You quoted them?
Thatās the thing, I am letting. Everyone is letting. This discussion is about how we can make things more fair, thatās it. I donāt get this fear of ābeing forcedā to contribute, when nobodyās trying to force your hand. Why is it that you feel that way ?
By the way, while I certainly do desire that representation were a concern for more people (and it seems to be headed that way anyway in the industry at large), here Iāve merely been observing that misrepresentation is an issue and brainstorming to think of solutions that can be acted upon. Again, I am not forcing anydone to do anything. I donāt even have that power !
As stated by @Fweeb , and going off of @Modron 's original topic, this conversation should be about alternatives, options, and solutions to a perceived lack of diversity in 3D assets. Everything else going on here is entirely off-topic. This side conversation has gone way too far already, letās get back on topic.
To reiterate, this thread is about either sharing solutions or discussing implementing solutions to a lack of diversity in 3D asset packs. Feelings about diversity are not relevant to this thread and will be considered off-topic moving forward. This thread is bringing out the worst in all of us, and it should be a simple discussion about solutions. Letās all step back, and if you donāt have something solution-oriented to contribute, donāt contribute- itās off-topic
Sorry, the lack of commas + compound adjectives threw me. Edit made.
This discussion is spiraling out of control for no reason whatsoever since OP can find anything they asked exactly where they were looking for it. Reallusion CC has content store that actually provides everything.
Has it been established that it is unfair though? As people point out - is there truly a lack of assets (or asset creation tools available), or is it simply that people donāt know they are there, havenāt looked or simply arenāt using them.
It was claimed right at the start of this thread that Reallusions āAll textures and hair assets are white youthful peopleā - but even a cursory glance at their content store or market place shows this to be far from the truth. Itās the same with the Daz3D store.
We also have to bear in mind the environment we operate in. Blenderartists seems to be quite European/US focussed in terms of itās user base - so it shouldnāt come as a surprise that the content posted here has a certain skew in terms of demographics and aesthetics. That said - there is a black African female character on the featured row and a fair few more POC characters in the āFinished Projectsā forum.
I guess itād be a bit like going to India and looking at the Bollywood movie roster and asking why there arenāt more east Asian, black Africans or white European actors featured. Most European countries and even the USA are still predominantly white - as such, the art produced is likely to reflect that demographic to a high degree (just like Indian art mostly depicts Indians, and African art mostly depicts Africans).
I think a more challenging issue from a technical standpoint is larger body types. You see this in every game with a character creator: you drag the slider all the way to max weight, and the character uniformly inflates.
To keep a skeletal animation system working without needing to do a ton of work, you canāt add too much fat.
Fat is dynamic and squishy and hard to rig. This is why most fat characters / assets are ~250lbs max. Big, musclebound characters are fine too, since muscle is supposed to be firm and rigid and adheres well to a skeletal rig. I mean, look at all the diverse body shapes:
Iām surprised the baby doesnāt have a six pack.
Do you like how they cut the fat people out of the āhuman anatomyā page?
Again (echoing from the top of the thread), everyone has Blender on their machines. Blender has an asset browser which supports collections. Blender has sculpting. The Blender community has a place called the Blender Market. Anyone who wants to see a more diverse collection of characters know exactly what they can do right now to get fast results (since simply calling for it is not going to be near as efficient).
There is the saying ābe the change you want to beā, so if you can do it yourself there is no time to waste.
It is something that has to come from the creative team.
I am not a content creator. So I have no control over that aspect of it myself. But on a recent project my concept artist intentionally tried to include a diverse group in the characters. And I am all for that, when it makes sense. And it certainly did for this project we were working on.
From a filmmaker perspective I am adamant about the fact that I am of a certain ethnic background so I represent that, mostly, and people of other ethnic backgrounds should represent their own ethnicity as only they can. I donāt see it as my place. And I would not want to be the one to profit from it either.
For content creation, I would propose that people of more diverse backgrounds be the ones to create this content with respect to their own ethnicity and in a way that they are best fitted to do so. And they should also be the ones to benefit from that.
So I think the solution overall is to encourage and support people of more diverse backgrounds to create content and be thus represented. And also to corner that market and get the benefit as well.
It feels like youāre going out of your way, to cherry pick every touchpoint of their marketing that doesnāt include every shape, size, age, and color of person imaginable.
18 seconds into their demo video, thereās an overweight woman. The title screen itself includes diversity.
Factually, there has been a lack of diversity in 3D assets, stock photography, etc. Iāve personally had to deal with this limitation (5 years ago, it was freaking awful), and Iām personally gratified to see that some companies are striving to make their catalogs look more like the actual human race.
Having said that, it never ceases to amaze me when someone complains about a particular image Iāve used as not adhering to EDI; Iāve had one minority complain that a DIFFERENT minority was used as an image. Iāve had a blond person complain that I used an image of a person with red hair. Iāve literally had to tell someone, āSorry, I could not find a picture of a child of color, in a wheelchair, who is also transgendered, in a photo with an eye doctor, with parents that are also of mixed race.ā
Reallusion is making great efforts to give artists a diverse palette. We should be celebrating this, not looking for some individual element of their marketing which didnāt include insert type of person.
Thatās valid, the landscape for diverse characters is definitely improving. Those improvements come out of conversations like this, as there is a demand, and thereās money to be made in meeting that demand.
The technical and market issues pale in comparison to the cultural issues, but those take generations to change. I anticipate seeing mostly fit young people in most media going forward.
Thereās absolutely demand. Our clients are comprised of the entire demographic, and the lack of diverse assets in years passed was infuriating. At one point, I seriously considered asking our BOD to fund a professional photoshoot, so that we could shoot a few thousand images of any person I could find who would sign a waiver.
Iām failing to see the bias. This took me five minutes with Humangen.
And after a couple more minutes, the caucasian guy is now a fat B.
The generators indeed are getting much better at diversity. Pre made assets (which the op was talking about) have a little bit more catching up to do.
I would call HumanGen characters pre-made assets. Yes, you can tweak them in the interface (and as I had to in the second render, you can over-drive them if you want to), but I literally did no creative work of my own to get those images. I selected, tweaked (using the packages own sliders) for the first, and had to tweak to over-drive for the second, and that was literally one parameter that I tweaked on each after selecting the base (in fact, the Asian character is āout of the boxā pretty much).
And, of course, Iām not restricted to male figures. I could do exactly the same with female, and I could equally screw up the slim white female figure to make her unbearably thin, or overweight.
Most of it is done with shape keys and, when the time comes, the shaders. You just have to tweak them before you finalise the creation stage. The basis for the different ethnicities are there, and you can in fact mix those, too for mixed race characters.
As I said, Iām not seeing the bias. I got three distinct characters in a matter of minutes using what I would call pre-made assets.
I donāt want to speak for @Modron , but Iām pretty sure pre-made assets in this specific case means one-click downloads from sites like TurboSquid, CG Trader, BlenderMarket, etc.
Itās possible, but with a smidgen more effort, the world is your oyster.
Oh yeah, for sure, if youāre willing to use a generator, you have some pretty impressive options. Iām not disagreeing with you at all there. Sometimes, though, there are circumstances where you just want to drop an asset in without having to edit anything. I donāt personally do this for characters, but Iāve been known to do it for highly complex things like shoes or pre-vis stand-in assets