Learned so much and had so much fun making this project.
again I was just trying to come up with some cool wallpapers for my phone and pc and started this project.
the main challenge was creating the costume and designing the character, using Daz 3D I was able to create the base figure and from there I used Marvelous Designer to make the base outfit and added the details using blender’s geometry nodes and some other techniques.
hope you like it
also Any feedback would be appreciated
Thanks.
I read it after I posted my comment. I think it was slightly disappointing that a “blender work” is only a little bit made in Blender. All of those other programs you mentioned are proprietary. And Daz as far as I know is basically just a library of malleable characters. Anyway, the final image looks cool. Even though the way you describe how you did it make it not as breathtaking as would something made from zero.
If they had started in Blender and used ‘Human Generator’ to ‘create’ the Human - and used ‘Standard’ clothing… then customized it in blender, - So it would be ‘All Blender’ - would that have been less ‘Disappointing’ ?
Human Generator is not free.
Also they would not have ‘crafted’ the character from scratch.
I fear you would still be disappointed.
I think it’s a great.
The reason I’m posting, is to understand why you are disappointed, did you hope this would be a solution to a problem you have? - but then you are disappointed to find out it was not.
If Human Generator was free, would that be the ‘solution’ you are looking for ?
The solution I’m looking for, if there was one, is to know the human anatomy good enough that I do not need any generator tools for it. That I could add a cube, extrude arms and legs from it, open sculpt mode and make a human that looks so good that people will be in awe. Then if I want to pose it, I would re-topo the human, rig the human, and then pose. If I would like clothes, I’d model them inside blender. Of course I do not know the anatomy that well. And my characters all look kind of silly. But I’m trying to learn.
I’m increasingly frustrated with the “generate / buy models” mentality of artists and game makers. I’m myself guilty of it. I had 4 models from blendswap in my first short film ( a car, a jet engine, and 2 trees ). In my last short film I only have one of those trees, that I modified to fit into the scenery better. But I would like everything, down to the very little detail, down to the most minute texture and to the tiniest sound effect to be all produced entirely by me. So it would be a piece of art, not a toy.
From one point of view I’m trying to reflect on the current AI situation that is threatening to take jobs away. People try to propose laws to limit what you can do with generative tools. And I think it’s a terrible limitation to impose. So to fight AI we need to do something else. A violinist today seems to be a profession that is not needed, as say a graphics designer in the near future. But there are violinists. And they are paid well. Because people value real violin more than a MIDI fake violin. People want to see a virtuoso playing a complex solo on stage for real. That is where the thrill is. Movies like the Mission Impossible series and every Christopher Nolan movie capitalize on this desire for reality, for risk. And I think this is what will defeat AI without laws that take too much of our freedom. People would value real work being really done. And I’m slightly disappointed that this was just a generative tool that made the human. And another generative tool that made the clothing. Instead of the person really doing it himself.
On the other hand, there is the whole “toy” argument that I hear so often from those who do not know how 3D modeling works. I show my films to people who do not know nothing and they claim that I have downloaded some app to my phone that makes all of those things for me, therefor it’s not cool. While I worked for 3 and then 3 and a half years for both of my films. If Blender is as easy to work with as a character creation menu in an RPG video game, those people are kind of right. And it’s disappointing.
On the other hand I could have argued for something like, writing the MP4 file manually bite by bite to make a film. Which is technically possible. But I understand the value of a deadline. And I’d rather use cycles to render frames. And use interpolation between key frames. And stuff like that. Because I would be lying if I myself didn’t look for soothing convenience in making what I want to make. In the end of the day everybody uses some shortcuts here and there. But then I’m a kind of hypocrite when it comes to my last message.
Say there was a generative tool that is very good. And I could make a very good looking human. What if I want to develop my own style of humans? What if I want the noses to be crude pyramids without nostrils? Would that tool allow me to go crazy? Or would it bound me to whatever there is possible inside of the tool?
