fivecat opened this issue on Apr 28, 2008 · 149 posts
Penguinisto posted Sat, 10 May 2008 at 11:56 AM
Quote - Endless streams of mechanical dreams and architectural settings that have all the cool charm of a visit to the dentist's office.
Depends on portrayal, really.
Also, maybe a parallel is in order...
I know a lot of C/C++ and Java programmers who will happily slag on .NET/VB programmers as mere wannabes. Sure, they all make programs that do their basic intended function. OTOH, the complaints and debates begin when it comes to efficiency, elegance (yes, elegance), security, and flexibility. C/C++ is definitely higher-end of the two - you can use it on any OS, it is highly efficient, and in spite of its ungodly complexity, you can make it do some really beautiful things. Java, though ungodly complex and somewhat arcane in its knowledge-set, is a workhorse of the professional end of programming. At the higher-end of the software development field, a programmer who doesn't know C/C++ or Java is pretty much out of a job 9 times out of 10. They get paid well, and for a damned good reason. At the other end, you have a lot of folks who hammer out Windows-only stuff in VB and .NET... You can get stuff written in VB or .NET into C/C++ (or even Java) form, but it ain't easy, and takes a shitload of work to do. Stuff written in .NET/VB have a limited range, an average variety of applications, and for the most part it's Windows-only*. Microsoft has improved these over the years, but it's full of quirks, bugs, and problems that make it difficult to work with at times, and still somewhat limited.
Is this starting to sound familiar? It should. Replace C++ with 3DS Max, Java with Maya, .NET and VB with Poser 7 and 4, respectively. Now it should sound familiar, no? :)
The end result (be it "aesthetic renders" or "applications") doesn't really matter in the context from which it is being viewed. What does matter, and is being examined, are concepts like flexibility (what all can you do with it?), elegance (that is, how clever and time-efficient are you at reaching your goal with a tool without sacrificing quality?), interoperability (does it play nice with others?), extensibility (think "render farm" as a ferinstance), and marketability (can you get a job with this, let alone a career?)...
'course, in the case of the article that kicked all this off, the guy was having a bit of fun. Problem is for many, he's embarrassingly right in his observations, and any cursory peek at Renderosity's galleries will not only confirm it, but holy shit - will confirm it in spades. Now sure - a deeper peek will reveal a lot of gems buried in the manure, but you still have all that manure sitting around. ;)
/P