A regular Vue artist put a photograph on the gallery to make a point, and though I could see some of what he was getting at about personal input, skies in particular are to a degree restricted if you use only the Vue atmosphere editor. Though I havent used alpha planes for skies, there are certain types of sky that would in my opinion be difficult to produce with the editor and a photo or postwork painting might be the only way to achieve it. Now strangely some who frown on postwork in Vue, looked on as not pure Vue, accept the use of alpha plane photos because alpha planes are part of Vue. Some alpha plane work I have seen is obvious, the shadows on the plane item dont match the image, or the ground shadows show the object is flat, some postwork is also too obvious, but if either method is done okay, then why not use them.

I think as to how much personal input an image contains that comes down to the individuals choice, computer graphics such as Vue were initially a novelty to me, quickly I could knock up a variety of landscapes, this I found great fun. It was friends still using just conventional art, when looking at the images, who would say, Well yes its pleasant enough, but how much have you really created, thats just a composition not a creation. So for me personally, I knew that was right, I was finding it hard to come to terms with 3D modelling programs even though I could sculpt/model in conventional art, the technical side of computer modelling software was puggling my non technical brain. Without learning it though, I was restricted to using only what was available freely or to buy, and a million other people were using that, so my images were going to just be repeats of lots of others, and most of the content not truly mine. I have eventually found Poser an asset, modelling all your own figures from scratch can be too time consuming, remodelling Poser figures to suit the needs of the image, helps considerably. I find I have to model my own clothes for the figures, as the out of the box market rarely supply what I need.

Within Vue alone it is possible to create a landscape that represents an actual place, if its historical, paintings and engravings give a guide. I havent seen many real landscapes in Vue, and I dont mean just saying its such and such a place, anybody knowing the real place will know if its a fictionalised representation. I have done about 4 images creating real places, its relatively hard work, but satisfying when finished. If it needs buildings Wings is great for creating them, I dont find its much use using freebies or bought buildings that bear little relationship to the actual buildings of the scene, because I know its not right. Anyway theres a challenge to the Vue artists, create some scenes of your home areas or favourite places, with accurate landscapes and buildings.

This isnt intended to offend those that cant make any of their own stuff, but for those that can, dont let computer graphics stunt your creativity. People have said to me making their own stuff means they do less images, well surely it isnt all about how many images you can upload, quantity can sometimes mean repetitiveness, and a little more time something different. A sculptor of many years experience said to me in my early days, Never let quantity of work become the controlling factor, or you will never improve on what you do, spend some of your time learning, which you should always be doing, however many years experience you have.

Apologies for missing commenting on lots of images of late, my connections been slow, and many Renderosity images are frequently not coming up lately, unless I use refresh about 3 to 4 times. I have also been very busy learning and still am, but hope to get back to more regular comments shortly. Dave