also saw some nice work in everybody's galleries. If I were taking the time to tell you what's wrong with your least impressive work, I'm probably not spending enough time telling you what's right with your best. Whatever time I spend critiquing the work of  others comes at the expense of spending more time bettering my own work.

As much as many don't like to see a comment that says, "Great work!" or something equally minimal, it's still nice encouragement. Somebody saw the thumbnail, found it compelling enough to open, and was happy enough with what they saw that they took the extra time to say something. I don't know about anybody else, but I don't usually get the compunction to leave a comment much more than 5% of the time. When I do find something striking enough that I want to say something, I'll try to leave more than a small one-liner. Even if I only left a quick 1-liner, it was because I thought that the work was worth saying something about. I'm not leaving the comment just to say that Killroy was here. I just can't find it in me to get upset if that's all somebody took the time to leave.

The big difference between art and technique is that technique can be learned whereas it's very hard to teach artistic talent. Teaching may focus and channel those talents. Teaching cannot create an artist unless the student has the desire to be one and is willing to invest the time to practice and improve.  Much of the artistic learning process is a personal one. Teachers can help show technique. Teachers can encourage and inspire. The real work, of artistically improving, comes from outside a classroom. Improvement is only going to come with time and practice. The amount of time an aspiring artist is going to spend on their craft partly comes from the encouragement they get.

My personal feeling is that anybody, who takes the time and trouble to post a public gallery, is better served by encouraging positive comments than a litany of comments about what they can improve.  If I should ever feel the urge to express my opinions about how others can improve their artwork, there are more than enough avenues where Works in Progress are being posted by artists who truly want criticisms and advice on how to improve what they're working on. Somehow, personal galleries just don't seem like the best place to do that.

Should somebody really want comments on how their art fares in the real world, pick a non-3D gallery to exhibit in and find out how others, who haven't grown accustomed to the quirks inherent in 3D work, view the masterpiece.

Mark this day in your calendar folks. I'm going to ask if anyone here can say why the most common critique I get is on my "Image Resolution" when I render using Firefly. People keep telling me to use the "Anti-Alias option but here isn't one for Firefly like the checkbox I see for the Poser 4 render engine! Is there some Fine Render setting for Firefly that I'm missing somewhere? Is it simply because I save all my images at 95% quality JPG compression? Have I been getting that stupid thing backwards all this time and should be saving at 5% Quality instead?

laughing

I was wondering how long it would be before someone admitted to going through the galleries of the people who've posted in this thread lol

yeah, miz, I agree. it was a bummer when they dropped the "anti-alias" button. of course, I never thought it should be an option; they should be properly anti-aliased by default. I haven't looked at the galleries of the folks in this thread, dsb, but I reckon they've done some excellent work, hence no need to check. don't bother with mine, however. I only posted a few things here (can't recall why I did it, but apparently I had to do it for some reason), but most of them were deleted, excepting one or two shots I slipped into the forums here.

Miss Nancy ... I'll hold my hands up to checking out the galleries of those who are the most 'outspoken', not just in this thread but pretty much all the others I've posted in too.

Not yours however. I guess you're just too darn reasonable-sounding to be nosey about :lol:

Attached Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing

Ah! Well, now that's the price you pay for professional rendering! Renderers that handle AA with just a simple checkbox don't tell you the whole truth. AA is not just an on/off parameter, it's a combination of supersampling and filtering (click the link for the dirty nerdy details). In theory, you'd want to use an infinite number of samples, filtered with an infinite size sinc filter, resulting in inifinte render times. So in practice, we compromise. In FireFly (and other Reyes-style renderers) you have the shading rate, pixel samples and pixel filter parameters to adjust this compromise to fit your artistic needs: Shading rate controls with how much detail texturing and shading are computed (smaller=more detail). Pixel samples determines the precision with which geometry will be sampled (higher value=more precise). The post filter size and type determine how all this information is being turned into a pixel. A 1 pixel sized box filter is fast and simple, but does not result in the best quality. As said above, the filter for best quality would result in infinite render times (and cannot be set anyway), so you have to experiment here. My preferred allround filter is 2 pixels gauss, although I do tend to use a sinc filter every now and then for strand based hair. Renderers that just have an AA checkbox make an arbitrary choice for all these parameters and give you a simple yes/no decision. Easier to use, but when their choices don't work for your scene, you have no means to make them work, at all. (And unfortunately, most renderers that don't give you the choice of pixel filtering force you to a 1 pixel box filter.) When you look over to the "better" renderers like PRMan or Mental Ray, you will see that neither of them has a simple AA checkbox but all of them have supersampling and filtering parameters similar to FireFly (in fact, almost every FireFly parameter can be found in RenderMan as well).

