Roberto's Bullhorn: LETS TALK (Lessons Learned Thread)

[TiMrozek]

Agh! Friday? Well that’s cool. I will be away on vacation starting this Saturday so I will be a week behind. Although I’ve got some extra work on my plate right now so I might be too busy anyway. We’ll see, seems like a great challenge. I really hope to get involved. Don’t want to just stop at one HMC. I want to keep going.

[RageOfAges]

It’s a modelling challenge. No textures.

Yes, a texture won’t save a bad model. BUT, it obscures the model, it makes it harder to see the form. I don’t like it because the person must post more images, with textures, without textures, etc. But it’s not part of the challenge. It won’t hurt the quality of the works.

And I think the themes should be open enough to allow us to choose the style and techniques. I’m particularly interested in challenges that are more creative and the results have a wide range of styles, like the last one. In my opinion that’s what make these challenges successful and fun.

While part of me agrees with the whole texture idea, they are not required, so punishing someone who adds them is a little silly imo. besides, if 4 people out of 10 put textures on their model, and the other 6 feel belittled by it, it might give some of those six the inspiration and motivation to create textures themselves, giving them a finished piece for the portfolio.

That’s what these challenges are about. Creating artwork for yourself and the community. Saying “no textures” to me is just a form of justifying one’s own laziness, and rather than trying to push the extra mile to get those textures done, you’d want everyone else to “skimp” on their own models so you don’t feel so bad. Pardon if that sounded harsh, it wasn’t meant to be at all, I’m just tired. Yeah, there’s a vote and some people win categories, but for all those with a finished entry who didn’t win a category, well it’s not like they lost or anything. They still have a model to showcase, and in some instances, a model with textures, which will help sell your artwork on your demo reel.

Cheers

-Rage

[WyattHarris]

I’m reminded of something, what is it… Oh yes, the same exact conversation.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=4385373

I mostly remembered this one because it involved Rick Baker. The fact is though that some are going to texture their models, there is no getting away from that. This challenge proved just like most of the ones in the past, the best model wins textured or not. I think it’s the quality of the CGTalk crowd that can look past any raz-ma-taz and judge the model strictly by the modeling or sculpting.

Make sure you notice the date on that old thread. Certain topics never die on this forum.

[FabioDona]

While part of me agrees with the whole texture idea, they are not required, so punishing someone who adds them is a little silly imo. besides, if 4 people out of 10 put textures on their model, and the other 6 feel belittled by it, it might give some of those six the inspiration and motivation to create textures themselves, giving them a finished piece for the portfolio.

That’s what these challenges are about. Creating artwork for yourself and the community. Saying “no textures” to me is just a form of justifying one’s own laziness, and rather than trying to push the extra mile to get those textures done, you’d want everyone else to “skimp” on their own models so you don’t feel so bad. Pardon if that sounded harsh, it wasn’t meant to be at all, I’m just tired. Yeah, there’s a vote and some people win categories, but for all those with a finished entry who didn’t win a category, well it’s not like they lost or anything. They still have a model to showcase, and in some instances, a model with textures, which will help sell your artwork on your demo reel.

Cheers

-Rage

Rage, you have a point here. Though I don’t agree with the laziness part

I gave up that idea after seeing the previous challenges.

Btw, that wasn’t harsh at all.

[RageOfAges]

@Wyatt Harris: Hmm…It seems the discussions and arguments after challenges is either “no textures” or “no time extensions”. Lol it seems to me that they alternate from challenge to challenge. Also, it is prety hard to forget anything that MonsterMaker writes or posts. Any tidbit we get from him is valuable. A true artistic genius, that guy; with a heart of gold to boot :arteest:

@fabio dona: I’m glad you didn’t take it personally. I know I wrote “you” but essentially it was aimed at everyone, whether they are for or against textures. And I never meant to insinuate that you were lazy.

