I’d only resort to asking to see a .blend file after I’d exhausted all my other resources, such as general web searches, tutorials, image searches, searching BlendSwap, and just mucking around with something myself until I run out of ideas and/or patience for it (which is usually an hour or two of continuous failure.)
Even when I get ahold of a .blend file, I only use it as a reference. Being able to see how the author did something in the context of their scene does a lot to help me make an informed decision on how to implement the same technique(s) in my own work.
For me, doing doing something for myself (and learning from my mistakes along the way) rather than just ripping off someone else’s work for what I need, helps me to both learn and remember the proper procedure more completely and vividly than just looking at something and copying-and-pasting it into my stuff.
Yes, because you’d imagine that with the amount of 3d art being produced you’d see more variation.
No, because 1. there’s a huge focus on realism and 2. a lot of 3d work is studio work. If you go to individual artist’s portefolios you’ll start noticing their style.
It’s kinda like animation, you really need to look carefully to see the differences in expression in animator’s work. Similarly, you should be able to recognize a difference between Blizzard-style models or Valve-style. And not just in a game-to-game basis, but also in the way how they express what realism looks like. Blizzard, in my opinion is more about the drama of models, and Valve is more functional.
In terms of lack of variation, the fact is that on this forum at least, there’s a wave of a certain kind of picture produced when a new feature comes into Blender or when someone’s image is especially inspirational.
Look in the Dyntopo thread and the Sketchbook forum for instance, I have lost count as just the incredible number of similar-looking human heads that have been made since the sculpt system was improved, place one up at random and you may not know exactly who made it. Also, it seems almost every artist at one point makes a studio render of a car or a real world object with no background (just for practice or to show to a potential client).
Now similar images using similar techniques is especially noted when Michalis popularized the idea of using displacement maps to ‘sculpt’ an object. It may not feel like there’s so much repetition if not for the fact that it looks as if every artist is using the exact same displacement texture.
Another reason for repetition is partly instinctual; You see an image and you get the message that if he can make an image like that, I can make something just like it (and especially if instructions are given). You can see this easily on Blenderguru where a lot of newcomers learn by following instructions and mimicking the master, bringing dozens and dozens of very similar clones of the tutorial image. If you get an excellent reputation as a Blender master and teacher, you can command the appearance of many dozens of images of anything you wish just by writing a tutorial.
I’m kind of wondering who this horde of gimme-yer-blend-file people are. I guess I may not be looking in the right sub-forums, but the only post-your-blend-file comments I’ve seen have been directed at people who have a problem they want to fix but can’t describe it well enough with text and screenshots. So you ask for a blend file so you can diagnose the trouble and provide a solution. I know quite a few people who do that, I do myself, but I don’t do it because I want to copy the blend or pass it off as my own.
I’ve also seen people asking for others to post node set ups, which falls into a similar category, to me, as an oil painter asking a fellow artist what brand of paint he uses and where did he buy it. I suppose we could all grind our own paint and make our own charcoal sticks, but is there really anyone who would argue that those who chose to use store bought are not real artists?
I am sure the OP has some examples of people who ask for blend files for nefarious purposes, but I suspect that the group is rather small.
I dissagree. Allthough I’m not a fan of rap music, rap artist do combine samples to create something new. Similarly, a filmmaker can make a movie out of a book. An artist could make an original work by making a collage. Just because someone has a different view on what the steps are to make art, doesn’t make that view wrong. Let me make it clear, I don’t actually consider myself an artist at all. I’m a scientist who likes to use blender to make illustrations about his work. And I don’t actually copy other peoples blend file, because I like to learn how to model myself. I just don’t think that you do not have to do all the steps in the proces to make a work of art. I fact, I consider it an absurd statement, because you cannot draw the line. I could say that someone who didn’t write his own 3d program is not a proper artist, or pianters are not proper painters if they don’t mix their own paint.
“I could say that someone who didn’t write his own 3d program is not a proper artist, or pianters are not proper painters if they don’t mix their own paint.”
