so, what got you into CG art?
Mistara
Posts: 38,675
for me it was Final Fantasy VIII.
luved the cg cut scenes. Questis Trepe. respect the lady with the ninjuck, lol. she knows how to use 'em.
Post edited by Mistara on
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For the love of my adoring fans and the huge wads of cash!!... Wait that was for my stripping career... ummm... CGA, hu? It's easier than actually making physical models like I used to (and sometimes still do)... I'd say fun too, only the migraine headaches I get when doing it will disagree.
What got me into CG Art?
Basically, I was looking on the net for a program that was far better than HeroMachine but similar. I wanted more freedom to do what I wanted and more realism. I looked all over the net, looking at 2d Art programs and countless others. Even programs like Manga Studio didn't cut it for me.
Then I stumbled on the DAZ website. At first, I didn't know what to make of it so I left and did more searching. A short time passed and again I came across the DAZ website. So, I decided to check out Daz Studio (after I did some reading on what can be done with it).
It was EXACTLY what I was looking for and I didn't even know it, but Daz Studio filled the bill for me. It gave me the freedom no other program could do (I didn't even know of Poser at the time, and if I did I forgot about it).
And that's what got me into CG Art.
I was retired due to injuries in the line of duty and didn't know what to do with myself. I've always built models and mini's, and always enjoyed painting and drawing as a hobby, so when a friend of mine pointed me at Daz 1.5 I was sold! It's the best of traditional 2d art, with modelling and mini's thrown in :)
The best part is that I don't need lots of shelf space to store my models... which is good because every flat surface I own is already covered in them... lol
At the tender young age of twelve I started programming (actually, I started a lot earlier than that, but twelve is when I started doing a proper job of it). Basic games on the old Acorn Electron, moving up to QBasic and C++. I made them because I wanted to make my own games.
I did basic 2D pixel art for most of my earlier games but as years progressed I realized I needed to move with the times and step it up to 3D. Thus I got into using 3D Studio Max student edition. I've always been a very visual sort of programmer. I like to make things which had both form as well as function, so I worked hard to make things as pretty as possible with the limited skills I had. I'm not very good at organic art (Read: anything that lives and breathes) but my work was suitable for scenery and props.
I got into a discussion with a friend on a programming forum who'd posted some renders of some very well made characters. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was the Millennium male, female and child. I queried him about it and he contacted me via email with some simple renders so I could see the characters in all their form. He told me about Poser, and from that it was a simple websearch to find it.
I blew an entire months salary on the basic Poser edition and got setup with Victoria. The rest, as they say, is history.
When I was a kid I used to make 2D graphics and poor quality 3D images using an old Atari 800 computer.
Many years latter I was using some mapping software for work and for creative fun. One of the addition to one program had extensive stuff on using 3D programs with it and recommended Bryce and had numerous Bryce images showing how to combining the two.
I ended up buying buying Bryce Pro a month latter and had fun using it. I was looking at getting Poser at some point, as I had used MangaStudioEX amd was curious bout it. A few months latter I went to the local ComicCon and saw several DAZ representatives at it.
I got to ask several questions about 3D software, got an Aiko 3 T-shirt,and bought Carrara 8 Pro supper cheap. I also got to ask questions about Studio, Poser, and 3D art.
I ended up having so much fun with Bryce & Carrara that I ended up over the next year slowly buying 3D stuff.
Being in Secoond Life introduced me to DAZ Studio. I had tried building, and making textures, then I wanted to try animations a bit. I read DAZ Studio was free and could make .bvh files, so downloaded it. Tried 2 poses before I realized it wasn't for me. Then over a year later, looked at it again with the thought of making my own art to import into Second Life and have been much more involved with CG Art since. I'm still not very good, but I do enjoy seeing my virtual art hanging on the walls of my virtual house.
Basically,D/S 4.5 was the first 3D tool i used in my life,and the reason why i choosed the CG Art is because when i see a film like
Bee Movie,Resident Evil Degeneration/damnation,Final Fantasy or any other CG movie,i feel like they are dying or something because they don't have a lot of action but this is just in my opinion.
So i started learning the basic's like big booms,clothing,hairing(funny word),texturing and you know the rest,and other reason is when avatar the movie come out,everyone i know was wondering how did they make it and they keep telling me that's better than 3d and they can't seperate between the 3d and realism,but i did saw the diffrence,i was getting angry day by day because those idiot's don't even know what 3d means.
anyway,now my goal is to create a cg movie that have non-stop action (when you hear action from me i refer to highly detailed long time period's gunfights) and show everyone who don't believe in me what i can do.
