Post work?

While I occassionally manage to do a render I think is okay without postwork, I almost always do -something- to it. Sometimes it's something as simple as duplicating the layers and adjusting the levels or setting them to soft light to add some depth. Usually tho, I put quite a lot of painting into my more in depth pieces.

I tend to think that a poser piece with little or no postwork is a true mark of skill - but there are those of us here who use postwork to give the piece that extra flare, so essentially it is a beginning point.

I do minimal postwork - I cannot draw so I touch up the angled and pixeled parts of the hair but I never draw from scratch. I'll do fixes and then do a soft overlay/blur to the final piece, to deepen in the colors and shadows. I'm not great at doing poser shadows either and even with help, my shadows come out jagged so I have to smooth them.

I really don't think it speaks to the artists level of talent since both using poser and drawing can be difficult. If that made sense.

I usually do very little postwork unless an idea demands it. I have been thinking about experimenting more with it, though.

I think that art comes in many forms, and people can be talented in many ways, I want the picture in my head, the one thats naging to escape to be seen as I see it by everyone.

I think artists like Wystro and Dragonsnail are amazing.. even though none of their art is 3d, and Lunna is awesome with her manipulations.. since those areas are all done completely in photoshop or similar programs you cant say its less than art because it was postworked.

I say use your talents you have available. Learn what you can about how to do things in different ways, use tools available to you, practice any mediums you feel might help your goal, and perhaps then you will be more able to complete your vision for all to see.

I remember buying Poser when it cost hundreds of dollars.

I bought it, was super-excited, then I ended up yelling at it, and then finally curled up into a tight little ball under my computer desk and weeping. I'd look at stunning, elegant pieces on the boards then look at the tortured pretzel creatures that I created. While the work of others strutted about as super-cool chicks or hot guys, my twisted heaps of wreckage cried out "Please kill me....."

Long story short, 3D rendering is not the path for me...not now anyway. I think artists Make Something Happen regardless of how they come about it. Skill is measured by what the viewer experiences, not our methods (my opinion).

I hear what you're saying, and I agree. But at the same time, I want to improve my skills, and I often tend to learn through imitation. I think that art, like music, is a combination of two things: talent and technique. Talent can't be taught; but technique can. And like my forays into music, I suppose I try to make up for a lack in the former by making an effort to improve the latter.

I'm in the opposite boat from you. I envy those who can pick up pencils and paper and create something wonderful. My attempts at this don't result in pretzel creatures, but they generally look like they've been run over by a steamroller with PMS. So I'm much better off turning dials and clicking "Undo" when I make a change I don't like.

The reason I ask this question is that I frequently run into things in a render that are almost right, but not quite. I hear one voice saying, "oh just fix it in post." But another says, "learn how to use the software, so you won't have to." So I'm just wondering how others do it.

Oh Wystro, your post made me laugh out loud here at work ;)

I **A L W A Y S** postwork, even if it's just an errant smudge here or shadow there. I never feel like I've completed a piece unless I put my grimy little mitts on it at least once in Photoshop. Not to mention the fact that most of the backgrounds that I really like are in a folder on my desktop waiting for me to add the characters and whatnot. Importing the files into Poser is not my idea of fun, not to mention WAAAYY over my head.

So, *sigh* I guess I'm on the other end of the food chain than most of the artists here. Maybe someday I'll be able to actually completely finish a piece in Poser, that I have no desire to change in Photoshop, but I tend to doubt it ;)

Heh, I was just thinking "hey wait, that sickly sweet spring piece I did wasn't postworked!" then I remembered that purty blue sky wasn't rendered! :pleased

music is another form of art.. so yes its true..and all of us I think have gotten better with our talents the more we learn about what we do, and how we do it.

A musician might become proficient in playing his instrument in the style he loves.. but he might learn more learning techniques and styles of other music.. classical, rock , country, reggae.. whatever.. and as well might deepen his music by pairing that instrument with another..

try not to limit yourself, learn what you can and if you can achieve all you desire with the single instrument then you know and can be happy with your results. :)

Its ok Darsa! I am with you on the postwork must-do bandwagon. I can't bear leaving a render untouched, I don't set them up with the "hope" of not needing any postwork. I set them up to take advantage of a specific background or screenshot or whatever. And messing around with cyclorama to make backdrops is too fiddly for me :)

I have respect for both sides though, when someone posts a pic that says no postwork I am like... WOW you are SO brave! lol It always makes me wonder though, don't those people even get a little twitch, thinking "if I just added a sparkle or a blur or SpecialEffect_05 this would look soooo good!".

if you want cookie-cutter images , then don't do any postwork.

but what are you referring to when you say true skill? true skill in manipulating the tools inside DazStudio or Poser? Or true skill in painting?

it doesn't take skill to learn poser or DAZ, it takes patience and the willingness to learn and retain the information about tools.

it takes skill to paint from scratch.