That’s a horribly false equivalence, which drives me nuts about internet discussion. There’s a difference between making the materials used to create art and making the art from materials. A HUGE difference. Can you really look at all these people taking the exact same textures from the same 3 websites, putting them over the same models they’re downloading from the same three websites, posing them and calling it done and say that this is art?
I am asking all this as someone new to the 3d world but who’s spent 12-13 years looking at 3d art and I’m just stunned at how identical most of this stuff looks. I’m trying to avoid listing specific examples b/c I dont want to call individual pieces out.
And please let’s not pretend that “certain steps” is the same as people taking other people’s blend files and changing a few settings or following a tutorial and adding nothing to the methods they learn. It’s not.
“The craft”? Modeling is a craft. Rigging is a craft. Shading is a craft. Animation is a mother of a craft. Even if you intend to be a generalist, focusing on specific areas by leaning on readymade assets is a very viable way to learn. Having animated using a robust rig is great experience when you decide to learn rigging yourself. Shading and lighting a scene with verified good geometry concentrates all the inevitable noob-errors on the actual lighting and shading.
Who said anything about “making art”? It’s practice.
I have a feeling you didn’t really understand the intent of those asking for .blend files. They probably wanted to check out the technical content of the scenes because they were curious, maybe play around and tweak some stuff to understand it better.
Maybe you learned digital illustration without ever looking at someone else’s finished layered file. But I think that would be a valuable way to learn tricks from a master, without any extra time wasted by him/her trying to explain it. Either you’re curious and smart enough to learn something, or not. If you’re not curious enough to look in the first place, it doesn’t matter how smart you are.
And if you can (maybe) learn some neat layer-tricks from a digital 2d art master, well, so hyperexpletive much of 3d-based art is based on “layer-tricks”. Creative use and abuse of every corner of the feature-wise huge software. Looking at a .blend is more like visiting a movie set than borrowing a painting to trace. Yeah, you can grab models and materials and stuff to use yourself, but I honestly think that it’s very seldom the point.
If anything, I find it a bit funny that the Blender community isn’t more remix-heavy. There could be a huge scene of re-rendering and re-editing BBB and Tears of Steel and other open-licenced work, semi-illegal remix culture meeting actually openly available resources. But the only time we see these movies resurface is when tech companies use them as demo material because it’s legally convenient. But, eh, I digress.
I learned digital illustration by interning and essentially doing grunt work and practicing my illustration in my free time, which is how it always works at studios. In no situation did I then take working PSD or sketchbook pro files, I saw their way of doing it and then thought about it and decided if it would work best for me. If I had worked over their files my art would look like exactly like theirs, which is exactly what’s happening with this art form. And no, I don’t layer the same way as the people who taught me, because it’s not the most efficient way to get my kind of art down on screen.
This approach is also great for patience, because having to actually learn to do things from scratch will make you get better at using the program b/c there’s no way you’ll want to go through all the steps again. Almost all of the good lessons I’ve had in the last 14 years of working with computers came from getting in-depth in my own way with the applications, which forced me to be precise with myself about what I wanted to do.
Maybe my focus on wanting to make animated shorts separates my goals from the “post-processed still image” group which I think might be the overwhelming majority.
Maybe the idea of learning from tutorials is different from what you experienced on your own - with the user interface and so many terms and tools ot learn, it is easier to follow a tutorial at first and reproduce similar results to the tutorial than to just poke around pushing buttons with no idea what does what. I liken the sharing of blend files to the same thing as when I get digital art magazines and they share brushes and textures to go along with tutorials in the magazine. Makes it easier to produce results to learn the techniques. I think maybe you are seeing a lot of tutorial results instead of unique project applications, but that comes with the territory.
that makes sense on a couple of levels, might be particular to the way I render but I’ve never watched a single tutorial on rendering in Photoshop, i figure if I’ve been drawing all my life I’ll quickly figure out how to replicate it, and to this day I only use 3-4 brushes. And I’m extremely fast b/c of it despite high detail (I render a full comic page from my book in a day working part time on it).