Let's see what other reasons got you here.
Originally I was looking for a figure model to help with my sculpting ,hireing a real model can be pricey,I found a website called Majic Sculpt,and they used the Poser/Daz figures ,to do the poses that were requested or had a library of premade poses rendered out that could be down loaded.Which I thought was pretty interesting ,and the website had listed DAZ as the source of the models,so there I went to check it out ......and from there became totally addicted,haven't done a bit of sculpting ,just trying to learn DS andspending way more money then I would have for a live model but what the heck I'm haveing a barrel of fun at it!!
Being a long time "pen and paper" Roleplaying game enthusiast who woke the hobby back to life around 2004 when my son came to the age when he could really play, I soon ended up with Dundjinni and map-making. But to create props to use in Dundjunni I first found FilterForge to make textures and I even made filters to create tavern tables etc. I then ventured into 3D by simple modeling to create my own props that I rendered. But I wanted to make really cool character portraits and story cutscene images, so I started to play with DS 2 but never came into it. But with DS 3 it took of, and I've also got Carrara, Poser, Vue and a bunch of other tools.
But my first contact with 3D was Strata Studio Vision on my Mac II with a 68020 processor and 5MB of RAM, back in 1989. I also had Poser 3 but never really understood it and Bryce 2. Hence my 2005 date in the forum, when I registered Bryce 5 I think, but as I said, neither Bryce nor Poser took off until I found DS 3, when I really had a clear vision of what I wanted to accomplish. All other toying around is just the result of my Curiosity and addiction to toys (and the fact that I had a moonlighting deal with a company that later became my main client where I could just buy anything "with in limits" that I wanted to play with i exchange for my services (as I couldn't really charge them for support that they should have gotten from their IT department and I was employed by another company in the same business group).
So, to summarize, It was my urge to make really good looking adventures for Pen and Paper RPGs that got me into the whole world of DAZ, and i think I've reached my goal, my first adventure book is almost complete and ready for printing.
Myst Online Uru Live and Bryce
I actually statred with CorelDraw, when I got my first PC, as against a computer using basic. I didn't start with a PC till the 486 was the current model, which was what I had.
Played around with Draw and Corel photopaint, decided I wanted more, so went browsing in a small PC software shop, and they showed me Bryce. I was instantly in love, but had to wait patiently until Bryce 2 came out and I could use it on a PC. Have been hooked ever since. By the time Bryce 3 was released I also bought Poser 3, so I could put figures into my landscapes, and the rest is history. Now I use Bryce 7 pro, which I bought the instant it was released, and a more modern version of Poser as an add-on to get my figures over.
I started in 3D art completely by accident. I was researching how to create games using actionscript and wandered into a forum where someone mentioned Blender as being a great 3D program that could do it all and had a game engine built in. I wrote the link down that the person posted, but thought they must be just exaggerating because nothing that complicated could be free.
Well I checked it out a few days later and was extremely surprised. From that I learned about Daz Studio, Vue, Carrara, Poser, etc. so seven years and three computers later, every extra penny I can scrounge up is now going to feed this addiction... ;-)
Unmedicated clinical depression, actually. I'm fine now, but after college I was very depressed, complete with constant suicidal thoughts, and had a very dull job that I hated. It was not at all where I'd wanted to end up. I started gaming in the evenings to take my mind off things. A friend introduced me to the Elder Scrolls series, and I wanted to make my own clothing and armor because everything available for females was cheesecake or just a male mesh with no female version.
My friend Enigmatic, using endless patience, taught me to use Blender to create meshes and the GIMP to create textures. I modded for ES: Oblivion for years, until someone on my favorite gaming forum pointed me toward DAZ Studio and Poser. Because making clothes in 3d was already a thing for me, it was an easy transition to make (and rigging for V4, while not fun, isn't much worse than the first workarounds for getting armor into Oblivion were).
My first couple of products were pretty terrible, but over time I got better, and got better hardware with which to render. Renderosity gave me a chance when RDNA turned me down, and that was how I gradually earned enough to quit working part-time at scutwork and switch entirely to 3d.
I was doing commercial modeling/design for Sims2 and my design partner mentioned poser and since i hadn't heard if it, she pointed me to a copy at Frys and i was hooked! i found that the limitations i had with traditional art (not being able to translate what was in my head completely) were gone when using digital mediums. Plus it gave me new areas to explore commercially.
I've always liked making/having art for my RPG characters (and I've been at this for awhile. Like "bought the original AD&D Fiend Folio with the Cthulhu mythos in it when it was in stores" awhile.) But I had trouble getting what was in my head onto paper.
