Something most 3D artists get wrong (including me)

mmitchell_houston

The original ad was just a close-up on a pair of eyes. The eyebrows were there, the top of the nose -- that's it. As far as it went, it was okay. And anyone who thinks there is a "problem" with that type of advertising has never made a billboard before (I've only made a few, but none of the ad agency guys I know have any problem with the idea of using CGI eyes). The ad used a really high-resolution map for the eyes and they looked okay. Especially driving by from a distance. If I had to guess, the whole thing was Victoria 4.

Sky Hndx Perfect symmetry is definitely an issue in modeling and texturing. A few imperfections do go a long way to enhancing the "reality" of CGI figures (assuming reality is the aesthetic to which you aspire). But, when designing a beautiful woman, you can only add a little imperfection before you negatively impact the "beauty" of the model. And I would argue (and probably fail to convince a lot of people) that it is easier to have "imperfections" in a living woman and still have her be beautiful because of the nuances of her soul (energy, subtlties of expression, humor, light in the eyes, etc.) can make her appear beautiful, whereas a static, lifeless CGI image -- which, even if based on scans/input from a real woman -- will not achieve beauty as easily because, by definition, she is not alive and therefore lacks the soul which can shine through in a photograph of a real person.

I doubt I put that well, but there it is.

Sky Hndx : Current music trends are nothing new -- every generation thinks they have "invented" the first music that sounds good. Your comments about modern music modulating (i.e. autotuning) voices is actually similar to a discussion in music that was going on back in the 1960s and 1970s. Back then, the multi-track editing made it possible for singers to combine multiple takes to create a song. Before then, it was (mostly) sing the song 10 times and we'll pick the best version (sometimes, if there was a natural break in a song, you could splice two versions together). With the multitrack system, it became easy to pick and choose phrases, takes, even single notes. And then layer them. This made it possible for Paul McCartney to sing the lead track, do his own backup vocals, and play every intrument on an entire album (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCartney_(album)). That's an extreme, but one little aspect of this technological advancement (that was complained about quite heavily way back when) has become so commonplace that I doubt anyone even notices it any more -- a single singer will be trailing off a long note and then start singing the next verse... while the original note is still heard. In other words: The singer must have two mouths!  :-)  This is "not natural," and waaaay back when I was a kid, there were a lot of complaints about it. I think the main version of the "complaint" that has remained is when some people note that the album version of a song sounds very different than the live version of the song.

Anyway -- just a random thought.