I got curious the other day as to what would happen if I told everybody I uploaded a picture. I am pretty sure most you saw it, The Hunt. I spent a little over an hour on it, probably a tenth of what I spent on the previous post, putting in default terrains with default mats until most of the default ground wasn't flat. The semitransparent ship is the only one with a tweaked default mat and I even did more tweaking in Photoshop. The lense flare is the only other postwork but I think it adds a lot to the image. In Stage Two I spent 1 hour in Terragen on an image and notified everyone in the Terragen forum about my new image. That was a pretty well spent hour because I knew exactly what I wanted the image to look like when I made it, unlike "The Hunt". Stage Three came up with the big Hot 20 controversy. I threw together a somewhat shiny sphere over water with a couple of bad clouds and a couple terrains reflected in the sphere. It probably took as long to render on premium as it did to make it, not long. I was really curious to see if it would get in the Hot 20. It didn't, but it got a more viewings than many of my other images. What I learned is that if you tell people, they will be more likely to look. "The Hunt" has the second highest number of viewings in my gallery. The number of viewings for my Terragen image were higher than normal, too. The thing that really interested me was that all three of my images got "Excellent"s. I actually kind of like them, except for the quickie. That one is getting deleted from the gallery as soon as I'm done writing this. I thank you for the comments, even though I threw together the images the time limit I placed on my self helped me learn new things. That's what this place is all about. Thank you.

A lot has to do with the thumbnail, I think. Your Terragen image is very dark, and IMHO it doesn't look like it would be worth opening and waiting the download time if you connection isn't particularly fast. 'The Hunt' looks more interesting. Your quick Bryce render thumbnail probably looked bright and sci-fi, so more interesting to open.

Your probably right, but my Terragen images don't get many viewings anyway.

try adding a woman in the title (chicks, girls girls girls -marina drying off) or even a pic of one in the thumb THEN see what happens... lol

Message edited on: 12/03/2004 18:59

That is guaranteed to work! HAHA! I would be so much more popular if I had Poser. But who wants to be a Poser? Seriously, Poser is a great program. Thumbnails definitely are the key. I think I might throw together some images and practice "thumbnailing." That actually sounds like a good idea. An image could be genius but if the thumbnail doesn't interest me I probably won't look.