After a while of trying different options, and assorted drawing classes which just made me feel talentless, I stumbled across the Poser 6 Demo. Then while saving mad money for that, I found DAZ Studio, which was free and (for me) easier, and well... here I am with yet another expensive hobby. :) At least this one doesn't take up space for supplies.
Myst Online Uru Live and Bryce
That makes 2 of us, but Uru Online wasn't around back then. I bought my first copy of Myst for my first Windows computer (Win95) and was mesmorized. I discovered that the original version of Myst (and then Riven) were created with Bryce, so I played with a demo version of Bryce3D. By the time I felt I really wanted to have the software, Bryce 4 had come out and I found myself buried in the Renderosity Byrce Forum around April 2000.
Then a long-time online 2D graphics colleague introduced me to RDNA and DAZ3D around October 2004 when she convinced me I could do landscape (outdoor) scenes with Poser as well as Bryce utilizing DAZ's Multiplane Cyclorama and the Millennium Environment. I bought Poser 5 and started to play with it, but never really got very comfortable using it, and I still wasn't crazy about the Gen3 characters at the time, so I stuck to my outdoor scenes in Bryce and another 3D landscape generator called Terragen, but Bryce won out most of the time.
About 4 years ago I downloaded what was then the current version of Blender, and started dabbling with modeling, and though I'm finally feeling comfortable with the software, I haven't really gotten good enough with detailing to become a vendor, but hopefully one day.
As far as DAZ Studio, I have to say the earliest versions did nothing for me, and it wasn't until version 2 came out that I got into it, and to paraphrase HeraldOfFire, "the rest IS history". :-)
Ah, I have that particular Fiend Folio to. As well as several hundred Zocchi polysets. I wanted to draw 3d maps for the platers to look at. My drawnig skills aren't very good. I can use a ruler and pencil to draw some perspective buildnigs, but nothing freehand.
About 1989 I found DKBTrace and it ran on my Amiga computer. I had a hard time getting things like Christmas ornaments to go where i wanted them to on a tree. So I gave up for al ong while. About 2001, I found Campaign Cratographer 2 mappng software. It is isometric for dioramas, etc. I showed up here abourt the fall of 2010, and I had a hard time getting my brani around DAZ studio and Bryce. So, I am back and trying again.
I can visualize 3D in my head, but getting it drawn is a problem.
i hope to change that.
I got into this after having an accident that left me bed ridden for 8 months. I was driving the wife crazy so she bought me a modeling app. I pulled up a footstool next to the couch, put the monitor on it and keyboard on my stomach and started modeling. Now I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing.
To squander my non-existent free time, I had taken up writing fanfiction (Go ahead, laugh, everybody else does.) I had foolishly wondered if my stories wouldn't be better with a few illustrations. Then I stumbled across Daz just as D|S 4.0 was being released (it was free for a limited time, you see...). I've been struggling to make a decent render ever since.
My training was in optics but I graduated just after the dotcom bust and all the optics jobs had dried up. Oddly, doing CGI lets me exercise the arcane concepts I've been trained in, such as raytracing, specular BRDFs, complex indices of refraction, and so on. What I didn't learn in school was how to avoid making a perfectly good model look like a Chucky doll on crack. Still, I persevere.
Games, unlike others I never cared for RPGs, I was more into action/adventure and FPS & RTS later on. I started Gaming in my Tweens during the early 90's (16bit era) remember seeing Segas Am1/ Am2 Games around 93 and thinking wow, this is the future! Daytona USA in particular was the first Full 3d and textured Arcade game I saw, and it was an amazing for its time, there was nothing else like it.
In 1999 I had my first exposure to 3d modling on a mac progame called Infini-D, but I only really learned to animate boxes with it.
In 2000 I was 'lent' a copy of 3ds max R3 via a designer friend who lived just round the corner from me, I tried to learn, (I even bought a book), but it was too tough and I gave I up.
In 2005 I became obsessed with the Game 'Silent Hunter III' to point that i realised that I desperately wanted to create new units for modders to import. If only I knew how.....
In 2006 while on holiday in croatia I was sitting on an island beach contemplating life I decided I was going to learn 3d at some point, despite having just started a carreer in IT support.
In 2007 I had a good support job, lived rent free and had no kids!, so I bit the bullet and forked out for 3ds Max 2008 and decided i would learn it even if it killed me. spending the money worked. (you dont buy expensive software and not use it) I managed to figure out the basics and first models started coming, WW2 era Aircraft mostly as I used to build model kits of them as a kid, so i had good knowlege of them.
