How did you get started in 3D Graphics? If you spend
a significant amount of time around computers you cannot help but
get sucked in to the CG world eventually - even if only to a small
degree. It started for me in my late teens when I scanned in some
of my pencil drawings and messed around with coloring them in an
ancient version of Photoshop. Looking back at them (still have them
on an old floppy disk) the results were horrid, but it was a start.
After that, the rest just fell in... I stumbled upon Renderosity,
posted some of my pencil scans, and after deliberating between
Poser or Bryce, gave Poser a try. For the longest time I lived off
of freestuff, messing around with lighting and altering free
textures - adding tattoos, warpaint, etc. Pretty much all of my
early products were tools and textures that I had made for my own
personal use -- people kept nagging me to put them in the store and
I eventually did. Nowadays, I try to divide my working time between
creating new products and learning new techniques and skills. With
3D you can never stop learning, otherwise you are left behind.
How long have you been working with 3D Graphics?
Around 6 years now. The earliest part of that was spent using other
creator's freestuff contributions in my own hobby renders. That
lead to creating my own textures and tools, to eventually
remorphing entire figures and modeling clothing. My longer-term
goal is to create an entirely unique figure mesh - since some of
the EULAs of the ones we merchants depend upon are becoming pretty
restrictive. It is requiring me to relearn modeling using a
different technique, since NURBS is unsuitable for figure modeling.
Do you have any formal training? Not in 3D or CG -
but in traditional art. Before I got into CG I painted in oils and
alkyds, rendered in pencils and charcoal. Unfortunately, CG and
technology is killing all of our traditional mediums. I am ashamed
to admit that I have hardly touched paint or pencil since I
discovered Photoshop... and I haven't even explored programs such
as Corel Painter yet. Look around you - our traditional media is
dying. When I first learned photography I developed my own B&W film
in a darkroom. It was a hassle, expensive, time-consuming, and many
potentially great photos ended up as failures - yet my photos had
more meaning to them, and to me. Nowadays even professional
photographers have switched to digital - traditional darkroom
skills are hardly taught in schools anymore (I know someone who is
doing a photography course in college and has never been in a
darkroom in her life). Even though high-end digital cameras can
produce equal or better photos than conventional film cameras, and
digital paint programs can emulate traditional media like oils and
watercolors, I still highly respect those who make the effort to
develop their own film or paint on an actual canvas despite the
convenience of the new media. The number of people who do this,
however, is dwindling fast: convenience spells the death of
tradition, I suppose. I am guilty of it myself: CG, as opposed to
traditional art, appealed to me because of its forgiveness. There
is no 'undo' in traditional mediums, and its amazing how much we
have come to rely on it (usually when I'm painting, morphing,
whatever I'll have my left hand resting on the CTRL+Z keys, heh).
It is going to take an enormous effort on my part, but I am
determined to take up some traditional media again. I have plans
for some oil paintings, and I have also been researching casting
techniques -- for a change from 3D I am going to sculpt a character
and cast some resin kits. As for 3D - I'm constantly learning on my
own mainly from books, help files, online tutorials, and just
messing with the programs. Unfortunately by the time a curriculum
is developed and implemented in a school environment the program is
moved on to at least another version and new technologies are
developed. Right now I can't commit the insane amount of money on
tuition, a license of maya unlimited, and the specific laptop that
is required to enroll. Not to mention that the specific program
training would be obsolete before I even finished paying off my
tuition debt. What software do you use for product
development? Photoshop 7 for pretty much all texturing,
promos, etc -- even for some complex curve files I import into
Rhino. Rhino for modeling - its a NURBS modeler with a very fast
and intuitive workflow. Its drawbacks are its sometimes
frustratingly inconsistent tool results, and the fact that NURBS is
less efficient for some types of modeling. UVMapper for UV mapping.
I have an ancient version of MAX that I use when I need to edit
meshes, optimize them, or do something I cant do in
Poser/Rhino/UVMapper. And Poser, of course. I have four versions
installed for testing: Poser4 unpatched, Poser 4.03, Poser
w/ProPack, and Poser5. I havent picked up a Poser6 upgrade yet. I
just bought a copy of Silo - thanks to Jeff (ElorOnceDark) for
pointing it out to me. How much time is required for product
development? That depends... When I get started working on
something I work very fast, generally hunched over this infernal
machine until it is done. The problem is that while I enjoy doing
morphs, textures, and modeling outfits and props, I absolutely
loathe dealing with the Poser file formats. So what usually happens
is that I have everything morphed and modeled in a reasonably fast
time, but then I get bogged down with the menial crap such as
editing CR2s, doing JCMs, conforming, UVmapping, optimizing for
Poser, packaging, doing MAT poses, etc. Thats the part I absolutely
hate doing - and the reason my production time drags sometimes. I'm
at the point where I'm considering hiring someone to 'Poserize' my
products for a sizeable cut of my profits, just so I can focus on
the creative aspect of the product development process. I have no
less than a dozen products that have been sitting on my hard drive
for months, all of them complete or nearly complete. I just get
totally sidetracked when it comes to Poserizing them -- many
non-merchants do not realise the amount of effort that goes into
creating a product for Poser. Can you give a brief overview
of your development cycle for a new product? Hmm.. These
days its mainly outfits - so everything starts with a rough sketch
so that I can keep track of what I'm doing. Rarely does clothing
look good on the default bodies so I end up morphing them into