I know that technically I can generate the human, and then edit the nose out. But what if I want something so complex that making a human from scratch is literally easier. Then the tool is pointless. Unless of course you have limitless possibilities with the tool. Blender is such tool. It lets you make whatever. But with that freedom comes the slight inconvenience of actually knowing what you want to make.
Say there is an addon for Blender ( even paid ) that is making humans. Blender’s license requires every added code to be under the GPL so say that the addon is Free / Libre Software. Technically then, to make a human with a silly design is possible through that tool, by editing it’s source code until it can generate what you want. And I’d like to develop ( or partially develop ) a tool that will, say, generate all of the background characters for me, in the specific style of the movie I’m making. That would be great.
But for the main characters, making them from scratch should be easier. If not, they are not unique enough, and so why even bother making that movie?
I respect your opinion, and I do agree that to create art in it’s purest form, you should be responsible for creating it all. - Not simply re-assembling the parts in a more interesting way.
How about for people who want to tell a story, but have less time or talent to create the 3D elements.
If the story is something worth telling, is it not acceptable for them to take a few short cuts ?
What if - without the shortcuts - they would just give up and that story would never come to life. ( Yes, they could simply ‘write it’ - but these days - who reads ? )
If you could create your unique character, and animated every 4th frame… and AI was to assist you. ( in theory you are the ‘Director’ but you would create the film in much less time as AI would generate 3 of 4 frames. ( and Yes, you can re-edit all you want. ) Blender already does this - to a point ‘In Betweening’…
You can design your own character, you can design your own ‘Rig’ to control that character.
or you can buy something - at the ‘Asset’ Market.
I’m currently watching your short film - ( I stopped so I could reply to this. ) - I’m enjoying it very much.
When you make a film, it’s all about telling a story… if it’s a good story - it will probably be a good film. ( regardless of the quality of the Assets or Animation. )
If it’s a boring or bad story, better assets or animation will not make it any better.
I hope you consider taking any short cuts that will let you create new and interesting content faster and easier.
Now I’ll get back to watching your first short film…
This is exactly why I’m not in favor of proposed laws that would limit what can be done with generative tools ( AI or otherwise ). And I’m myself guilty of using something that isn’t made by me. But I strive towards something higher. And perhaps those people should also, at least, strive towards something higher.
The mistake you’re making is forgetting that your artistic goals are not necessarily the same as someone else’s.
If the goal is to master the character creation from scratch either to specialize as a character artist or as a matter of personal pride, it makes sense to spend two more years mastering character creation. If one simply wants a human character in their piece, and has no personal nor professional need to create everything 100% from scratch, then it’s perfectly reasonable to use a third party asset rather than wait two or more years to finally have the skills to make these images.
As for a Blender-only workflow, or open-source/freeware only workflow, again this might be your personal goal whether due to financial constraints or an ideological preference for open-source for the sake of open-source whether it’s the best tool for the job or not - but that’s not the norm. It’s not at all uncommon for only the hair, rigging, lighting, and rendering to be done in Blender.
This is both an example of a reason for someone to learn to create their own characters from scratch, and also confusing your own personal artistic goals with MASSX.RZ when assessing their work. (That said, if you can sculpt you could also reshape the DAZ characters into your preferred style, load as a morph, and adjust the rig as needed.)
Still, Daz is not AI, nor is it an automated generative tool, and as such no one is calling for limitations on it’s use. That’s just not a thing at all. AI is simply not applicable to the discussion in any way, and is not a fair comparison especially since most of the image was done from scratch except the human body.
This question struck me when I was finishing Moria’s Race ( my latest film ) because technically I did use AI for it. I used the built in denoiser implemented using machine learning that makes the rendering of images way faster than what it would take otherwise.
I made a poll on Mastodon asking people whether such uses of AI ( as a mere filter, that doesn’t substitute creativity ) are okay. And the vote was unanimous that open-image-denoise is in fact an okay use of AI.
