Hello everyone!
I joined CGSociety but I looked at it from many years - searching for solutions to solve some problems, at galleries etc. I decided to join because it would be nice to support some kind of 3d community. Earlier I really did not have time and I kind of do not like to share my private stuff but I thought: I have some experience in 3d, so why not? After I joined I looked at the main categories and threads and I have a feeling that just 3-4 years ago there was a LOT more activity here. Does everybody moved to Facebook groups? I tried that, and did not found any reasonable group - 75% of all post are spam. In fact I think that some years ago was a much easier to find some value information on Internet then now. For example: you look for something in Google and first pages are garbage without any real value. Do you also have this feeling or am I just getting old?
Are internet forums dead?
Lots of people left, but there are still participants. Would be a shame if forums get abandoned, because as you said - the answers once given come up in the searches 100 years from now. And because CGTalk was visited mostly by professionals most threads offered good solutions.
I think at this point it has to be a conscious effort from the users to bring it back
These days is full with “what do you think about blender versus Microsoft Paint, which one is better”?
I’m one of the “old timers” in the online community, having once been a member of Planet3DArt some 20 years ago. In that time, I’ve seen many good forums rise and fall. Before that, I used to hang around the various chat rooms and BBS user groups for a good half decade or more.
I would like to think the 25+ years behind me has granted me a bit of perspective. From this vantage point, it would therefore seem that forums aren’t dead per se. Every generation of CG users has its own way of passing along information and interacting. Forums are simply part of a larger evolutionary process.
In the early days, you might talk shop with your peers in a much more local fashion. If you were lucky then you might have been able to expand your circle by going to conventions or meetings.
With the advent of modems, these users could now address their concerns and issues via BBS groups. Got a question? Fire off a message to the group and wait a day (or three) for the chain of responses to pile up. All text, usually short, but it was better than nothing and certainly wider reaching than the guys in your office or meetings.
The modern internet changed the game. Forums allowed a newer and even younger crop of CG artists to go global. More over, it allowed them to share visually. With the restrictions of super slow dial up gone, you could even post long responses or tutorials.
The problem, as you might guess, is that forums don’t really speak to today’s generation. Shorter questions. Quicker responses. Live streaming. Real-time previewing. Post from your phone. Today’s CG artist is on the go more than ever. On top of that, this new crop of artists is also chasing internet fame. It’s all about the likes and the followers. Forums are pretty restrictive and don’t allow as much of what the new generation wants.
Forums aren’t dead. They’re just too old school in the age of social media. Forums are to social media what Usenet groups were to forums. If it’s any consolation, social media as the primary mode of interaction among CG artists is ultimately doomed to the same fate. At some point, sooner than you could imagine, something new will come along and replace social media for CG artists.
Your body may gray and wrinkle, but you need to go where the people are if you wish to continue to be a part of the community. IMO, you can’t afford to get old if you want to remain relevant and informed. Gotta keep that finger on the pulse of the industry and community at all times.
Again, as one of the “old timers” here, I lament the current state and ultimate fate of forums. I just accept it for what it is. Forums aren’t dead. They just don’t speak to a different generation that demands more. Forums like this one hit their practical limit years ago. Social media offers a far more customizable and personalized experience.
I’m not saying that CG Talk is dead. It just represents a different, older way of interaction.
Forward. Always forward. Like it or not.
The silliness of that particular question aside, ask yourself why so may versus threads exist these days. Back when you joined CG Talk 14 years ago, you had fewer (reasonable) software choices and far fewer apps in your pipeline. I think that, given the number of available choices, today’s n00b is looking for more validation. They want somebody to come along and say that their favorite app is king or some misunderstood brilliance. They want some assurance that their decisions are the right ones. That has led us to becoming far more tribal than ever.
On top of what Cookepuss mentioned people viewing the internet moved from (desktop) computers to handheld ones phones/tablets. On a tablet it’s still ok I think to view/interact a forum (especially one as large as this one) but on a tiny phone screen… (?) I wish there was a way to collapse forum threads (way more) here so I have less to scroll through even as I’m behind a 27" screen.