My Poser/Daz Studio discovery path, went abit like this.
...Eh whats the point of this? I dont get it.....
...Oh that looks nice but i cant customize it or use it with my own stuff, well that sucks!....
...Uh, Why are these models so cheap?
...Oh wait, ...I see
...ohhhh I CAN import stuff from Max....
...Ahhh ok, this is pretty cool actually :) ....
...three things Uncle Arthur (arthritis), the Sabrinno, and the Shadowrun RPG.
I actually started back in the1980s with a course in Computer graphics (old school) where everything needed to be programmed and plotted. Just to model and then "finish" (texture) a three dimensional letter (like "e") was a painstaking challenge that took a couple days. Very "math intensive" (one of the supportive courses was matrix algebra). Didn't feel really "creative" so dropped out of that and went back to paper, pencil, and pen.
Then along came PixelPaint for the Mac II, a 2D drawing/painting programme which approached the task from the artist's rather than mathematician's perspective. Still it was a lot of work to draw and paint a single character but no plotting, no calculations, and waiting to compile (and usually debugging several times) to see the results. The downside figures were static and could not be posed plus Macs (especially the new colour ones) back then cost more than a year's tuition and books did. Actually managed to finish a wonderful pic of my Champion's character Amber and several planetary scenes for my S-F graphic novel idea. Only made it part way though the first Sabrinno (a feline like race from my story) before I left school. Still have the pics on floppies somewhere (Amber had to be split into two files as her pic was bigger than what a single 3.5" floppy of the day could store).
So back to paper pencil and pen again. I could see the that a programme which allowed you to save characters and pose them would be a huge benefit to comic and graphic production work but at the time such applications still required the resources of a Cray II.
As I kept working on the story I realised it was bigger than one person could handle. I would have to hire other artists to help, meaning I would become more a business person/manger than a writer/artist. There was also the fact that others may (and reasonably so) want to put their own "signature" on the work thus visually changing things from the original concept (one of the big critiques I received from many in the comics field was that the females had no breasts) I ended up shelving the idea indefinitely
After that I became more involved in RPGs, and GM'd a campaign based loosely on the storyline for nearly three years using an S-F RPG system. I also developed an offshoot of the main race in a friend's long running AD&D campaign. This got me into doing scene and character sketches/illustrations related to the games I was in (still have a most of them, a few of which were scanned and uploaded to my DA gallery).
Then I was introduced to Shadowrun™ which I enjoyed for its rich background and settings and more "contemporary" feel compared with high fantasy worlds. It still had the "classic" races and magic, but mixed with high technology and set in a modern urban setting (my icon Kyoto Kid was my most successful and long running character who's career spanned four editions of the game). I became even more involved in doing sketches and illustrations (some for campaigns I GM'd) but by this time arthritis began to take away my dexterity and grip in my hands. It eventiually became difficult to do even a simple pencil drawing without downing Advil like M&Ms;. I could see the image I wanted knew what I needed to do but due to my stiff shaky hands it had become difficult to hold a pencil steady enough to draw clean lines anymore (which is why a tablet is of no use to me).
Then I saw some really cool fan art pics on the Dumpshock (Shadowrun RPG) forums that rivaled those in the published rule books and modules. At first I thought they were paintings but learned they were actual 3D CG images done not on a huge mainframe, but home PCs using one of several 3D software applications. I was already working with Gimp and Inkscape, but like Pixel Paint, each pose had to be recreated as a separate pic.
One of the artists posted a list with links to the various sites including e_frontier (Poser) e-on (Vue) and Daz3D (Daz Studio/Carrara/Bryce). Being on a tight budget Poser and Vue were pretty much out as I really didn't want to plunk down a fairly large sum of money for something I was not sure may or may not fit my needs. Oh there were the 30-day demos, but I found them hamstrung with many features I was interested in being locked. On the other hand DazStudio (1.5) was free and a fully functioning application with no expiration date. To have something to play with Daz offered a free content bundle (the old 3D Bridge Pack) which included Aiko3 LE a few of the Daz animals, Mil Dragon some clothing, hair and a few props. There was also the Daz Freepository, as well as the weekly freebie and other sites with freebie content like ShareCG, Rendo, and the old Content Paradise. This offered me enough to put the programme through its paces and see just what it could do.
Well that as they say "is history", I was hooked. Here was what I had been hoping to see for over two decades. A CG programme that allowed you to not only pose, morph, texture and save characters, but even animate them as well without having and worked on my duo core notebook. Yes it would require leaning to model and/or digitally sculpt to create the characters from my old S-F story, but once that was done, it would be time to dust off the old storyline and finally finish it.
