Hello all,
Over the last year or so my style has radically changed, but I’d say a large part of the influence has been Blender itself. Because of the strengths/weaknesses of the renderer I find that it simply handles particular styles better. An example would be I’ve come to conclude that it prefers textures to geometry in lots of cases, and a lot of the best Blender work these days is much more reliant on texturing than modelling (see Airman, @ndy’s work etc.) not saying the modellings bad, just simple with detailed texturing where other people would have moved to geometry, which, to be fair I would have done except for the aliasing issues that arise.
You’re right. Texturing lends itself better in generating greater detail than with geometry alone. I think is a bit limited with geometry because you strat getting into memory bog downs if you add too much geometric detail. I.E. I tried modelling a wire mesh fence by link duplicating (alt- d) all the wire mesh, and I ran into the dreaded vertices limit very quickly. I would have better off using a .jpeg texture of the wire mesh, and it would have been less time and memory consuming.
Yes i have also found this in a way, but ofcourse a combination of the two is the best. Tou just have to know where you can rely more on textures and where you can’t.
Or it could just be that you are gaining more experience as a 3D artist. I’m always amazed at the relative simplicity and elegance of the models produced by the pros in their incredible film work. Texturing, lighting and composition always carry the day.
Try making a high-poly car (and when I say high-poly…I even modeled the windshild whipers), putting it in a hilly landscape, covering that hilly landscape with grass and some trees…BOOM. I had to resort to particle based grass wich didn’t look nearly as nice as my geometry grass.
So Blender has a tendency to cramp my style. Overall it seems that one can get the best realism out of geometry as opposed to bump maps, textures, etc simply because when you get closer to it, you can tell what has been faked and what has not. Of cource, even high-detail geometry will look bad without proper texturing.
Now the chain link-fence in geometry…thats crazy However if you were to take the camera very close to it, or along next to it looking down the fence, the texture would look like crap. So at that point you NEED geometry for at least the areas that will be close to the camera.
I find that Blender actually has expanded my style. I draw in a kind of simplistic cartoon style. But with Blender and 3D I find that I can do cartoon, realistic, real like but more artistic, abstract and mini animations exploring light, shape, color, motion and sometimes sound. So using Blender has taught me about lighting texturing compostition and given me a place to practice and test what I learnded form other 3D sources. The more I learn about 3D the more impressed I am with the capablitys of Blender along with the ease of use that allows me to explore whole new realms of creative possiblitys.
Paradox
You haven’t really said anything blender-specific. All 3d artists do that, most good 3d work has good texturing. Artists use textures when geometry isn’t absolutely needed.
I have looked through that…however one thing I never did understand about compositing as a way to reduce the load on your computer for complex scenes is how exactly do you accuratly cast shadows from one object onto another without computing the vertecies for both. This is where it falls apart. I understand how it would work great for a number of characters against a complext backdrop (render backdrop, render character and the few backdrop elements that their shaows interact with, render next char…etc) but what about a scene where the trees are intereacting with the car which has shadows that are interacting with the grass and ground and the grass has shadows interacting with the ground. How would I break that up when all elements are intereacting with one another?
I think Blender is a great tool… it is just annoying to constantly have to moniter several prospectives at once… but I guess that comes with all 3d progs.
Bleder had limited my ability, there are few things that can’t be done even in the most basic moldeling, such as extruding along path with basic shapes and function, such as twist, bevel, pivit, rotate, 3D array and 2D scale. The extra steps that need to be made such as bending and the definitions of the fuction that’s on the button, makes them unclear and confusing. The render quality is the biggest down side as well as the limited amount of textures.
There are some things I would love to see in Blender that will save some time, such as auto reconize of plug-ins and textures as well a way to make them load at opening. With a quick click selection with an x or enter key, this will reduce the amount of time, of opening and reloading plug-ins, textures and settings.
And yes, I called that being picky. You have the power to make your own startup file, and yet you still complain that the included startup file is not enough…
cause if you reach it only while modelling a fence…I hope your fence had lots of detail!!..if you mean the limit inside a single “object”…then why not just separate the fence in different parts…with all the same texture it don’t change nothing…
anyway I don’t blender changed my style of modelling…cause blender is my first experience in 3d. I tried other prog like 3dsmax and a bit of maya…but still I found those program to be to slow for modelling. They don’t seem to have direct hotkey like blender…so I really think blender is one of the best prog out there…and it’s free…yea it lack a bit for some things like no reflection…but hey! we have yafray
I had to resort to particle based grass wich didn’t look nearly as nice as my geometry grass.
However if you were to take the camera very close to it, or along next to it looking down the fence, the texture would look like crap. So at that point you NEED geometry for at least the areas that will be close to the camera.
