I've just spent the last 6 hours with a scene I really wanted to do.
After lots of hangs, split renders and finally getting it all together, I looked at it and thought "nah, doesn't look the way I wanted", and just deleated all the files.

There comes a time when you realise that you've wasted enough time on  a project that's just not working. Six straight hours is my record so far on a single render.
Wondering how many others have had similar experiences?

ashley9803 - Oh yeah, been there mate. I've spent days, & I mean days, on a project. Only to scrap it in the end. I don't have many pictures in my gallery because most of my work has been scrapped. Looking back now, some of it was OK. In the end I don't see it as a waste of time though. I always seem to learn something from every project I do.
If you're frustrated about it though, I know how you feel.

Been there and done that! I entered an image into a contest once and spent over a week working on it but I couldn't ever get it the way I saw it in my head. So I scrapped it and did something else which flowed much better.  I don't consider it a waste of time though. Even when something doesn't turn out the way I expected, I still learned stuff while trying.

If i had kept all the projects i had begun, my gallery should have more than 200 pages!!
My trash can is a huge gallery for me!
But no waste of time as the other said, always learning from bad experiences (it's hard to admit though, when you are very angry against yourself and that bl**dy machine that is not even able to turn your work into a masterpiece!!). I guess it has again to do with the "make art" button... Still looking for it...

One thing I have learnt is that it's much better to ditch a scene and restart, than keep trying to get it to work.
Failures are almost always to do with lighting, the hardest thing to get right in Poser.
Probably the thing I learnt the most from these failures is that I won't post anything I'm not happy with.

Just one tiny corrective I want to add.   During an interview, Woody Allen said that the frustrating thing about being a film maker is that none of his movies ever turned out exactly the way he originally envisioned them.  He'd start out where he wanted to gone, and then at some point in time, his original vision would get lost and he'd just finish the movie to finish the movie.  Just because your project doesn't completely fulfill what you see inside your head, that does not necessarily mean it doesn't have value as art.  Being a Poser artist is alot like being a film maker.

3Dsmacker - I just wish my  projects could earn me the type of money Woody Allen was getting, I'd then finish them whether they were to my original vision or not, LOL!

Just binned 3 days worth.
If it ain't right, it ain't right.

I've found the best thing is to use the 'save as' a lot - that way when something does go right, you can save it and revert to it if necessary.

all the time..;) of course, 2nd go round goes much faster, because you already know where to find things..;)

One and a half days was the max time I ever spent trying to get my idea right for a scene.  Didn't make it, sadly; so junked the whole lot.

I sometimes leave them a day or two, but end up still deleted the whole thing.

i always spend days or weeks on any project, it is very rare that one comes together in a couple of days, after that time if it still doesn't look right i either save it (to go back to at a later date) or delete it and move on, the last render i uploaded took about three weeks, because i went through about ten different backgrounds before making one i finally liked, but if that background hadn't of worked out, then the whole thing would of been deleted, it was on it's last chance!!

the big guys over at CGSociety average around 4-6 months on a given project. sometimes the end result is a single render.

the best way to approach it i think is to either let the problem beat you, or you beat the problem.
you just have to dedicate the time needed, to beating the problem.

Call it a day when you're stuck, but for heavens sake, DON'T delete
the PZ3!   The chances are good that you've created something you 
can re-use later on: either a mesh or a set of morphs or a 
technique or a composition of objects. 

Six months from now you'll be doing a quite different scene, 
and the thought will strike you: "Hmm.  Didn't I already figure 
out how to do this?  Oh, yeah, it was in that scene."

Quite a few times I've spent quite a few hours on a scene and then scrapped the whole thing.
I also have a habit of going through my collection of renders and just deleting scenes that never grew on me. 
I don't wanna think of how many hours that adds up to. :)

I never delete anything either. Many times I've gone back to an abandoned project, seen it in a new light, and finished it; often the result was completely different to what I originally intended. I kept going back to Missing over a period of about three months. One piece of music I worked on was set aside for ten years before I worked out how to finish it. The piece I wrote for my son's birth still hasn't had its final mixdown, and he's now fourteen. I think you need to be able to recognise when something isn't working, and continuing to work on it is dragging you down; but at the same time, be aware that you will think differently in the future. Your skills will improve, your perceptions will change, you'll be inspired by as yet unknown sources. You can never tell what will be valuable, and what will be trash.

I've spent days working on things only to not like what I ended up with, so I trashed it. Other times I put them away and work on them later.

Do you start off with a sketch of what you want to do first? I think that helps the most. Most of the time the failures are things that I didn't think out too well to start with.

