I have not posted usenet under my own name for
years but some say my writing style is unmistakable so
you may have seen my post on the rendering and
photoshop newsgroups.

    What I have noticed there is a catetory of
questions from people trying to come to conceptual
grips with aspects of rendering. For example a weekly
question is like, "How can I get a 3D effect from a
Photoshop image?" The answer is, you can not as you do
not have 3D information to work with. You can only try
to fake it.

    There are about a dozen such questions. These are
from people who rather clearly are good at normal
graphics programs but just have not quite grasped 3D
modeling. And to be frank about it, some of the posts I
have seen here indicate there are lots of 3D gurus who
do not quite grasp what 2D imaging is all about.

    So I was thinking, how about a FAQ to get both
sides up to speed on both methods? I would be more than
willing to host it if one can be put together and if
povray.org does not wish to.

    My website has some very controversial material
that will be included in blocking software real soon
now. So a host other than myself may be a better place.

    It is not that the intellectual leap is that hard.
It is that the better you are at one the harder it is
to jump to the other. It would more or less save people
a couple months of rethinking to learn the other. Ana
maybe prevent some creative folks from giving up
because they don't have those couple months.

    Just a thought.

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Yeah, I think this is a real good idea.  There are a lot of tutorials
that explain the extreme basics for brand newbies, but very few
intermediate tutorials.  What I'd really like to see is a tutorial that
starts with the basics and then builds on them.  Texturing is another
aspect that I have found poorly documented.  In my experience, 3D art is
only half modeling and layout.  The other half is texturing.  For
example, have you seen Gilles Tran's IRTC garden entry?  The textures
are absolutely spectacular.  I would really like to see some tutorials
that show the basics behind creating textures such as his.  Also, when I
had Rhino3D (in its beta stage),  texturing presented a constant problem
for me, as the textures were always distorted by the shape of the
model.  How do you compensate for this.  And, finally, one more thing:
procedural textures.  What the heck are they anyway and how do you make
them?  Thank you.

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So you're proposing a FAQ on how to get the best from 2D and 3D in
terms of ease and quality? I think I can be of help :) Most of my
pictures are just that - old test renders or object show-off scenes
revived in PhotoShop. The opposite happens, too, with odd height
fields or displacement maps or image mapes or whatever. Or with
fractals -- get the 3D julias from POV, the 2D stuff from FE and then
finish the idea in PhotoShop. In short, if such questions arise, I
think I can be of help.

The problem remains, though, who will maintain the FAQ and how will it
be supported? if it comes to just getting useful info from posts on
this server, ok, but I think you have something more complicated than
that in mind.


Peter Popov
pet### [at] usanet
ICQ: 15002700

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