I’m okay with people doing whatever they want to do. I’m expressing my personal take and the reasons for my personal take.
Valerian The City of Thousand Planets is a good looking movie.
James Cameron is probably disappointed in this movie because Luc Besson shot the film in 2D and then post converted it. James Cameron is not against the freedom of Luc Besson to shoot in 2D and then post convert the movie. It’s not about it. It’s about taste. In this case, taste of how a certain thing was done. And I just want to stress the point that such tastes are sometimes important to some people.
This discussion, while interesting, is very out of place. Please keep discussions about using AI in an artistic workflow generally on appropriate threads, and stay on topic here
Umm, it’s just a background for my phone
I’m not sure how long you have been doing this but I do completely understand what you are saying yet let me point out a few things I don’t agree with.
first of all let me tell you
blender is a very capable software but it’s not made for everything, I noticed you said the cloth was generated with marvelous, no it was not the process of making a cloth or an outfit in both blender and marvelous is the same it’s just that blender isn’t made for it, marvelous has much better tools for it, you wouldn’t film a movie with a camera that is made for taking pictures just because it has the filming function.
then there are times when you know you can make something very well but you don’t have the time to especially if you are doing it for a client so you download it to save time.
you might even download it because you don’t have the skills that doesn’t make you anything less, imagine arcane(the lol animation) it was made by a team not a single person and each individual in that team specialized it certain things like lighting, modelling, sculpting, texturing, etc.
you don’t have to do everything just by yourself to call it art, many character artists use daz to generate base characters with the retopoed topology and start sculpting on top of it to save time.
as long as the final result is visually stunning and tells the story you wanted it to, it’s art. not Ai though I hate that sh*t too. not hating on Ai artist tough you still need a very good understanding of how neural network works to become one and to be fair Ai does solve a lots of problems very well even text to image Ai, I’m just done seeing the same thing slightly differently done on my feed everyday.
when I started out blender I believed I have to do everything myself, I wanted to become a one man game developer so I needed to learn everything, and of course blender being sort of an all in one free tool I started with blender.
I learned Modelling, sculpting, making vegetation, procedural materials and producing my own textures and really tried to produce everything in my scenes myself you can see some of the examples on my portfolio as well, however something wasn’t right, except for modelling that I did it very often I wasn’t really good at everything else and besides that my projects getting more and more ambitious they were taking way too long to make.
now of course I could just put more and more time to it to gain the experience and better my self but that was if I didn’t have to make money.
you see my main job is 3D, mostly based on my main skill as modelling and visualization and I Just couldn’t spend too much time on doing everything myself while I can barely pay my life expenses and while focusing on my job I have less time to put on my personal projects.
now you might ask didn’t you want to make a video game all by yourself.
yes that was before I realized my pc is way too potato for that
I have an old asus laptop(gt 630/ intel hd 4000 - 8gb ddr3 ram - intel core i7 gen3)
so having all limitation as life expenses, job finding and pc spec. it’s not really sane for me to put all my time in producing something that I’m going to use as my phone wallpaper.
now this project for me was indeed a practice however not a sculpting nor modelling practice, I wanted to focus on making the outfit, I didn’t care what software I’m using as far as it was done all by myself I just wanted to practice bringing my vision to life that is a sailor uniform with the jacket on top in street wear punk style.
so I did the base cloth, making the patterns, sewing and simulating the posses inside marvelous, I did some of the costume texture using substance designer and photoshop and retopoed using blender, also all the other details like the straps, buckles, zipper teeth, stitches and some other stuff were done in blender and some parts like the shoes lace sucks and fishnet or the hair is completely blender.
basically using all my knowledge of different software and tools to bring my imagination to life, it doesn’t all have to be done in blender, you wouldn’t unscrew a cross slot screw with a slotted screwdriver just because it can .