Nope, never delete scenes here, either. They come in handy a year or so down the road when you're stuck for an idea. Funny, what looked impossibly bad, is an easy fix with a few more months of experience. To be honest, 6 hours is not a lot of time to put in on an image. A good night's sleep, and it might have looked different to you.

My Make Art button is incredibly bugged.  I thought about complaining to the developers but since I'm not rich yet it appears they aren't listening anyway.  Generally I have to jab at that stinking button for a good 6-10 days before anything reasonable comes out.

Quote - Call it a day when you're stuck, but for heavens sake, DON'T delete
the PZ3!

Ditto that!  I have a WIP folder where I keep all the projects I'm currently working on and the ones that I abandoned.  There have been many times when I've gone back months (or even a year or more) later and salvaged certain ones that just didn't work out at the time.  Either I was finally able to do something I didn't know how to do before, or I simply got the inspiration to finish it up or use it as a base to take things in an entirely new direction. 

One other thing I always do is keep a detailed list (a notepad file) of everything I use for each image/project, and stick it in the relevant folder with the image and PZ3.  I find that extremely useful for those times when you look back at something you made months or years ago, realize you want to re-use a certain morph, texture, prop, etc., but can't remember what it was!

7/31/07

Allen Tate, a venerable poet of the 20th century, gave several lectures at UNC-Greensboro in the early 1970’s, when I attended there. He asked an assembly of about 500 awe-struck students how many of them wrote “free verse” poetry. Almost all the crowed proudly raised their hands. He set them up.

The old author then proceeded to angrily reprimand them pointing out that most “free verse” poetry is actually lazy prose (called prosety), and not very skillful. Good poetry is really hard work. He lectured for an hour on the virtues of novices using rhyme, meter, and other poetic techniques.

His basic point was that the struggle to produce good poetry while adhering to strict rules forces poets to consider ideas and modes of expression they would never have otherwise explored. Set your standards high and then live up to them.

When something isn’t working, try something else. Never throw a poem away. Instead put it away, until you are a better poet. Sooner or later, you may be good enough to write that poem. Years are not too long to work on a masterpiece. Corny but true.

Many of you are professionals, but I only play with Poser when there is time. I have only “finished” one render and it was trite (stock theme, figures, props, pose, lighting, environment, effects, and background).

I have never deleted any scene that have I started, because I learn things here all the time that help me advance one or another of them. A recent thread about lighting turned on a light for me, and helped me work on one project that just was not cooperating. Someday, I will be a good enough graphics artist to complete a project and share it.

LMK

wow.  i don't think i've ever spent less than 10 hours on a picture, and that doesn't include finishing it for display.  i need to get faster.

i know what you mean, though.  i'm presently trying not to hate myself for losing the ability to light worth a damn in Poser.  i think i'm going to have to break down and give up on bagginsbills light set for now,  move back to my default one, and slowly transitiion to his innovations.  i just can't seem to adjust it to behave like i'd like.  which doesn't even make sense to me; it seems like a perfectly logical and straightforward light set.  but  i was working in d|s for two renders, and poof!  now i can't seem to do jack with Poser lights.  

but i know if i'm patient with myself (but not too patient- as in just get into that pose room and do it), i'll get going again.  and i also know that i've probably set the bar higher again without thinking about it (looking back, i notice that my standards keep raising).  but what really frustrates me is when i have to stop for software.  i have a picture whose idea i love, whose lighting i thought was working, whose elements i liked, where even the cloth was behaving like i wanted , and Poser just couldn't render it.  just flat out failed.  and i moved to my second d|s scene because my first kept crashing d|s on render ( i don't find it more stable or faster at all).  we'll see what 1.7 can do, but i don't have my hopes too high. 

i wish these apps could handle more complex renders.  i'm not asking for them to be quick, just possible .

i keep around _all_my scenes, but i'm beginning to think that's vain.  some of those ideas suck out loud, and should probably be trashed.  maybe i'll collect them all and let the critique group vote on the top ten, and dump all the rest.

I've worked on real life painting for weeks, and revisited/revised paintings a few years after originally creating them. I hark back to the old days of 3d, where renders took a few days to even render, and you spent a few weeks getting the scene set up the way you wanted.

And you guys quit after a few hours?

Bah! You're spoiled with faster and faster  technology, and better and better tools. What some people fail to understand, is even though everything else has improved, there are more options and possiblites now, and while that means some tasks are easier, some are now more complex.

Talk to a few real world artists about how long they'bve worked on a painting, or sculpture.. some artists take a few months to create a final work of art.

Or talk to content creators, who spend a few months sometimes creating a poser product. The reward is not the final product, but also the journey along the way and the learning process.

