[bjørn]

I showed the www.Brucerayne.com/gallery page to a friend saying :See what you can do with 3D modelling! He replied that all this could be done with a digicamera and Photoshop. Frankly I hadn't a good answer to that (except that it is great fun to model). Can anyone tell me the benefit with 3D modelling.....( and a good reply to my friend).

[R4s1n]

1 Main benefit...
Not everybody has the money to spend to recreate scenarios just for pictures.
I think it would take even more time to find the places to take a picture of....
But why when you can model them and modify them without ever leaving the comfort of your chair :attn:

[Cchristensen]

I wouldn't worry too much about what your friend thinks about 3D images. He isn't going to change the fact that CG images continue to expand to more and more areas where traditional photography has ruled. As someone who has been shooting photos and using photoshop for a very long time, I can assure you that they are not capable of reproducing every 3D image you see. Take a look at the 3D CG Choice Gallery at CGTalk and ask your friend to reproduce a few of those images.

Here is some more on the subject - http://www10.dcccafe.com/nbc/article...ticleid=261557

[Fallenswordsman]

Bruce Rayne? Wasn't he Batman?

My own argument here would be to do with the art of CG. Whilst your traditional photographer friend might be able to create some nice still life photos, what we can do as CG artists is to have pin-point precision over lighting as well as what we include in our pictures. For example say I wanted a picture of an expensive watch - now I don't own an expensive watch and nobody would be stupid enough to lend me an expensive watch to take photos of in the first place so my alternative is to make a CG model and then render it.

I also think there is a certain level of respect that goes with creating photorealistic scenes in CG. A quick trip over to A.N.Other website where there aren't that many sophisticated CG artists, and you'll find people going "Woo, looks like a real photo" to even the simplest of setups. I think as CG artists, we consider it a skill to create scenes that can pass for photoreal. After we've mastered that skill and gotten bored with it, then we start letting our imagination run a bit wild and start creating scenes and images that a traditional photographer would be hard pressed to recreate without significant time and effort. How many photographers would have access to a McLaren to take photos of it a la Philip's tutorial?

To me, creating photorealistic scenes with CG is just part of our skill-set and it is one that people respect because of the difficulty level that can be involved in making the scene totally believable or perfect. Its the magic of making people take a second glance to discover if what they are seeing is truly a photo or a piece of CG. Then on top of that we can usethat skill set to produce images totally from our imagination - we can create our own design of building, we can create our own design of pocket watch or pen to render, if we don't like something, we can change it and its a darn sight easier for us to do than it would be to do in photoshop, especially if you want images at many different angles.

[bjørn]

Wise words, Fallenwordsman. I'll pass them on.

[rwhunt99]

I'd also like to add to that;
When it comes to professional shoots, there is a lot of time and effort to bring everything together to shoot a model and perhaps a car or other sales object and if it's an outside job, the weather plays a big factor, as these costs keep going up and the talent pool and software keeps getting better, it provides a real alternative to a live shoot. Just set up a scene in a 3D package and you have control of evrything that even a digital camera can't provide. there are so many things in a TV commercial today that are shot in a computer that people don't even notice or realize thats it's computer generated. btw, Photoshop is a software package too, it's just that a 3D package can go so much further than even the best Photoshop Jock.


:bow: