RedHawk opened this issue on Sep 09, 2006 · 36 posts
bagginsbill posted Sun, 10 September 2006 at 12:24 PM
Acadia, experimenting is just one way of learning it. There are many modes of learning. Self directed experimentation works for me and quite a few others, but should not necessarily be the best way for someone else. So don't despair.
Let's use some analogies to explore the subject of mat-room skill.
Let's talk about music - this is familiar to everybody. There are four fundamental musical activities, all interwined and dependent on each other. I'm listing them in a specific order. The first is easiest to learn/teach - many people teach themselves without any concious effort. The last is very difficult to learn/teach - special training is needed unless you are a savant.
By listen, I don't mean "hear" - anybody can do that. By listen, I mean to be able to tell the difference between good and bad performance, appreciate nuances, recognize patterns, and identify similarities to other listening experiences.
When you hear Jazz, you know it is Jazz right? You can recognize it. Little children don't, though. They have not been "ear trained" enough to distinguish one style of music from another. Most adults can do it easily, without formal training. When you hear a recording of a high school rock band playing Rolling Stones, you can tell the song is by the Rolling Stones, but not being performed by the Rolling Stones. It's not authentic and you know it. How do you know it? Think about that. When you look at a badly done water render, you never mistake it for a photo of water. But WHY? If you stopped to think about why, you might start to recognize a little better what to do in the mat room.
Included in listening, is the ability to decompose the music into constituent parts, which have some established relationship to each other. I was nearly a professional musician, trained for years and years. I practiced the piano 4 to 11 hours a day from age 10 to 17. When I hear music, I I instantly perceive the chord progression, the major rhythmic elements, the actual instruments involved, the style of music, and quite often I can identify the composer even if I've never heard the piece.
I'm starting to be able to do the same for the Poser mat room. For example, I can almost always identify a Face_Off product being used in a gallery image, without reading the credits. I can also instantly tell if somebody has rendered glass or metal or ceramic incorrectly and I can tell you WHY.
After listening, comes performance. Quite apart from the ability to listen, performing is it's own activity. Part of it is purely mechanical. For piano, you need to know which keys go with which notes, how hard to hit them, when to push the pedals, etc. Organs, harpsichords, and accordians share some mechanics with the piano, but are otherwise quite different and have other mechanics you need to learn. In the case of the mat room, you need to know how to operate the mouse, how to create nodes, connect them, and set the parameters. If I give you a recipe, such as above, you are able to perform it perfectly, unless the recipe is really complicated. If I give you 85 nodes to connect, you probably couldn't do it from memory, but you could read my drawing and reproduce it. When you perform incorrectly, you're ability to listen should confirm for you that you did it wrong. Similarly, your ability to see the render and know what to expect versus what you see, would let you know if you performed the material construction correctly.
Next comes arranging. In music, this is the conversion of an idea (a particular song) into a series of instructions for the different performers in an ensemble. Some arrangers are only good at certain types of music. For example, I've known musicians who can arrange brass, strings, guitars, and drums for stage bands and do a fine job with rock or classical, but be clueless for jazz or blues. Being able to arrange well requires that you understand the role of the different instruments, how they sound when played together, and a thorough understanding of the underlying style of the song.
For the mat-room, I've seen people do a great job with arranging skin, but be totally clueless at arraning metals or water. I've seen the opposite as well. To be able to map an idea, like gold, into a bunch of nodes is just like arranging. To do it, you need to learn a lot more about what it is you're trying to realize. For example, shiny glossy finishes (cars, pearls, porcelain) have a consistent behavior, which is that the amount of reflection from them should increase as the surface points away from the camera. If you don't know this, and don't arrange for this to happen, then the surface will never look like porcelain, it will look like metal instead. Once you understand that, it's a simple matter of choosing the right nodes, which would be Edge_Blend, and maybe some Bias, to plug into the Reflection_Value.
Finally there is composing. This is the ability to invent, from sheer nothingness, a song, or if you are really a pioneer, an entirely new musical style. This is difficult to teach. Most extraordinary composers, especially pioneers, are born with the ability. But many people can be taught to become ordinary composers to some degree. When it is taught, however, it is AFTER the person has already acquired considerable skill at listening, performing, and arranging.
When you see me "compose" a new material, it is not a mystery that I can and you can't. I've spent thousands of hours reading about different styles of materials, staring at photos and renders, and experimenting with different arrangements of Poser nodes, some I made up, but many I got from others. Only recently have I become sufficiently skilled to invent new materials from scratch on demand. Meaning, I'm not just coming up with stuff by accident, but rather someone suggests an effect they want, and I can find a way to achieve the effect.
When I try to do these things with software other than Poser, I fail because I don't know how to perform or arrange, even though my composing and listening skills are still fine.
The more I do it, the faster i become at it.
I could make the same sort of alagous descriptions about food activities:
Quantitatively, you may or may not be able to do the same. But qualitatively, there is no reason why my mat-room spaghetti should remain a mystery to you, or that you can't make your own variations. With enough 1,2,3, you will start to do 4.
Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)