I never throw anything away at all.. hd storage is dirt cheap, and you never know when you will want to take somethng from an old scene, or revisit it.

if you're including me in that statement, no, i said i don't do less than 10 hours.  i only quit after either a week or more of no progress (different but not better) or repeated and total inability to render at least 1/10 of the scene at a time at any reasonable setting (which can occur much more quickly).
as for throwing things out, i'm betting on your unfinished being of a much higher quality  than mine.

Here's an interesting thought. It wouldn't happen, but imagine giving someone else your unfinished work & seeing how they change & complete it.
Maybe not.

well, i offered that once.  i got zero takers. 

Love that idea stormchaser.
But to "share" would mean sharing purchased content in many cases.
While I have little problem with sharing, vendors and the like would frown on this no doubt.

Anyway, started again on the scene and glad I did. Turned out quite good second time around.. Much better to start anew IMO.
I don't see it as  throwing stuff away, I've still got all the content, I'm just putting it together again.
Which is what all Poser does when you think about it.

Edit - another analogy - using Poser is like playing with dolls and taking a picture. I threw my first picture away, but I've still got all my dollies.**
**

Quote - Here's an interesting thought. It wouldn't happen, but imagine giving someone else your unfinished work & seeing how they change & complete it.
Maybe not.

I've actually done that, and I've had other people give me scenes to play with. Of course, we're talking about scenes that we modeled and textured from scratch, so there was no copywrite thing to limit what can be shared. It's amazing what different directions a scene can take with very few changes.

""so there was no copywrite thing to limit what can be shared.""

Cant be that hard to use stuff that others have as well.  Apollo comes to mind as well as poser specific content - mod mansion, free content Dystopia.  V3 .

Quote - Edit - another analogy - using Poser is like playing with dolls and taking a picture. I threw my first picture away, but I've still got all my dollies.**
**

(please take this tongue-in-cheek) ewwww.. dollies?!! flashbacks of sisters huge barbie collection noooo... They're models.. carefully posed and lit models! Gad, I'll never look at a Poser scene the same way again. (Remember, this is all said in fun.)

scanmead - yes it was all said in fun.
I take my work (play?) with Poser quite seriously and always try to improve with each project.

ps. how's this for fun (not), had my upper wisdom tooth pulled out 30 minutes ago. Didn't hurt a bit but now the needles are wearing off and I might not sleep too much tonight.
Worse still, I can't have a fag for four hours.

I find it's the really really simple ideas that always take the longest and you end up scrubbing it. 
Then other days you can throw something really complicated out asap.

I spent about 10 hours trying to do a Silver Surfer image. You'd think this would be about the easiest thing in the world to texture....it is, but after about 4 hours trying to light it correctly I gave up.
Still might give it another crack one day.

Yeh, sometimes it all comes together with the first render.
Other times... well f**k it all.
I'm just saying that there is a time to re-start  the whole process.
Start with default lighting, and gradually build up the scene all over.
Is that so unreasonable?
I have lots of HD space, but what's the poin tof keping  crap? For crap's sake?
Out with the old, start again is my motto.
Often it will give you a whole new perspective.

Sometimes it's useful to look back on your work and deleting the maybes and the not sures means viewers only get to see quality work. Is that a good thing? 

In the long run, uploading nearly good stuff is useful in a few ways, you get to see your progression as well as the viewer. It can also plan a style which you may not have known about. 

Do I delete my art? yes I do, but only art that I get frustrated with, and deleting it means I can try it again from a different angle.

Sorry if I seem short.
The dentist said, "no drinking, eating or oral sex for 4 hours.
I'll leave it up to you to what I'll miss tonight.
Bear with me. Growl.

You can divide the human race into two types: one half says "that may come in useful some time, better keep it", and the other half says "it will only clutter the place up, get rid of it, get a newer and better one later if you need to". As with all things that divide us into two camps, the two halves will never agree. :)

""Worse still, I can't have a fag for four hours.""

WHAT?  There has got to be some cultural difference here - In America that means something that doesn't quite make sense in the context.  So does it mean something else somewhere else?

Fag generally means a cigarette, or a derogatory terms for gays.

wow what a strange word for cigerette.  I had only known the other word.  Sometimes here they call cigerettes "squares"  I always thought that was dumb.

Attached Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/wordhunt/

Faggots - are a type of meatballs made a company called Brains.

Straight -  A machine made cigarette from a packet. 
The opposite of a "rollie" - one  that you make yourself. 

The BBC programme Balderdash & Piffle (link above) reported a lot of these words that seem to have an 'gay' meaning are a result of them being found in Polari - a 'secret' language used by gays to avoid being busted when being gay was illgeal.