That’s probably because there is little to learn from the structure of these files. However, there is a great deal to learn from a rig, or from a material setup, or from looking at one permutation of the myriads of settings in Blender.
If somebody asks your for a blend file, they probably want to understand how it works. You can’t ask someone to give a video lecture on their workflow, but you can ask them for a blend file. You’re not obliged to share it.
People who are passionate about what they’re doing in any art will often discuss their process, tips and tricks, and in 3d people do the same. The reason people share ‘artistic’ blend files has less to do with the art and more to do with learning techniques and tricks behind the scenes. The equivalent might be to look at a painting to observe how different types of brushstrokes were used or looking at an underdrawing to see how the composition was engineered or looking at the way colors were layered through glazing to bring about a certain effect. CG is like painting techniques to the extreme, there is so much more you need to know technically and there are many more ways to go about doing something.
People generally don’t share ‘artistic’ blend files though, as in finished pieces that win awards and such, but even if they did (to act as masters studies that people could learn from by dissecting) it’s not like there’s any question of who did the work. If you tried at all to pass the work off as your own you’d be black listed, just like in any other art.
Some people share their files like you’d share stock photography though, in that they expect people to use their work as part of building a piece like you might use wallpaper or prints and not sew and color the fabric yourself.
As a working musician, there’s no way I would upload the full Pro Tools project with audio files for a song on the internet. What I can do is to release stems, meaning isolated tracks with all the vocals, then one with all the guitars, and so on. But throwing out a full .blend, .psd, or whatever… generally not the best idea, as there are a lot of dishonest people out there. You never know who steals your work online and use it for profit or whatever. Always make sure you have the “master file”.
That’s why I’d release part of a .blend file, just to share how a particular element was made. Right now I’m just a tutorial following noob anyway, so it’s of no concern, but if or when I have something other people would be interested in, I’d try to be careful about releasing the entire thing.
I’m all for sharing techniques and ideas, helping others to learn the tools and tricks. Just not necessarily the entire source file for the artwork.
It’s difficult to argue with COALMINDS because he is moving the goal posts all the time. Studying blend files is not the same thing as re-using assets, and re-using assets is not the same thing as imitating a style. COALMINDS is jumping back and forth between three entirely unrelated topics as if they were one and the same.
I’m trying to avoid listing specific examples b/c I dont want to call individual pieces out.
What COALMINDS is trying to avoid here is being called out himself. Has anyone seen any of his works? Are they 100 percent original? Where does he draw the line?
We need to be more specific here, otherwise the thread may as well continue forever without any conclusion.
To learn. In fact I would go as far as to say the Blend file is a better teacher than a tutorial. I would say it’s better than a tutorial because it usually comes with no commentary and to actually figure out how things work and what is doing what you have to do a little detective work. And it is in doing this detective work that you learn.
The idea isn’t to copy anything but to open that blend file look at how things are set up and than tweak and play with it. People always share files especially for learning purpose it is not just a blender thing.
If all you do when you download a blend file is copy than the person to blame for you lack of educational curiosity is yourself.
So when next you download a blend file EXPLORE! EXPLORE! EXPLORE! don’t just copy.
P.S when you get to the bits of blender that have poor documentation you will thank your lucky stars someone shared a blend file.
How many time i see some guy download a nice modeled car, with a pretty cycles material, add a HDR image as sky then post it in the Blender’s Facebook group and then wait for people’s aplausses? Well a lot of times.
There are people who doing a job for everyone to use it freely (OpenSource software for example). But you are not obligated to do the same, of course.
That’s why there are licenses. The licenses establish what you can do with this work. Of course, you should expect people to respect the license.
If reusing is frown upon, then I pity those making a living as comp artist.
Composite images are by definition created from many images and it would be silly to think that an artist would travel the world to take his own picture to use as material in his composition. Of course a comp artist doesn’t just cut and paste part of an image. He also modify it to the point that it is now something totaly different than the source image.