something a little more to my liking. My characters are usually
pretty idealized: I figure that since this is 3D, and most of what
we do is pinup/fantasy, I can dispense with the 'average' body and
morph something a bit more appealing. Most of the base models look
shapeless to me: women are supposed to have *hips*, thighs, waists,
calves -- and some muscle tone is required if theyre going to heft
that 6' claymore that people pose them with. Then I just import the
morphed, zeroed figure into Rhino and start modeling clothing for
the body. Once this is done, I UVmap it in UVMapper, and import it
into poser to make sure it fits. Then grouping/conforming. At this
point I'll shoot a copy over to Rio and she starts on texturing the
clothing. We use whatever we have around the house - scanning or
photographing it, or just handpainting it in Photoshop. For my
latest pack, for example, the Adventuress clothing, I scanned in an
old army web belt I had, a ribbed 'beater, and we took some photos
of some cut-off jeans of Rio's as well as an old beat-up pair of
motorcycle boots of mine. The rest of the textures are all painted
by hand - such as the gun, knife, etc. The specularity, bump,
displacement, transparency, etc maps are usually handpainted as
well - or adjusted from the scans. Any JCMs (joint controlled
morphs) come next. Same goes for any props that need to be
articulated (have moving parts), creating MATs, etc. All of this is
done in notepad. I've seen and tried some apps that are supposed to
automate many of these processes, but I've ended up with some
serious problems and glitches with many of them - which I have to
go and fix by hand in notepad afterwards - so I just do everything
in notepad to begin with. Its time consuming, but so boring its
relaxing :) I'll just crank up the stereo and get through the whole
thing in an afternoon, including JCMs, hiding dials I dont want
people turning, etc. Then I start organising everything into the
Runtime folders, creating thumbnails, and once I have more or less
a complete package I'll send it to someone to look over. I'm very
paranoid over who I send my products to to test - since in the past
I've actually had my products warezed before they were released in
the store, as well as ideas ganked by people to whom I've shown
work-in-progress renders. Terri (hisminky) is one of the people I
absolutely trust with both my ideas and products and ramblings -
shes been a great friend over the years. Where does your
inspiration come from when developing new products?
Everywhere... Rio, life, TV (although I rarely watch that anymore
except for movies and some HBO series like Deadwood & Six Feet
Under), music, books, games, the list goes on. Even if we merchants
are not directly inspired by something, we are all indirectly
influenced by everything around us. Some of it from my twisted
imagination - as I build up my store again and have some more
financial leeway I'll be branching off to do more and more
'experimental' wierd crap. Right now I'm limited to making what I
know will sell, but I will be including some really freaky stuff in
there soon, heh. Do you have any advice for aspiring Digital
Content Developers? Sure... Never stop learning. Try to
stay different - there are 1800 merchants at RO competing with you.
Right now, I think I would make more profit selling a purple
polkadotted texture for the Poser dog than I would selling yet
another caucasian Vicky texture pieced together out of various
merchant resource packs. Merchant resource packs are fine, if they
do not account for the bulk of your product. If all you have done
is piece together a product from 5 different 'resources' that 800
other merchants are all using, then your product isnt going to be
very unique, nor are you going to stand out in the flood of new
releases. Once you become a recogniseable merchant, protecting your
work from copyright thieves becomes nearly a full-time job. I have
CDs packed full of in-progress .OBJ & .PSD files, hi-res scans,
photos, etc.. as well as saves - in time increments - of my work as
I create a product. Someone who creates something from merchant
resource packs has a bill of sale for a merchant resource pack that
500 other merchants have purchased.. not much of a leg to stand on
if your clothing or figure texture looks like another merchants. I
have seen merchants lose copyright battles VS thieves who used
their material, even though it was a scanned handprint. In a
virtual world without consequences for your actions, its an uphill
battle protecting your work even with hard evidence, and its
hopeless with something as flimsy as the bill of sale for a
'merchant resource pack'. So, in a nutshell: find a niche. always
give your customers more than what they expect. stay different
(whether in terms of what you produce or how you produce it).
How has Renderosity's on-line community played a role in
regards to your products, friendships and learning? Heh.
Quite a bit, in fact. I met Rio at Renderosity - she messaged me to
congratulate me the last time I won MOM, and we ended up IMing back
and forth. I invited her to Dragon*Con, drove down from Windsor,
Ontario to Richmond, VA to pick her up. We gave Will (Valandar) a
ride from Memphis, TN to Atlanta where the convention was held, met
some of the Rosity staff and members, and we've been together ever
since (around 3 years now). If it wasnt for me stumbling upon
Renderosity, Id probably be working away in a day job right now
going crazy. I used to do onsite computer technical support/network
installations in downtown Toronto, mainly at law firms, and it was
pretty stressful. Do you have any final words?
Yeah... just some thanks to people who have helped me along over
the years - friends, aquaintances here at Renderosity. All of my
customers, for putting their faith in me and my work, and
supporting my products. I wouldnt be here without them: I'll be
sitting here totally frustrated with something, or off on some
crazy rant, and I'll get a really encouraging or sweet IM from
someone out of the blue and it can change my entire outlook that
day. *cough* and many thanks to the Renderosity staff
members who have put up with my last 5 years of ranting and selling
here. Most notable Clint, Jeny, Deb, Jen & Spike. Thanks also to my
partner - in both senses of the word - Rio. Shes absolutely
indispensible :) cheers, -gabriel
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