Postwork is combining the skill of your hand to paint with an already existing piece, it a screenshot or a 3d rendering.

if you suck at painting, then don't postwork, but don't be surprised if someone renders the exact same thing as you.

i can appreciate both forms, and i like it when a heavily postworked piece comes out nice, but unfortunately most of the time i make it worse.

i think postworked pieces are more spectacular than pure 3d renders, because it takes MORE skill to make something thats been painted. i don't know how to explain it. but it just requires more skill when it comes to painting something on a naked posed body and it looking like it fits. matching the lighting and gravity and all that.

and i dont really consider adjusting levels, "postwork".

its not like you do anything besides move a slider a little to the left or right :P

postwork = hair painting, dodging/burning / painting over nasty shadows etc. drawing on clothes, painting backgrounds, adding completely new objects to the picture.

oh one more thing sartori, don't rely on Poser ( or DAZStudio ) to make the right decision for you. Neither of these programs are built to make things REAL.

raytraced reflections ( aka real reflections ) ... if you've messed with them for any period of time you'd realize the reflection isnt always what it should be, just a prime example.

So Feel free to postwork it. Relying on Poser and DAZ to do everything logically right will get you nothing but disappointment.

the more i use Poser the more agitated I get because i study real life things and try to get that same thing out of Poser, but i fail, and i realize its not because I dont know what Im doing, but because Poser is taking shortcuts and just simulating it "close enough" that the average non-detail-fanatic user won't notice/care.

after all, what would be the difference between a $250 program ( poser ) and a $2000 program (cinema4d) if poser did it right and proper? :)

I'm all about the postwork... I would say over half my finished stuff is postwork. I'm not that good at Poser I guess, lol.

Thank you all very much for the responses! This was just the kind of feedback I was hoping for, and it's been quite helpful. :)

well, since i suck at Photo-Manipulation i have to make my Renders as perfect as possible... not always succeeding, naturally ;)

I've been trying to articulate my thoughts on this for a little bit now and have been having trouble nailing it down until I remembered my old photography teacher. (As an aside, I really only learned the technicalities in that class - I suck at photography :X. It just wasn't an environment where I could get the rigorous critique I needed to improve). He was firmly opposed to people cropping their photos because he felt that students needed to learn how to 'crop' with the camera itself, and really grasp the idea of considering their entire shot rather than saying 'oh, I'll crop this out later'. However, he had no problem teaching us to dodge and burn in the darkroom because there's a limit to how much you can control the intake of light with the camera - you can't do it selectively :).

Moral of the story, I suppose, is that you should take the medium as far as it will let you before switching to other means. I honestly don't know if this concept is universal, though. I know I kind of cringe when I see a wonderful vector piece where someone felt they just -had- to photoshop one little thing. Making a vector is a binary state - when you add raster elements, the piece is no longer vector. My own experiences may make me more of a purist in that regard, though (I hope) not an extremist. Or, god forbid, an elitist :).

I definitely respect the view that doing no postwork is a sign of skill. It does mean a person has mastered the program. Having said that, I do love seeing postwork. I come from watching people do screenshot manipulations where they did a lot of postwork to the point the characters no longer looked game-ugly and the spells just jumped off the page. Doing that kind of postwork gives a person knowledge and experience that they can carry outside of Poser.

If I didn't learn how to do postwork on screenshots, I probably wouldn't have attempted to draw. My rough sketches are for shit, they really are, but I know that I can fix my mistakes with the experience that I got from doing postwork. I've learned how to color, shade, and so on because of that. It gave me the confidence to try drawing. So that's why I like seeing postwork on Poser stuff because when a person gets bored doing Poser, hopefully they'll retain their knowledge and try to apply it in a different area of art (dollz, manips, drawings, whatever).

Doing Poser with no postwork is a sign of hardcore dedication/commitment to learning the program and I definitely appreciate that, too. Just explaining why postwork is not a bad word in my vocabulary. ;)

i wouldn't know what to do without postwork and honestly have learned more about art in general from doing postwork to my renders. course, if it weren't for vex and adiene, my postwork would truly suck as well since they are full of tips and tricks to try when you can't quite get the effect you wanted! i'm still doing alot of experimenting, but i think i actually have more fun when i get the render into PS!

Something one of my favorite college professors used to preach was "its all in the details". It's soemthing I've carried with me for years and something I always look to ad in every piece I do. Whether it's freehand or screenshot manips.

My take on postwork (mind you 3d isn't something I do) is that it opens the door to a whole new level for your piece. It can ad that extra punch that takes a piece from good to great, from great to outdtanding.