Film Noir Lighting Challenge at cgsociety

[Seth]

love this entry : http://features-temp.cgsociety.org/gallerycrits/11385/11385_1211361964_large.jpg

[gregsandor]

mr-miley -- lets get a TG2 package together and Ill upload it to the cgsociety challenge ftp so everyone can use it, and we'll have it all in one place and consistent.  The objects are in 1 meter scale to TG2, and fit right in to the environment. 

[Oshyan]

I just want to say that it is very clear that the more options you have in your program, the better art you can create, and the more "legitimate" the art you create is too. Right? I mean certainly those old painters who used just one or two brushes and a few different colors of paint weren't creating great art... 

"High end" programs have a reputation and a price tag, but they are no more capable of creating great art than any other program, generally speaking. If you know the program *and you have artistic talent and vision*, you can create great art. A skilled Terragen user can create great art, just as a skilled Maya user can. Drawing a line between them in terms of the "legitimacy" of the output is meaningless and stupid. ILM uses Vue and many effects companies use TG2 for some of their work - do you think they care that 15 year olds who probably pirated their copy of the software think that using anything other than "high end software" is wrong? No, they care about the results.

- Oshyan

[Seth]

Drawing a line between them in terms of the "legitimacy" of the output is meaningless and stupid.

it's not the tool that make the art, i totally agree... bu try to create an entire scene with character and furnitures with only TG...
the creative processus is not the same with a software like Maya as with Terragen... you can create something with only clicking with TG2 (perhaps not good looking but you can) and when you start to understand what kind of values work with those kind of nodes... well you get something better. How many here use tgc from other people or put some of their own tgc in their future creations ? that's is not art, that is technical...
In my professionnal previous life i was something called an artist (wooohaaaa) and the creation process was far more.... personnal (and difficult)than with TG2.
Don't get me wrong, i looove Terragen, but i don't think we can call it art creation whereas in other hands, i think that with software like Maya or 3DSMAX, some users are real artists and express something very personnal...
I just think it's difficult to call somebody an artist just because he is making good landscapes... even if i see real good creativity among some Terragen users... but hey ! we are hobbyists, not professionnal CG creators
I hope i didn't upset anybody in this message, i just expressed my thoughts about this and i say good luck for those who will participate to the challenge (i even hope they'll win)

[cyphyr]

I think you have stumbled upon a very important difference between almost all terrain packages (including TG) and the more mainstream 3d modeling packages and this that with almost all the terrain packages we are effectively exploring a fractaly generated world in the hope of finding the view we are looking for. If we press the random number generate button enough times we will eventually get the cloud or landscape features were looking for. This is of course only partly true in that once a Terrain package user has become familiar enough with how the fractals work they can indeed create the image in their mind rather than hopefully stumbling upon it. In the mainstream packages you have to know what you want in order to get a result. With TG and its brothers you "can" just press\ the random button and get a great result but with experience and patience you can and will create the images in your mind.

Indeed if you look at the images as they have been shown in our very own image gallery we can see an evolution from random luck images a year or so ago to the very much more accomplished images we see today where the artists have understood the inner workings of TG and been able to bring forth the vision in the minds to fruition.

Richard

[gregsandor]

This thread is for those Terragen2 users interested in the Film Noir Challenge at cgsociety.  Please start another thread for other discussions.

[Seth]

This thread is for those Terragen2 users interested in the Film Noir Challenge at cgsociety.  Please start another thread for other discussions.

On the floor ! Here comes the forum police ! ^^

[bobbystahr]

Yes and yes.  If you can, do it.  As a matter of fact I have made the real location into a 10m res terragen terrain.  If you want it and are going to participate in the challenge let me know.

It sounds like we have a few here who are going to join in -- let's make a TG2 conversion and I'll ask Jeremy to post it on the ftp for everyone to use.
[/quote]
Ever convert that to a .ter...would love to give'er a go with an actual .ter.. ...