SO WHO REALLY CREATED IT?

I posted this in the Daz forums yesterday and it sparked an interesting debate, so I decided to repost it here:
(all images from Daz and Vue galleries)

There is much that can be said in praise of CG art where the creator did everything themselves, and I think we all know of certain CG sites where the type of art we do here is seriously looked down upon or even viciously attacked.

I used to be a professional artist (and all that implies). Human characters and rigs was my focus. I was very good at it and achieved photorealism on more than one occasion. I have modeled sub-D characters, NURB characters, and polygon characters. I have worked in video games, TV and film. For most of that time I knew very little, if anything, about the whole Poser world. What little I did hear, coming from "professional artists" was not good. Sadly, I believed it without ever having looked at the program for myself. These guys use Maya. They must be right, right?

The first time someone really tried to push me into Poser was quite a few years ago when I was at the now defunct EA Vegas, formerly known as Westwood Studios. He was an avid Poser user and did a lot of matte paintings for Threshold, on the Mortal Kombat movies and TV series. When you see those little people walking around in the matte paintings, those are Poser people.

So one day he said, "I can't imagine why you don't use Poser. It's perfect for what you do!" I replied, "Yeah, yeah..." Still he decided to show me just how quick and easy it was to populate a scene with characters walking and running around. He also showed me how much content, as far as human styles and costumes, there was available. Still I thought, "Maybe I use it for extras or background characters." On one of the Command & Conquer games there was a scene where Cain, the bad guy, is giving a speech to a bunch of soldiers. He did the crowd in Poser. It was easy.

That was a long time ago, so it must have been Poser 2 or 3. Over the years I saw Poser get better, but never gave it much more thought. Then something changed.

Around 2006 I was working on a movie, a low budget creature flick directed by the guy who designed the dragons for Reign of Fire. Because he had a name and had worked on quite a few big movies, he had connections. This allowed him to "borrow" sets for his film that we could never afford. Being an art director, he threw up some tarps, some lanterns and some good lighting and BOOM! New set. He did the same with costumes. He knew people and it helped. So did we have totally original stuff of our creation in the film? No, but it made our movie of less than $2 million look like it must have cost $20 million or more. That's when I gave Poser more serious consideration.

If there's one thing I never liked to model, it's generic, real world things, like, say, a Baretta 9mm pistol. I modeled one once. Did a great job too, near photoreal, but it took a lot of time and effort and had I known about this site back then I would have paid $20 for a pack of guns and moved on.

As I mentioned before, human characters was my focus and I had been modeling them for ages before I found about this site. When I saw the latest versions of Poser and then later found this site I was truly happy! Why should I continue to model human characters? There comes a point past which human characters are not getting any better. And that goes double for generic clothing like T-Shirts, jeans, underwear, bikinis and the like. They are everywhere here! If there's one thing I don't believe in, it's reinventing the wheel.

I mentioned in another thread how I paid nearly $50 for a mask on Turbo Squid. I was working on a scene where I needed it and at that point I had two choices. Pull out a card, pay the $50. Drop the mask in the scene and move on, OR drop everything I am doing and spend the time to model up and texture a mask to go on the wall in the background of my scene. Personally, I would rather spend m time focusing on my story, characters, good lighting etc.

Buying content that does what you need simply makes sense, and the prices on this site can't be beat. You think Stone Mason's prices are high? A few buildings cost hundreds of dollars on a "pro" site like 3D02. Speaking of which, who do you think is buying content off these super expensive pro sites? I asked a buddy of mine at Zoic about buying content and he said, "Hell yeah! All the time." The big guys buy content too. When you have a tight deadline on your TV show or movie and you need to flip a 2007 BMW 525, do you think they pay some guy thousands and give him months to model it? So while the "pro" artists on certain sites may sit around and bash Poser, they do plenty of content buying too, even in shows like CSI, BSG, Angel, X-men and many more.

You know what? I say let the pros talk while they spend $200 on a human model that looks no better than Victoria. Or worse, spend months to model something that doesn't come close. (Have you seen the digital stunt doubles in some recent movies?! PS3 games look better!) And if they want to say what we do isn't art, let them say it if it makes them feel better! Do you enjoy what you do? Do you love playing with the software and the content we have here? Does your art look the way you want it to look? Then who cares what anyone else has to say?

I'm going to make something cool in Poser now.

Tags: Art