Then, from a Shadowrun campaign I was in came a little red hared teenage orphan named Leela Groznek with her own story to tell.
At this stage making a living from this isn't important anymore, I just want to tell a couple stories.
..and now I have the means to do it the way I dreamed about.
For me, it was largely due to Toy Story coming out right about the time I realized I was never going to be able to draw to my satisfaction. Though it would be years before I had any knowledge that my problem had a name, I'm motor dysgraphic -- which is one of those conditions where the name is about a thousand times scarier than the condition. Essentially, it's a minor processing disorder that limits my fine motor control on certain tasks. Most things I can do adeptly with either hand (I'm mixed handed, and the traits often correspond), but anything that requires the use of a stylus (drawing, writing, painting) is difficult at best. Lines don't go quite where I want them to, I can't quite hold a stylus properly, and if I persist it gets uncomfortable and then painful after a while. (Of course, now that I know what the cause of the problem is, I'm also looking into ways to deal with it, in as much as that's possible.)
Toy Story showed me a different kind of art. Next year, one of the teachers at the high school started a multimedia class, and had trueSpace (a now-defunct modeling suite) on the computers. Eventually I discovered DazStudio and started using it because when it comes to making something as complex as a good-looking human figure, I'd rather not spend ages re-inventing the wheel. (Though interestingly, I've found that having use of the models and morphs has been helpful in figuring out how to do more organic modeling rather than just the hard-edged props I'd always done before.)
LOL, my story is much seedier than these, so I'd better leave it alone. ;)
Back when Morrowind was newer, someone on the official MW forums requested a mod of a dress here in the store. I looked through the store a bit and realized this had to do with Poser, which I had seen before but saw no purpose for. To help make a long story short, I came across Puntomaus' own 3D gallery and I knew I had to try it out.
To make comics of stories I had in my head. I've already done sprite comics for a few years before this.
I think it actually started with making collages in the 80's. Everyone I knew was making strange retro poster art and making own clip art. This and black/white photography classes lead to xerox copier "art". So the concept of layers was very familiar. Somewhere I got a copy of Metacreations, which had "3d" 2d images that could be layered as if a single scene. The "sprites" were heavily shaded so that they could be arranged and mingled with photos and "look real" if arranged with lighting in mind.
Next discovered Terragen which was awesome, and taking those renders into Jasc PaintShop to add tube stuff, tones, and modify and blend with by filters on photos was very satisfying. Became a filter nut. There were free KPTs on the Bryce manual. And, Yay SuperBlade Pro and EyeCandy ! Somewhere, I just can't remember, can't remember what or when I used primitives as base models, made cogs, jewelry, stuff.
Then I found a copy of Bryce 5 in a now defunct CompuUSA store. Bryce made the worlds of Terragen so much easier--although it was a strange user interface fersure. Bought a book on Bryce with a cd of demos. Found Peter Sharpe's tutorials, those were inspiring. But, my job work stepped up with little time for life and leisure much less art, and didnt stop until I decided to retire. I decided to try Bryce again, got the free 5.5 version download at DAZ. Here I was introduced to the 3d models, and instantly liked the idea of populating my CG worlds with posable figures. Been at it learning more and more. Still big gaps in my knowledge, but I am generally pleased with the process. A good computer sure makes the difference! (Thanks to my hubby who is the computer innards expert).
My addiction is all Matty and Neil's fault...they introduced me to it! At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it...lol
Matty started a thread over at an elder scrolls forum and the rest is history...there was a group of us who all started playing with DS at the same time. Matty posted lots of links to tutorials and we all learnt together.
Actually I sorta fell into things I used to design lighting for shows, theatre and concerts. Due to illness I had to take another job in my company and hated it, pretty much was going nuts and a friend tried pushing me into webdesign I did that for awhile and helped create my companies current website, got frustrate with that whole deal and was looking around and found DAZ. It was a way for me to let my creativity out of the box and though I am still learning and have a long way to go I really enjoy it. And now when I am bored at work I have DAZ on my work computer too.
My addiction is all Matty and Neil's fault...they introduced me to it! At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it...lol
Matty started a thread over at an elder scrolls forum and the rest is history...there was a group of us who all started playing with DS at the same time. Matty posted lots of links to tutorials and we all learnt together.
Great days. :-)
Amiga to PC and Bryce 2 in the mid nineties..
Supplemented Bryce with Poser stuff.
Switched totally to DAZ Studio back prior to version 1 and never looked back.