To light, or not to light ... and what is art, anyway?

I was surfing around earlier, and landed on a CG art forum, where a couple of dozen people attacked a knotty problem: why are CG artists rarely -- if ever -- respected as artists? And no CG art ever done has -- yet -- been listed or exhibited alongside fine art. This is just the way things are, but why is it so?

Two things came out of the forum, to my mind: one, CG art is in the hands of the multitudes, and anyone can have a bash, and many people are very, very good at it ... so there's no fortune to be made by art critics and dealers. If it all comes down to money, they're going to stick with art which less ubiquitous! Makes sense -- even if some of these commercial galleries are stocked to the rafters with Naive style crayon drawings carrying four-figure pricetags! Don't misunderstand! I'd be the first one to agree that the Turner, Constable or Wright of Derby piece was worth several million bucks. But I don't see the value of a lot of modern art.

The second thing to come out of the forum was this: a lot of people think CG art was done by a computer. Fine distinction there -- done by a computer, not done with a computer. One utter ignoramus distinguished himself by saying, "Anyone can sit in front of a computer and push buttons." It would also be true to say that anyone can grab a crayon and doodle ... and some of that complete rubbish ends up in modern art galleries, framed, with telephone number prices attached!

The misconception that CG art is done "by" a computer bothers me, because the computer is simply a tool. It does only what it's told, and if the CG artist doesn't have the eye, even the soul of the artist, the end result will be -- not to put too find a point on it! -- crap. Only the eye of an artist will create a great picture, no matter what the medium, and CG skills might be different from the skills involved with handling pencils, pastels, paint, but they're skills just the same.

Which drew me back to a question I was asked a while ago: in 3D art, why do you bother with lighting, when the program sets up default lights anyway? I'm hoping the above examples will answer the question! They're uploaded at full size -- and you'll need to see them at full size to appreciate the differences -- and labelled. As an artist, what you're trying to say, or do, through the medium of a picture, is intimately related to light and shadow. Does it matter if you put the shadows in with pastels, or charcoal, or a computer?

If you're interested, here is the forum with the discussion on why CG art is rarely respected. Beware: the folks writing in that forum appear to be barely literate. I've never read such dire English before. However, these guys are artists, not writers, and they could easily be speaking English as a second or third language. They need more lessons! However, if you an brave the mangling of the language, what they're saying is very poignant.

The model in the above renders is my own creation. He's wearing the Victor skinmap and the Rock Star hair by Neftis. The raytraced renders are at the absolute outer limit of what can be done on this system, without an actual render engine like Octane or similar. And if you're curious to know why I'm always yapping on about how I would dearly love to have a system capable of running such a render engine, here is a page which will answer that question, too! For the vast majority of the 50 showcase renders on that page, this computer won't do that work necessary to generate that photographic realism. The power isn't available to handle renders of that complexity. But check those out, and by halfway down the page you'll know why I dream of the day when I can get a system fast enough to run a real, genuine render engine!

Jade, 5 February

The cyborg, the 'Empress of Outer Space,' and ... a chair

You might remember this character from a few weeks ago -- in fact, it was January 9, a post called Space Opera on Steroids! I always intended to come back to this character -- the cyborg -- and the scenario, which I like a lot. Remember this:


And at last I've had the chance to do a little bit more with this. Back in the Days of Yore, when SF was "naive" (we all were, I guess) there was this tradition of "rich and lawless galaxies" where anything could happen, you could muddle up fantasy women, monsters, muscular heroes, space battles and mighty starships. Something happened along the way since then, and SF lost a lot of its innocence. I guess it grew up, and I'm as glad as the next person that it did, because if it hadn't, you wouldn't have movies like Terminator Salvation, and Avatar! But on the other hand, I'm also very, very pleased to remember the old days...


These pictures are all about texture, surfaces and light. I'm in the process of discovering how far I can push the software on the hardware I own at this moment! Not as far as I'd like to, that's for sure ... but it's not bad. Not bad at all.

The quest, mind you, is for photographic realism. It's always in the back of your mind, while you're doing the best artwork you can think of. Niggling away there is the thought, "I wonder if I could get this to look like a photograph? Well ... not without a computer with about 16GB of Ram (!!) and a 4GB video card, and a far faster processor than anything that's normal in desktop systems. But...

I gave myself a small "assignment." A picture that, on the face of it, is very simple, but down deep is very complex:


It's just a chair standing on a hickory plank floor against a colonial type plaster wall. It's all about surfaces and light, texture maps, displacement maps, reflection and refraction ... go ahead and click on it, see it at large size. Is it artwork, is it a photograph? The line is starting to blur. One reason is that I was able to replace every texture in the shot with high-resolution images, which is something you can't do in a very, very complex 3D scene such as the ones above.

The simpler the shot, the more photographic you can get it, but to get the same degree of reality into the highly complex shots, you need one of these render engines like Octane or Reality. One day. Oh yes -- one day.

Jade, 4 February

The magician -- and a new set from DM

Fantasy fragments again ... just a glimpse of a huge story that' hiding behind these pictures...