Well now see this is stuff I didn't know about at all. If I want better quality render resolutions then I need to increase the pixel samples and lower the the shading rate numbers? Is that correct?

Well, that and the pixel filter. I suggest you start with a very simple scene with just a few elements that easily show aliasing (like a box with a very detailed/high contrast texture, a few dynamic hairs) and try out different values for shading rate, pixel samples, post filter type and size. That will give you a feel of how they affect your image and the render time. You can also have a look at how the automatic settings in P6 use shading rate and pixel samples.

By Pixel Filter do you mean the "Post Filter Size" and "Post Filter Type"? I don't see a firefly setting for "Pixel Filter" under the firefly manual settings.

Quote - IMO, the biggest drawback to Poser is not even the lousy render engine.  It is the lack of actual artistic skill needed to make a render.  If you don't know basic composition, lighting, and HUMAN ANATOMY how can you presume to artistically portray the human figure?  And, then there is the lack of realisation that skin, or anything else, for that matter has channels.  A 4048x4048 color .jpg just doesn't do justice to the actual nuances in skin.  People have fun with Poser.  It is inexpensive.  Good.  But no one has to really take the time to learn about edgeloops, or s curves, or diffusion channels, and, most folks don't bother. 

This is like saying that no-one can sing unless they understand the physics of sound. Edgeloops do not art make. Neither, in fact, does human anatomy. Have a look at Modigliani sometime. Neither, in fact, does realism. Look at 1001 artists who painted according to their inner vision, not what the camera saw.

gagnon mentioned "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", a movie that didn't exactly garner worldwide praise. I just received the DVD, and it sez on the jacket: "Film critic roger ebert penned the screenplay of this Russ meyer classic, which isn't so much a sequel to the original (based on the Jaqueline Susann novel) as an ebulliently vulgar remake. Chronicling the adventures of a trio of female rockers who find their way from the heartland to Hollywood, the film features all the Meyer staples: bountiful breasts, lesbian love scenes and drug-fueled descents into murder and madness" I wouldn't be surprised if roger was the one who wrote that blurb :lol:

all true phantast. as long as we look at art in the context, period and style it was created in.

to compare modigliaris work with some of the renders put up as art is akin to comparing silk and a pigs ear. as for the inner vision of poser art. it's a rare commodity from what i've seen.  you can bet most of the good artist who create art outside the box..dali, picasso latrec, esher and of course modigliari will have learned technique and practiced  the edgeloops of painting or its equivilent. they have painted good traditional art of their period before exploring new styles. they know the rules and purposfully break them.  many of those that use poser don't know the rules and when they break them it shows.  we all know what we mean by a crap render. it has noting to do with artistic style as such. it's really about something not looking right. dalis painting look right even though they aren't.some of renasaiance artwork looks right even though it isn't. mona lisa looks right even though it bears little resemlence to the realism. depection of the golden mean in art through the modern movement (squares the get bigger to a ratio of 1.68) have nothing to do with realisim as such but have a certain perfection about them. they look right.

billy

some good points gagnonrich

"When an artist puts something in their gallery, I think they're putting something there that they're happy with and I don't feel it's my job to poke holes in their dreams"

personally i have never made a comment in anyones personal gallery. or on any of the gallery pages. though i've had a few giggles.  i would hate to destroy someones dream or ego in such a callous way.  i have made comment when they have been asked for though and found to my surprise as miss nancy pointed out that many who actually ask for crit comment or feedback don't realy want it. they simply want their ego's stroking. after seeing some of the comments and artwork in some of the more voiciferous galleries of this thread (i checked them out as well lol) i have to agree with her.  that said i do think some take what they can from decent feedback without resorting to an attack of the person leaving the feedback. dp to name one to a crit and responded with aplomb.

billy

hmmm...;)

I actually do play the piano, but don't like piano music..;)

I'm also a real technician...and..the prosecution rests..;)

After going from Terragen,  to Strata, to Bryce, to Poser, I can't say how happy I am to be able to put people in a picture..;)

I just like making pictures, and Poser is a tool. If I don't use a Craftsman Crescent wrench, and instead get something from the gas station, I just concern myself whether it will free up nuts and bolts..;) In fact, on average, I use 4-5 programs to make one pic (Wings, Bryce, Poser, Gimp, and sometimes Corel Draw)..;) not to mention the occasional use of Mojoworld..;)

If you're a professional artist, I suppose you can make valid complaints against it. I'm just here to have fun, but that doesn't stop me from trying to improve. When I hit the limits of Poser, maybe I'll start complaining, but for now, I got no beef..;)