Probably I’m even older since I also think people don’t have the patience to read books anymore 
. I still feel there is space for forums since they create a knowledge that is less ethereal in comparison with facebook groups. facebook group are, of course, necessary. The pace of interaction is just different and faster does not always mean better. Since I’m italian I would like to use the following methaphor: It is like cooking. It takes time, patience (to learn and to cook), sometime you need something fast (you are starving) but also when you have the time to settle down a bit you can make more elaborate recipe. Now I will stop since I’m starting to think about what my grandma cooked for me. And Love ! Do not forget to put passion and love in learning.
This.
Everyone that learns how to press a few buttons suddenly thinks they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread now.
And every little thing they say or do is somehow worth money. Lots of money.
-ScottA
Well, if your nick is any indicator of your date of birth, consider yourself the second oldest person in this thread. I was born in 1974. 
And, yeah, I empathize with you. Not as many people read and those who are up to date on the latest books probably use Audible in the car or bus instead.
The internet has spoiled a whole generation. I used to go to the bookstore ALL of the time… until it became a ghost town and eventually closed. Books are just one of those things built for a slower, brick & mortar world. As CG artists, we can all kind of understand why it is happening as well as the pros and cons. What is is. That’s my stance. Gotta roll with the punches and keep moving. It’s a little sad that an abundance of books and book readers should become casualties of a fast paced world, but that’s how it goes. C’est la vie.
Even so, there’s still no permanence to anything on the internet. There are a number of online articles, product reviews, and artworks of mine that have been lost to time. Cache services fail and/or delete material all of the time. Beyond a certain number of years, you should probably consider much of that stuff lost to the ether. Unless you’re delivering this information in a physical hard copy form, there’s still a ticking clock. It just so happens that FB’s clock ticks a shade faster.
I understand the need for forums. Don’t get me wrong. I just don’t think that most people have time for them these days. Hit-n-Run. Back in the old days, I’d spend countless hours on forums. I sorta realized that, instead of posting about art, I should probably be making some more of my own instead.
I’m a firm believer that the community could never have too many such resources. There should always be a way for new users to seek the advice of more seasoned vets. Take that away and you put the future in jeopardy.
All of THAT aside…
I wonder if these communities are no longer as popular simply because there are actually more people doing CG than ever. Seems counter-intuitive, but hear me out. 20 years ago, communities such as this were much smaller and tightly knit. They were like little dysfunctional families. The ratio of jobs to candidates was smaller because the talent pool was too. I think that the industry has grown so much that people are far less concerned with community and more concerned with getting paid (or noticed.) Forums can be a huge distraction if you’re not careful.
I also wonder if forums are suffering due to the increased complexity of CG art. 20 years ago, if you wanted to make a compelling piece of game art, all you needed was Photoshop and a program like 3D Studio. Two programs and you were golden. Today, if you can get by with only a half dozen apps then you’re running a tight ship. The work required to complete any one piece these days is huge. I think that, maybe, people would rather dig deep and get the job done than screw around all day in the one millionth “VS” thread. The complexity of the work itself could be taking people away from forums.
One last thing and I’m done. Back when Toy Story came out 23 years ago, there was a novelty to CG. It was fresh and new. Every teen with a computer thought that they could be the next Pixar. The forums used to be flooded with wannabes. CG is old news these days. Like I said, it’s also WAY more complex these days too. It’s still an attractive art form to a lot of newbies. However, I think that fewer and fewer stay with it because of this increased complexity. There’s not as much room for the fly by night wannabe as there used to be. In a sense, that’s good. It means that, even as a hobbyist, you’re either all in or not. These forums may have fewer people nowadays, but I think that more of them are serious and committed.
One last point and THEN I’m gone… 
Forums got hit petty had by the global economic recession last decade. These forums used to run a lot of competitions. They used to be a huge draw. The lurkers used to come out of the shadows and become regulars just for a shot at the big prizes or awards. When the big comps died out, that influx of new members probably died out. I saw how hard a site like GameArtisans got hit when comps like Dominance War and Comicon Challenge died off. GA wasn’t strong enough to survive that loss.
