Quote - this is a an online community.  not an art class site, or a training site.  it's not even a store with a community, because the community pre-dates the store. a  tons of people post just to put up something they like and to have other people they like enjoy it.  asking people who post like this to share constructive criticism is like asking people who invite each other to dinner parties to share constructive criticism about cooking.   you can complain that everyone is just exchanging pleasantries instead of analyzing the ingredients of the appetizers, but that's not really going to do anything but create discomfort all around.

Double that when sometimes you offer an honest opinion / comment and the artist doesn't like what you said, be it taken negatively or gets insulted by it.

Quote - i recently looked at the highest ranked, and i saw some work i didn't think was as good as some of mine, let alone that of the people i follow (most of whom are better than i am).  i also saw some images that were absolutely great, truly professional works.  sure, there were people on that list who are just part of the group of people who keep commenting and ranking each others' works.  but all that meant to me was that i couldn't use the list as a filter to find new and interesting works (and artists), and that even if i ever get back to posting, not to hope to be popular.  ever.  because i doubt i'll ever be great, and i know i'll never be an online Heather.

Likewise. I'm not a professional, so this is just a hobby. Something to do, something to learn and get better at, so I don't care about the top charts. Nor do I bother to pay the top charts attention.

Quote - if you want constructive criticism a) ask for it each time you post, and b) actually try to use it.

Good point. Though its rare that anyone either bothers to read and acknowledge such a request. Hence some people asking here outright in the thread for it.

Quote - frankly, for me, technical information is either educational or just noise.   99.9% of the time, the main problems i see aren't technical problems, they're artistic ones.  for instance, VSS, IDL and Poser 8 aren't going to help your realism if you follow the current trend and place a front lit figure in front of a gorgeously lit sky (sunset, full moon, etc.).  conversely, there's a lot of tropes in western art that have everything to do with norms and nothing to do with realism.

I usually post technical info when I think its relevant. Most usually when I'm using dynamic hair, fog and/or atmospheric effects, the amount of lights used in a scene with type of lighting. Just so that I inform that these are actual render effects, and not done or touched up or done entirely via postwork. It also helps get more specific comments and less generic ones when people see I spent time and accomplished said effects via scene setup and render. And I post technical info when I'm particularly satisfied and/or proud of how the render turned out.

I've noticed the lighting issues as well. Mainly stems from Poser's insistence of 3point lighting, and alot of vendors also provide 3 point lighting. For indoor scenes, or portraits / pin-ups, 3 point lighting is fine. But When you've got outdoor scenes, and you see a figure with orangy secondary light on the opposite side of the main light, maybe where shadows should be instead or standing infront of something which is not producing that orangy light, makes you wonder sometimes.

Theres a couple occasions over sitemail or instant messaging, i'd finish a render, post it, then get told 'i should've used a 3 point light setup' . I thought it was a rule of thumb i read on some site - the less lights you can get away with / need, the better (doing away with excess lights that don't have a place in the scene). For the render at hand, here's one that comes to mind - "Jundland". 1 light is used (either a distant or tube aka florescent), so the dynamic fur behaves naturally picking up the light. That wasn't the issue. It was the comment on the droid (XCC-900) where it was standing in part shadow, somewhat brought on by the big brimmed hat. So, umm, forget the actual lighting effects made by a single ceiling light from slightly infront of them, and place a secondary and tertiary lights on the droid to light up his face more despite having a wide brim hat? and loose the shadow and darkness on the face which really brings out / emphasizing his glowing red eyes? Not to mention pickup 2 more sources of lighting highlights on his reflective metalic blue body? Most of the body is automatically picking up secondary highlights from having a reflective surface and getting those highlights from the ceiling light shining on the floor.

Quote - but, in the end, the best way to get good critiques is to give them.  back when i was active in the galleries, a few people who posted "wonderfull!!!"and "fabulous!!!" to other people's work would write, "love it, but i wish...." on my work because i was giving pretty thorough critiques (max of  2 hours writing one- yeah, i'm slow). 