He has a power which was born in him, and from the time he was still a child his parents knew he was going to be trouble, because in their world sorcerers, magicians, are feared and persecuted as demonspawn. So when the traders from Arkeesh came through, selling spices and potions, they indentured the seven-year-old to a silversmith, knowing the child would be far safer with the caravan.

Before long, the silversmith was aware of his young apprentice's powers, but for himself, he was just a craftsman who could do nothing to nurture and teach. But he taught the growing boy a trade as the caravan wended its way into the east, into the forbidden lands of Sung, where he knew the great teachers could be found.

At last the traders reached the gates of a great and wicked old city, and there they stopped, because the people of Sung do not allow foreign devils access -- but they do come out to barter and haggle. The silversmith talked to many people, fr many days, asking who had a use for a talented young boy who was, by now, twelve years old ... and the next day one of the acolytes of the mage Adjestine came out to see him.

The caravan was ready to move on. The silversmith bade a sad farewell to a boy he had come to think of as his own son. He glimpsed his last of the lad as the acolytes walked back through the city gates, with a swinging of censers and clouds of incense. There, the boy would be tested many times as he grew to manhood. If he was worthy, if his powers were great enough, he would become one of the legendary mages of Sung --

But the silversmith could never have imagined how powerful his old apprentice would become, or that he would play a major role in a terrible war...

********

The rest of the tale is out there -- this is just the backstory! Indulge your imagination.

Thanks so much to the folks who've asked if we're okay, and not being caught up in the devastation of Cyclone Yasi, which has hit Queensland like an A-bomb. No, no, we're fine -- we're a couple of thousand miles away, and watching it on TV like yourselves.

Here's the situation:


As you can see, Yasi is making inroads on Northern Territory now, but the red blob marks where we hang out -- Adelaide, SA. We're far from the danger zone. However, the cyclone is having an effect on our weather ... we'd expected it to be hot and humid, and instead it's rewriting the weather forecast. Cooler and humid! We're looking forward to a whole string of consecutive days under 80 degrees, which for February is unnaturally low. Like it says in the movie, "Hasn't the weather been strange?" This is the latest satellite image of Yasi at the time of this writing, which is 6:30 or so, on the evening of Thursday, Feb 3. At this point, that storm has been blitzing Queensland for a full day, and the people there must be at their wits' end. My heart goes out to them.

Anyway -- today's renders are staged in a new set, Fantasy Musings, from one of my favorite designers, DanieNMaforno, or DM, which is on special at Renderosity right now. I like this set a lot ... it's all bars and gates, and lanterns, very evocative, filled with texture. These renders use the original textures as supplied. It's a challenge to light, but as soon as you get the lights juuuust right, the whole thing comes to life and looks amazing.

Jade, 3 February (Groundhog Day on t'other side of the dateline!)

Fragments of fantasy

2014 Edit: of the original project, only the thumbnails, and one image, remain. The rest are gone, sorry. But I want to include the post -- it's a neat story. So I'll fill in the blanks with something at least interesting after the text... I don't think I have anything much that's "in the spirit of," but if I think of something in due course, I'll come back and adjust this post.   

"Do you feel that, Iorik?" she asks, turning her face to the wind.

"Feel what, madam?" he asks, wondering why the concubine is on the heath at twilight, when the air smells strangely of the sea.

"There's a storm coming," she says. "Do you not smell it, taste it? It makes me think of my youth, of home, before."

"I feel the wind," he says. "I'm just my lady's guard, not..."

"Not what, Iorik? Say it," she challenges.

But he dare not say it, for the stories about her say she brought with her the magic of the steppes when she was sold into the household of the master. They call her the Stormseer, and Iorik can believe it as he watches her fall to her knees and petition the gods of the sky.

"Hear me," she whispers, "hear my prayer."

"What prayer, madam?" he asks, creeping closer.

But she no longer hears him. She hears only the sky -- the wind and the storm that will surely break across the heath before midnight.

She has always been able to hear, taste, smell the oncoming storm. But can she also summon the storm? Iorik does not know, but he wonders, watching her now, if she can bring the wild storm down on the household into which she was sold -- if she can wreak devastation, and through it win her own liberty, and his.

**************

Just a story fragment -- the rest of the story is out there somewhere, I'm sure. This one comes as a contrast to the weather we're having here, which has been brutal in the last few days. HOT. One of the riverland towns, east of here, recorded 51 degrees Celsius yesterday! That's 124 in the old Fahrenheit scale, and we measure share temperatures, so you can add 35 degrees to that to get the sun temperature. Ouch! Well, we didn't get that hot, but it was 43 for a couple of consecutive days, which is hot enough.

So I couldn't resist doing something with a big storm, chill winds -- "chance of an evening shower or two around the coastal hills," as the forecast sometimes says down here.

The model is Victoria 4, wearing the Yaana skin map and the Rock Star hair. The costume is the Night Lily coat -- there's supposed to be a dress under it, but, well, let's just replace it with a bikini, and set the textures of everything to something emerald green. The sky is an enlargement of a small piece of sky from a digital shot of a weather front arriving a couple of years ago, and the ground is a bit of terrain made in Bryce and exported as an .OBJ, and imported into DAZ here to serve as the ground. Nice.

Jade, 2 February