From inspiration to final render - process of creation

General Forums Off-topic Chat
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Hi guys,

I was wondering, how long does it usually take for you to actually create something in Blender. First of all, I understand, that this questions sounds very general, however I see some Blender giants like Gleb Alexandrov, Ray Martinez, Sebastian Zapata and some others spitting out high quality artwork every hour or so. This is kind of frustrating for me as it takes ages for me to produce something (which is miles away from art of fellows mentioned above).

So the question is how long does it take to produce artwork for you? (If you cant specify it somehow, please do me a favor and post some of it here with the note of time working on it).

The second part of question is: What’s your usuall process of creating art in blender step by step - from finding inspiration to final render and post processing? For me, initial idea often differ form the final result and perhaps in my case, not doing it right is the reason why it takes so long, and whi it more or less sucks…

Thanks

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second part first
for me if I am not really inspired about anything but want to make something other than what tutorials are telling me
I just pick an object randomly and build it just something lying around the house
once you have decided on something don’t change because I noticed a lot of the times I will start something and see something that I now find more interesting and never get anything finished
so once you pick stick with it
decide what you want to be able to render don’t build beyond that boundary its pointless cause space is endless and where do you draw the line

as far as time goes sometimes I can model something complex extremely fast and sometimes
something that seems simple can give me a head ache

so for starts just pick up an object set it on your desk and build it

excuse my punctuation I am always to short on time to formal type

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Well, “one thing that I think you should early-on think about” … (and, please believe me, there are no ‘hidden barbs’ here …) … is: “who are you doing this project for, and why?”

If, (say), “you are doing it to impress somebody,” who exactly are you trying to impress, and why?

  • “To impress somebody” most-certainly is a legitimate motivation, especially when you dare to contemplate just how many “demo reels” Pixar [I](et al)
 undoubtedly receive every single day. :eek:

[/I]
On the other hand, your motivations could be ruled by pure practicality: “your client is a small business, and so are you.” You need to produce a work-product that meets the customer’s needs, but that still will be “work that you are proud of,” all without blowing the [minuscule …] budget.

This leads to a “process of creation” that maximizes alternatives, specifically avoiding the consumption of “hours of CPU time” until it can be established (with reasonable certainty) that those hours will not become “sunk costs.”

It is “a process of creation” that knows about “good enough.” :slight_smile:

In this very-revealing web page, LucasFilm admits that they “used hundreds of Q-Tips® [cotton swabs …]” to stand-in for crowds in the Podracer sequence. (And, in fact, they released the film with those Q-Tips in it, although subsequent DVD’s substituted a “proper” :spin: CGI sequence.)

Most of the time, people (especially “clients”) are extremely visual. Human beings have tremendous built-in powers of visualization: a “cone-head” can stand-in for an entire actor, and a client can provide valuable insights given nothing more. We humans very-naturally understand a strategy of “successive refinement,” and it just so happens that Blender has many features (such as “OpenGL Preview” renders) that are obviously engineered with this realization in mind.

“The most-proper time to ‘put the finishing polish upon’ anything is … after you have sold it, and not one moment before!”

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You get faster with experience. A tip is to not get too stuck in the details too fast but instead worry more about the larger picture. Always think about “is this the highest priority thing I’m supposed to be doing?”.

I don’t really do blender renders so I can’t give a real answer to the second question but a good starting point is to have lots of reference of whatever you’re trying to create. That will give you some ideas, inspiration and hopefully a good starting point. Also it gets easier to create the bigger shapes first instead of trying to go too detailed too fast.

It’s a bit hard to help you when we don’t really know what you want to create though. You could try making a thread in the WIP forum and people might help you and give you ideas.

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And maybe: “just how far can I go, in the overall ‘project-wide decison-making process.’ w-i-t-h-o-u-t(!) 'a mind-numbingly X-hours-long, project-show-stopping, Render?!” :eek:

The good news is: “an awful-long way!”

"Computationally über-intensive …“® Computer Graphics” has defiinitely(!!) intersected the world of “Real-Time® Computer Graphics” to the point that we ought to be able to usefully take advantage of the difference. Today, we actually can “give the client something that he can productively ‘look at,’” within ‘hours’ instead of ‘days/weeks(?!)’ in-advance of his decision point.

An “OpenGL ‘preview’ (sic …)” of a scene is, (these days, “if I may say …™”) ‘pretty awesome.’ In fact, it’s pretty darned close to what [at least, could be …] “the finished(!) product.”