Mega comps with mega prizes used to be a huge part of forum life. They’ve largely been replaced by smaller weekly competitions that often have no prizes. This is especially true on smaller boards and FB.
Okay. NOW I’m done. LOL
Forums aren’t really dead and probably won’t ever die. I just don’t think that they’ll ever reach the same heights as 10 o 15 years ago. They’ve had their moment in the sun and now it’s social media’s turn.
Quote of the day! And not to mention the immense disappointment when they realize that it is not worth any money at all.
I mean, ask yourself why. To my mind, it’s Generation Entitlement. Trophies for just showing up. Cookies for simply doing what’s asked of you. A lack of critical input, yet tons of unearned praise. It’s no wonder why so many new users have these inflated opinions of their work. It’s even less surprising that they can’t take criticism. So many of them want the acclaim, but none of the hard work.
Back when 3D was easier and every layman with an extra hour could make something not terrible, the forums were filled with this sort of user. 3D wasn’t as hard, which meant that they didn’t need to do as much to achieve results. The pipeline has since expanded and more technical demands are being made of even the hobbyists. Slacker mentality won’t fly in 2018.
That casual user who thought a metallic sphere on a checkerboard plane was the sh** has fled for greener pastures. The increased complexity of the art form has cleared out a lot of these suckers. Bad for the forums’ membership numbers, but good for the community at large.
The one thing that STILL bothers me is how outsiders look at a piece of CG on screen and assume that it must be easy because… computers. Never mind that there are actual people literally slaving day and night to make it all appear so effortless. Nope. Grandpa Bill and Granny Irma still think that there’s some all powerful and magical button that does everything. Talent? It’s all computers. Just push the button and it’s done. :hmm:
@cookepuss.
I hate to say this but you’re a kid compared to me. I’m probably the oldest here in this thread. And maybe one of the oldest on the entire site.
Not the kind of competition I ever wanted to win.
Don’t even get me started about the Millennials and Gen-Zs.
High blood pressure at my age is deadly.
-ScottA
3d is compelling to new generations. It becomes more widely accepted as additional tools for any artist. Particularly, Zbrush is what kids and designers use for daily work, for skethcing ideas. Another thing is that they won’t use 3d as deeply as hardcore 3d professionals.
Oversaturation of information also happens. Unless it’s a brand-new tool, lots of information is on the internet.
Videos, explaining are much more intuitive and direct than help files, often without examples of how it works. You can find lots of stuff on youtube or in old posts via Google.
People indeed are now gathering in small groups, and chatting instantly about their problems.
One thing is books were long-witted, as people had plenty of time. Today the standard is being up to the point, concise.
I wouldn’t say the information on the internet is scam. I find quite a lot of useful stuff, on forums and on youtube.
I don’t think 3d became more complex to make. Actually, Mari, Zbrush, retopo, cloth simulation, interactive renderers, easy to setup materials made it much easier. Now you come to your artistic vision much faster. Add to this faster computers, and the technical complexity of baking normal maps and higher polycount balances out. Yes, you have to learn more programs today than ever to stay relevant. But at the same time, it’s never been easier to actually create and yet learn. Just throw out some cash at pluralsight, and you have hundreds of hours of explaining you stuff you’d never come across in 2000’s.
There’s a trend that concept artists learn 3d, and 3d-artists will inevitably have to catch up. I think artistic eye will become the neccesity in the upcoming 10 years, as all technical stuff will be replaced as much as possible with clever tools, such as Substance designer, but more robust and easy-to-use.
One younger fellow of mine asked if his straight out of zbrush models can be sold. Indeed I was surprised how he assured to fast turnaround of money, wanting to immediately get the desired result. So perhaps yes, there’s this desire to get it fast and now.
While it is easier to make things. The bar keeps getting pushed higher and higher.
When I started out in 3D. A 166 mhz computer was considered fast. And things like Toy Story1 was the target to hit.
