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Let's talk about.....POSTWORK

Seliah (Childe of Fyre)

Seliah (Childe of Fyre)

Running with the wolves.
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
No, postworking in that kind of a situation is dishonest.

With lighting... I will always make a note on the promo for paid products, what lights were used.

Nataani-PopupHeads01.jpg

Like that image... I try to note whether I used standard DS lights, Advanced Ambient lights, Uberenvironment, etc...

At least that way, the customers have an idea of what to expect from that light, and that if they use a different type of lighting they might get different results. But I also try to do pictures that use different light rigs, so folks can see what things look like depending on the light types in use.

But postworking a promo image is just not ethical; they need to know what they're buying. And if I find a vendor that has postworked their images, and I find out the hard way (as in after I've bought the product and rendered it), I never buy from that vendor again.
 
Miss B

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
Can't blame you, I wouldn't either, though I can't say I've ever found a vendor that does. In fact, a good many will actually say "no postwork" on the promos. I'm not saying that's necessary, but at least it tells you up front.
 
Lyne

Lyne

Distinguished
HW Honey Bear
That's very true, Seliah... I had forgotten my own "rule" of never post working a promo image (for my long ago on line store)...

I did express another of my own feelings about post work here: wip7

Basically it should not be noticeable. :)
 
RAMWolff

RAMWolff

Wolff Playing with Beez!
Contributing Artist
Too me post work, except for promo images, is part of the artistic process. Anyone that's snobbish enough to critique someones works and say that the post work was "cheating" isn't much of an artist to me, just a boorish snob that probably doesn't know how to work things in Photoshop or any other photo editor! lol
 
RAMWolff

RAMWolff

Wolff Playing with Beez!
Contributing Artist
I remember when the digital industry was just getting a foothold into people's perspectives and how negative "traditional" artists were towards those of us that had to embrace the digital way for one reason or another (because of my health I had no choice). So I've watched the ongoing debate for some time now.... lol
 
NG Artplay

NG Artplay

Eager
Contributing Artist
I love the newsletter with popular posts in it...thanks!

Postwork, postwork!! I'm a fan of it. When I started in 3D I was over at 3DCommune. A lot of members fell into the 'snobby no postwork' group so I thought that it was a bad thing back then. Most were using Bryce, as was I, and they felt that putting figures into the scene was a no-no too. As I progressed I found that all of the popular artists postworked their images and added figures. Even photographers postwork their images. When I started dabbling with adding postwork I got comments from people telling me that my work was getting so much better and I was improving. Only thing different was the postwork.

Postwork is always a no-no on promotional images for a product for sale. I don't want to buy a product and find that I can not reproduce similar results with the product. So irritating.
 
Ken1171

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
Hehe I remember having this argument over 10 years ago at Renderosity, where people used to proudly post renders claiming "no postwork", as if that were a good thing. Basically all movies productions have entire teams who work only in the postwork part, and that's integral part of the pipeline. There was an interview with George Lucas where he shows the "before" and "after" postwork from his 1977 Star Wars movie, where he points "you would have liked the movie without it". When I look at the pictures, I couldn't agree more.

I know there is a polemic side of postworking commercial promo images, but I think there is a difference between cheating the image and simple gamma or color correction. :)
 
Miss B

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
I agree Ken, as I often used the Layer Adjustment > Levels option to brighten up renders that always looked fine in Poser or DS, but seemed dull when I opened them in PS. Since learning how to create better lighting in my legacy DS apps, and finding really nice lighting sets since getting back into Poser, I don't do it as often, but I have no qualms doing that sort of thing.

Oh and I sometimes do multiple renders of scenes that are busy, or it would stall my laptop, or just take too long to finish. Much easier to composite 2 or 3 less busy renders to create the scene.
 
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RedPhantom

RedPhantom

Member
I generally try to use minimal postwork in my images. If I'm going to let an image render for 12 hours, it better turn out decent. But if I see a problem with the images once it's done, I'm going to fix it in postwork if I can rather than another 12 hour render. And somethings just can't be done in the software I have. Yes that's getting to be less and less but it's not not to zero yet. So if my art calls for that effect to complete it, why would I settle on less than complete just so that I can say I didn't postwork it?
dree.png
This image I probably could have gotten the sepia tone with shaders and maybe I could have used a prop for the frame and the shadows from it wouldn't have messed things up, possibly. But I don't know that I could have gotten the shading just inside the frame to look like that.
 
Ken1171

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
There are things that may never be fixed in renders, but can be quickly done in postwork, like:
  • Outfits that won't agree with some pose/morph combinations,
  • Bad figure bending in more challenging poses or rigging limitations.
In addition, it takes only a couple of minutes to change eye colors or add eye reflections in postwork as opposed to rendering the whole thing again. There are also changes I do for artistic purposes that have nothing to do with lighting or rendering. To me, aesthetics take precedence over rendering technicalities, and that's where postwork comes in.

Conversely, if the scene started with the wrong lighting and/or materials, the render will be bad, and postwork won't save it. That's a case when I would fix it and render the whole thing again.
 
Rae134

Rae134

Renowned
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
I have nothing against postwork, I just don't do it on much because my stupid computer is too dumb to do nice large renders and I feel it is wasted time on small images :p I might colour correct and whack on a sig, thats about it. I would probably do it more on nice large renders :)
 
icedragonart

icedragonart

Admirable
I've always felt like postwork was just another tool to get my artwork to look like what it looks like in my head. Sometimes, it just needs a layer or two. And sometimes it can be 20 layers. If I know its going to be extensive postwork then I usually render each item in the scene separately and save as a .png so the background is transparent. Then I import each into photoshop as a seperate layer. This allows me to add things in between layers like fog or clouds or whatever. Wish I didn't have to work, I might actually get a lot more postwork done lol.
 
Pendraia

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
icedragonart said:
I've always felt like postwork was just another tool to get my artwork to look like what it looks like in my head. Sometimes, it just needs a layer or two. And sometimes it can be 20 layers. If I know its going to be extensive postwork then I usually render each item in the scene separately and save as a .png so the background is transparent. Then I import each into photoshop as a seperate layer. This allows me to add things in between layers like fog or clouds or whatever. Wish I didn't have to work, I might actually get a lot more postwork done lol.
Click to expand...
I'm so with you on this...
 
DarwinsMishap

DarwinsMishap

Member
As a vendor, I always went to do renders without post work and note that in my stores- and which ones of the promos (if there are any) have post work in them, along with which render engine is used. I, personally, want to see the blasted product IN the render engine it was made for in the system it was made for. Too many products look fantastic, but at the bottom of the page the Studio product was rendered in Reality or Octane and the vendor had no examples of it in 3Delight or Iray (I personally use Iray, even on the 8 year old machine- my shader materials are all Iray or SSS for Poser as well, and that's noted in my products).

It irks me. Post work does not. :)
 
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