Hi All
Been going through the finished projects page and have been watching for a good few months now and the work just seems to be getting better and better, so Thumbs UP to all Blender Artists, keep at it.
Shaun
You can probably thank the improvements to the Cycles engine for that (which is making it far easier to create high-quality images in Blender). This is why the average image quality has been rising in the last few years.
Of course, the steadily increasing number of high quality tutorials and courses (that are easy to follow) have probably made their mark as well. Same with the increased availability of high quality materials.
When I started 3D back in 2004 (in Romania-EU) it wasn’t this easy to find information so I do give a lot of credits to those who think/make/share tutorials for pretty much everything. Also Thumbs Up for those responsible for the MacOS versions, without them I wouldn’t be part of this great concept (Blender-community-open)
I wouldn’t be so quick to lay all of the accolades at the feet of the technology. Our artist community has grown in talent and maturity. What we see on the feature row is the result of skill acquired by continued dedication to the craft. I daresay that is a far greater factor than any technological achievements within Blender (regardless of how impressive they’ve been).
I don’t think there’s any doubt that what you mentioned would be one of the major variables, but I think we still need to keep in mind that Blender’s technological advancement (while not being the primary variable) has indeed made it easier for people without as much skill to produce highly detailed and high-quality work.
For instance, thanks to Cycles, it’s far easier to get those subtle lighting details you would otherwise have to fake (which takes a great level of skill to do when noting the elaborate lighting setups for old scenes made with BI) and Bmesh makes modeling far easier as well when noting the tools that have resulted such as editmesh booleans. I will make a guess that image quality will rise again with the Cycles microdisplacement work because of the higher likelyhood that artists will stop using bumpmaps and use displacement instead for certain materials (which means greater degrees of detail using the full impact of the lighting engine).
Now I’m not saying that sufficient technology will simply make anything good (even if you aren’t trying), only that it makes such quality easier to achieve.
in the end, skill in the 3d cg artist and the skill in the developer of the medium the arists wields both contribute.
That said, I find that both parts of that equation
(the user community and the developer community)
are an example of utopianism. people working together for the common good.
Congrats you amazing cats.
I made and rigged a mech today, for skill and pleasure.
Blender is my tool and my toy, my teacher and my student.
Best way to describe it:D