But as soon as I got good enough to make my own Toy Story. They went and made Jurassic Park the new level to reach…and so on… facepalm
I can’t ever reach the top because they keep raising the bar just out of my reach.
I felt like a one legged man in an a** kicking contest.
So I switched over to doing mostly programming. I feel like I’m doing better, more meaningful work there that most people can’t or don’t want to do.
3D is for kids that don’t mind pissing into the wind and fighting a loosing battle competing against the big studios with endless resources.
-ScottA
Yeah. Apps make certain tasks a LOT easier. However, all things considered, artists today have to know a whole lot more than they did 20 years ago.
Back then, you were pretty much all set if all you knew were PS and 3DS back in 1997. Quake 1 models, iirc , were in the neighborhood of 200 polys and used a single 320x200 texture map. The most you had to worry about is not using a reserved color or whatnot.
Today, you have to worry about countless map types that can easily hit 2K or higher. Then there’s UDIM space. Realtime poly counts can easily blow past 10k now too. As an artist, you don’t have to simply know standard poly-by-poly or box modeling techniques. You also have to know a whole lot more about actual sculpting. The shear breadth and depth of what’s required of an artist these days is magnitudes greater. I would compare it to being a garage game developer back in the 1980s to studio game development in 2018.
IMO, you usually can’t just get away so few apps at your disposal either. That’s especially true when, as you suggest, we have specialized apps designed to make our lives easier. How many apps do you typically work with? My personal pipeline includes:
- Blender (C4D or Maya for other tasks)
- ZBrush 4R8
- Marvelous Designer 7
- Headus UVLayout
- Substance Designer
- Substance Painter
- xNormal
- Marmoset Toolbag
- Unreal Engine
- Photoshop
That’s nearly a dozen apps and doesn’t include plugins or animation specific tools… I could make the list much, much shorter, but that’s what happens when you try to pick the right tool for the job.
Back in 1997, you basically had one choice for 2D app (PS) and only a handful of choices for 3D apps; Alias or Discreet if you had deep pocket or cheaper stuff like trueSpace if you were an average schmuck. No cloth sims. No map generator. No specialty UV or sculpting tools. Nothing. Create a cube, cut, move some points, and slap a PS painted texture on. Done. (At least on the modeling end.) It doesn’t get simpler than that.
I think, big picture, it’s sort of hard to argue that 3D art has gotten more complex. The apps do a lot of stuff that we once had to do ourselves, but that just means that we now get to focus our energy on other more pressing tasks.
Given how much we have to do to see a piece through to the end, the amount of time we can devote to forums is much shorter. I think that’s why the hit and run madness of FB works so well these days.
(FWIW, film VFX has also gotten magnitudes more complex, but I didn’t think that it was worth mentioning because it’s always been a bit of a beast - relatively speaking.)
You have a lot of point in this. I’m sure we soon hit a wall where only big players will have a huge role, whilst others will have small crumbs.
I was making game models 10 years ago. And it was fun and easy: diffuse\bump\specular, around 6k 1 vehicle. Then around 5-7 years have passed, and now you have like 50 thousands polys for one model, and yet have to prepare normal maps, corresponding to hundreds of photos. Now it’s albedo, normal, shininess, reflectivity, metalness, hell knows what else. Texture resiolution quadrupled. I felt like my head will explode and totally exhausted making just one model for a month. Not that I wasn’t learning all along, quite the opposite. I think I’m one of those few, who learnt a lot, and many artists just stayed in casual gaming. I learnt zbrush, normal map generation, quixel suite, mari, xnormal. All the necessary tools for the job. And what I got? I got 1\3 less income from the same employer, shouting at me at the telephone that he will kick my ***, as he paid less money for more complex models.
I luckily switched to character modeling, escaping this. The pay didn’t become more in my country, and definitely complexity of assets is growing. I understand making characters today is the heydays, which will pass, as passed the time of easy game models with moderate pay.
Now that we have new Incredibles on the way to be released, there’s no wow-effect any longer. People say “it’s just another incredibles cartoon?” Yes, and what did you expect? A miracle? We have passed the point, where 3d was new and fresh. It’s just a tool in the toolbox, nothing more any longer. So you have to think strategically, as in 10-20 years a guy of the tool will be easily replaced.
Expect realistic characters generators with realistic clothes. Like, thousands of it. With half an hour of work. Also for cartoony characters. It all can be generated.
Substance already replaced a lot of manual labour for texturers. We were painting it all by hand, now it’s generated within seconds.
So either being strong at art, or programming, but not tools master.
I use just for characters:
zbrush
3ds max
topogun
uvlayout
xnormal
vray for baking lighting and reflections
mari for texturing
photoshop
Marvelous designer and Quixel suite, and Hairfarm I don’t use on this project as it’s not yet needed, but I know them.
Also I learnt along the way Corona renderer, Fusion for compositing, Modo Fusion, Rhino for nurbs, as I enjoy product viz. I’ve been also learning speedtree, world machine, Realflow, though briefly, more task-oriented. So yes, I know what this madness means. I also spent last year learning rigging basics. Will this ever stop?
But being frank, which of those programs are really hard?
Zbrush (half a year to properly master)
3ds max (many years to master)
Mari (2-3 months to master)
Rhino (1 year to master, nurbs is hard to learn)
Fusion (compositing theory required)
The rest can be learnt in weeks. The theory though takes months.
I think despite being quite broad field to explore, there’s a limit of what you need to know. But sometimes I feel my life is too consumed with 3d. If I spent as much time in any other field, I would perhaps reach quite good results. What’s painful though, is that those programs are just the tools, and I spent years learning them. But it gives me the job, for the time being.
On the bright side, Im sure you learnt a lot about sculpting, clothes garment, and other non-aging knowledge. So, despite a long journey, you became a better artist, no doubt about it.
Great insight, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts.
As I’m from Ukraine, we didn’t have the internet, and any videotutorial was at the price of gold. So human interaction was important. Also there were local shops, where sellers were keeping at the pulse of last events. There were books you could buy, but… wholeheartedly saying, they weren’t too good at the topic. You coudn’t learn much from it.
I think it sucked big time back then. But if I would have to learn as much as today, my head would explode. Thanks god I learnt it gradually, when normal mapping only started appearing.
Only when video tutorials started appearing, I felt my level started growing. Either you have to work in the enviromnent, or to learn from someone else. Good luck with help files. They usually reference materials, not the learning ones.
It’s strange that best artists in the world made hundreds of hours of training, and now you can subscribe for like 50 bucks per month to get an unlimited access.
So add to:
immediate fame seek
mobile
interactivity instead of long reading
immediate response (or almost immediate) in smaller interest groups
likes pray
fragmentality of experience
a devaluation of human factor. Today internet people cost nothing, therefore why to value it? It’s what Kojima predicted in MGS2 game, with everyone being “equal”.
I think you have a point that forums just don’t hold to the pace of experience. Once outdated TV is now repplaced with Youtube. Streamers are new stars.
I was from gamers generation. The same false, nowhere leading time-wasting. Before that was a TV generation. Before that books, as not all books were pure gold.
The new generation has its flaws, but I envy how much more sociable and self-promoting they are. I barely posted two posts in a decade on social media. I just don’t see the point. But those people perhaps do have see something beyond of what I can due to being old.
I believe forums should adapt, I mean forum developers should adapt to the new way, instead of saying social media groups has this and that and forums lacks it, its actually pretty simple and easy to make forums adapt the new generation and the new ways of thinking.
The quality of people at forums are way higher than facebook groups, besides the indexing and future referencing, are primary advantages for forums, social media groups will never have, I think if developers start to think more about how to improve forums and add that “Real time” feel to it things can change, I believe people will love forums more, companies will love forums more, they are more customisable , brandable too, and can generate more money with good traffic.
So in conclusion I think its up to the developers to adapt or be completely disrupted.
Any ideas you guys have for what changes we can add to forums to make them adapt the new ways of thinking and communication?