Thats also the same way to try to get more original comments rather than cookie cutter ones. By taking time to write a comment based on the image, sometimes the artist acknowledges it, and responds back in kind on a render of mine, or via sitemail, thanking me for the kind words.

Quote - so find a balance that suits you, and be happy as others find theirs.

Well said.

Likewise with a few other renders I like for particular reasons.

• Dungeons and Dragons, was a really hard scene to get lit properly, using tube lights set in the light fixtures, and an anything glows light with the florescent tubes and energy bars set to the glow channel. Probably the closest i've unintentionally come to 3 point lighting, but at least the lighting isn't artificial. - Your a scary scary robot - from the same scene, but an earlier light setup as i was still struggling with lighting being either too dark or too bright, but i got an interesting side effect while playing with some glowing eyes.
• "Cameron", same portrait as above, but sans eye glow, and using the final light setup in Dungeons & Dragons. (same scene, different camera angle actually). No 3 point lighting, just the overhead light fixtures with tube lights (finally achieved the desired values for them)
• LV What???, mainly a distant light, couple weak spotlights on the landing pad with a ship landing, and some spotlights on the reactor in the background. Rest is natural effects and atmospherics.
• My Immortal, yes there's postwork, but not corrective postwork to fix the render. Instead, crop and to frame it, where the render froze near the end, and ended up making something more out of the render than initially intended. No dodge & burn, just a properly set sunlight, and having setup subsurface scattering on the skin. I could'v postworked a streaking tear down the cheek, but it was more a fun challenge to actually model one. Also some friendly advice and suggestion helped make this render, as linked to the prior version of it in the notes which was lack-luster. I also made an entirely new render project, and used the rendered image as an in-scene photograph prop.
  Point being, I've either been griped at / on those images via sitemail, instant messenger, or at another gallery site. Had I used postwork or multipass renders + postwork on any of them, i'd have not struggled to learn and figure out how to fix and/or improve the lighting setups within carrara. They might not be perfect or "profesional" grade, but i'm satisfied with them as they are.

And you can't please everyone. if I put "pure render, no postwork", some wont care or mind, and say it looks good regardless. Some might go "whoa!" for having accomplished this via pure render. Postwork and multi-pass render advocates might trash it anyways out of jealousy or call it crap for the utter lack of any multi-pass or postwork.

Lastly, for the multi-pass and postwork advocates in this thread - this particular render "Carrara", I offer as my argument to spending the time and effort at trying to get the best out of the render program without resorting to postwork amd multipassing. She's my proudest achievement yet, the cyborg a hugely complex self designed shader that multi-layers a full skin shader and a metalic shader. Say what you want, but, she's ready to go in any scene I use her in. A few weeks dredging and hair pulling in figuring out how to make the shader work, saves the hassle infinitely in the longrun as I don't have to layer and erase parts of multi-renders in postwork. I basically picked up where winston1984 had left off with a generic featureless skin sample over cyborg endoskeleton. And now I can use any character skin set with the metal endoskeleton with a mere drag and drop. Only postwork in the image is the adding of my signature. Had I chosen the other route, using this character in more renders would be a real PIA.

Simply put: (for us hobbyists anyways) If you don't know how to do or achieve a desired effect in Poser or Carrara, spend the time trying to figure it out and accomplish it than resort to the easier postwork method. You'll learn lots from it, and have gained a better understanding of the program, if not even pioneered a new skill within the render program.

Most importantly, the same can be said, as I said earlier regarding the use of Light Sets and Character Poses. You can use light and pose sets to start with, but your not learning anything. If you use a light set but don't examine the settings that make it work, your not learning anything. If you examine the light, play with it, try new parameters on it, you might find you won't have to take it into Photoshop/Gimp to use the dodge or burn tools on some areas, or add shadows. If you use character poses like depending on a crutch, your not learning anything, and your limiting yourself to only the range of preset poses you have in your runtime.