Cheers

-Rage

[menthol]

There wasn’t any part of the challenge I hated. I would have liked more critiques on my work. Getting a late start on my expressions and finishing most of them in the last week probably did not help, but the lack of comments was rather awkward

I don't agree with Chris about "most helpful forum member" category. It is too scary, I try to comment as much as I can, by pm / drop a line in people's thread without expecting something in return. I wouldn't do that then if there was such category and since this community rather different for me to adapt, I enjoy and at the same time learn just by looking their threads. I think you should consider their posts on their threads as comments as well. They share their thoughts with you. You shouldn't comment someone else's work just to get a critique, you should however comment if you enjoyed, learned something, have any idea, ~what you get in return is total mistery :D 

As for comments, if you really expect people to encourage you to continue~, you might get motivation from the model but usually not everyone think the same way, so try to find something popular, funny, something different ~or try some other places/people. But if you don't, look at your lovely model and smile.

As for critiques, when you don't get enough critiques, first critique yourself about something doesn't feel right and ask a question about that part, you still didn't get any critique? Change the view, present well, but still nothing? There are great people here, why don't you send PM to them and ask their oppinion? I'm sure they'll give critique whenever they find time. (Great people, don't hate me! :D) And there is another possibility that not everyone gives critique because they think you might be sensitive about your work, which is pretty common.

~
I don't know if I should post to this thread since I'm not in this challenge but, I'm doing my own work at nights and what I learned from this challenge which effected my own, topology from Brett & Magdalena(I'm 8 months old, so it was important for me to understand why, that it can be troublesome if a model hasn't got muscle flows) and I'll always remember Chris' methods.

Great work pals, gals.
Cheers!

[WyattHarris]

@Wyatt Harris: Hmm…It seems the discussions and arguments after challenges is either “no textures” or “no time extensions”. Lol it seems to me that they alternate from challenge to challenge. Also, it is prety hard to forget anything that MonsterMaker writes or posts. Any tidbit we get from him is valuable. A true artistic genius, that guy; with a heart of gold to boot :arteest:

At least the “sculpting/no sculpting” discussion hasn’t popped up in a while.

I think Rick’s real important point was he didn’t care about the contest part of the challenge at all. Just having fun and producing good results. If you make hard and fast rules that can’t be flexible then it really takes away from enjoying the challenge. I don’t feel like my work is finished if I haven’t textured it but sometimes I run out of time and can’t finish the texturing. I don’t want to penalize those that are able to texture. On the flip side you had Oddity’s point that making this a straight up hardcore challenge, “Michelangelo’s David” for example, really shows the how hardcore it is. No doubt this challenge could get a lot more hardcore but I think doing that would alienate a lot of people and we wouldn’t get as many participants.

There wasn’t any part of the challenge I hated. I would have liked more critiques on my work. Getting a late start on my expressions and finishing most of them in the last week probably did not help, but the lack of comments was rather awkward

The late start may have been the problem. I’ve found that the comments slow down quite a bit toward the end with the deadline approaching. Those that comment are usually competitors and competitors are quite busy by this point trying to finish up.

[JM-art]

Maybe the topic about texture or not texture remain because in the rules there are no mention about textures, just modeling and displacemnt maps.

and after the rules, it says…

Only participants who follow the rules and submit a final entry will be eligible for the voting process.
Any piece caught breaking the rules will be taken off the thread.

The thing is that the regular participants knows very well what is ok and what not by experience.

But new ones may stick to the only explicit rules and then be confused with the flexibility of them, thinking…if i knew it, i would do it that way, or the other.

To be complete honest, in the rules it says:

At at the end of the challenge the final model will have to look like a scene that we might see in a cg movie or a commercial."

Wich can be interpreted like a model textured, iluminated, and even with some postpro effect. But it’s not realy explicit and given the name of the forum, the hole thing about the textures is not 100% clear.

Cheers.

[RobertoOrtiz]

Guys this is a heads up that we are live:
HCR MINI-Challenge #21: QUEEN OF THE ROCKETMEN

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