I have been a 3D modeler for much longer than I was a 3D artist. No, this is not a contradiction - many 3D modelers have a different perspective of what they do and how it is seen by others. This is one of the reasons why I have changed my perspective about the whole thing I was doing before, but only after I came to dA. Let me explain why.

In all those years when I was being a 3D modeler, my main goal was always try to reproduce an idea the best I could using 3D models. But I was never thinking much of what I would do with the model after I created it, so the process was more about skill and technique than anything else. Most of those models would end up forgotten in some dusty folder that nobody would ever see.

This happens because of the nature of 3D models. They are created by 3D modeling experts, and saved on file formats that can only be used by other 3D modelers. Those are technical people, not necessarily artists. I only much later came to understand that "art" is what you come to do with the models after you create them. Ok, the act of sculpting something in 3D is obviously an art, but creating CG images with 3D models is yet another completely different animal.

That is why professional movie studios only hire 3D modelers to create models and nothing else. They hire different people to do all the rest of the steps required to bring a 3D model to life on the big screens - and all these people are experts on their specific areas, where none of that involves 3D modeling.

If you would be patient enough to sit and look at the ending credits after a 3D movie, you will see that there are only like a dozen modelers, and then *hundreds* of other people who actually work on these models to bring them to life. Mind you, a 3D model cannot move at all, and has only a single color (usually gray). They are like rigid statues, and that's about it for the modeling part.

To make a 3D model able to move, or even to have different textures and materials applied, a series of other steps follow after modeling, and each of them is an art on their own right. And after the 3D model can move, show facial expressions and have materials applied, animating them is yet another art on its own right. But even all that is not enough - the animated model needs to be framed and lighted before it can be rendered.

Once again, each of those parts is executed by different experts from the industry in a professional movie studio. It would only be in low budget garage studios that the same person would do two or more of those process, or in some cases all of them. I am a low budget 3D artist, so I do all of those things myself - from raw modeling to animation, lighting, framing and rendering. It took me years to learn ALL of those things, one at a time, and with no lack of my share of blood and tears.

But as I was learning each of those skills and applying them to my gallery, my perspective of the whole thing was gradually changing. I started to think that a finished model in all its glory meant *nothing* unless I went further ahead with the next steps to bring it to life: morph targets, posing, materials, textures, lighting, animation, framing and rendering.

No wonder it took me so long to learn all those things on my own - they are each independent subjects that have little or nothing to do with the others. Only then I understood why professional studios must hire different people to do each of those things - the amount of time to learn each of them is insane, not to mention you have to find people with the artistic talent to do them right.

An expert in character animation might be terrible with texture painting, rendering, or even lighting. Being good with one means nothing about the others. And the word that comes to mind is "art". It takes an artist to make each of those things right, and yet another artist to coordinate ALL of those things together to bring out what the movie wants to convey.

In feature movies such as Ratatouille, the 3D models not only look alive, but they have more expression, personality and body language than even live action actors. The backgrounds, scene materials, and lighting created such a unique style and mood that made the movie stand out from the rest. I truly consider Ratatouille a masterpiece of 3D media, uniqueness of style, and human expression.

So it was obvious that all of those steps after modeling are equally important, and I just had to learn them all. After about three years, I think I covered most of that ground with varied degrees of success. I now think I can do just about anything and take out the world. That is - until someone asked me to model a vehicle. O_o

Geez, I have spent all of this time concentrating on characters - I have zero experience creating vehicles and buildings. Even the modeling technics to create and rig those are different. Ok, so I will probably never learn everything - it's too much, but I think I came a long way from just being yet another 3D modeler with no apparent purpose for doing so. I now create fully functional models capable of performing any imaginable action, and I always create them with a purpose. Each of my models will always be used in my gallery, and in some cases the galleries of countless other 3D artists.

  Coming from this, at some point I started to have conflicted ideas about my older beliefs, such as my greatest proud was to display a 3D render with absolutely no postwork - and I even wrote that in big letters, thinking that was something good. But now I believe that the actual art *starts* with postwork, and that's the part I am mostly proud of. Even professional studios have entire postwork production pipelines that process the entire movie before it is released to the public.

Nowadays I still find occasional 3D renders where the artist is proud to announce in big letters that their picture has no postwork whatsoever, and I sometimes giggle to myself with that idea. I once thought the same way, but learning the rest of the jobs in the 3D pipeline has completely changed my perspective of the whole thing. By now I would actually feel guilty and even lazy if I didn't spend hours doing my postwork.

And this is something I have learned from the pros. When watching the DVD extras from the first Star Wars movie, they showed some sequences before and after post-production, and the differences are huge. The movie would had never reached the public like it did without heavy and painstaking postwork. Funny I couldn't see this the first time I watched those DVD extras, but I suspect it has something to do with the extra knowledge I didn't have way back then. If I didn't know, I couldn't see it.

You will notice my early pics posted at dA had little to no postwork, but as I started to study, learn and improve skills in completely new areas such as character rigging, materials and lighting, those things started to change. I started to post deviations just about character rigging, just about materials, just about lighting, and later just about how materials react to different lighting setups. I was starting to put things together, and started to feel more like an artist than a 3D modeler I once was.

Just last month I have found a photographer here at dA that had a terrific way to use lights. His pictures were very eye-catching and I couldn't put my finger on it. I wanted to learn that lighting technique, and I've spent about a week exchanging notes with him. It comes down that my obsession for minimalistic use of lights was a blatant mistake, and I was seriously neglecting the importance of rim lights, by instead always concentrating on key + flood setups.

Ever since, rim lights have become my best friends, and many here have already noticed how my visuals have changed ever since. People claim my characters look more realistic, when in reality they are just the same - what changed was the lighting technique. This is combined with an extra year I have spent studying materials and how they react to 3D lights. I now think that lights and materials are inseparable entities, because they always work together.

I can't tell exactly where I stand comparing to how I used to think about 3D models in the past, but I know some of my older perspectives have changed all the way around, now pointing to the exact opposite direction. I have also learned to have a deeper respect for all those hundreds of people showing on the end credits of a 3D feature movie, where only about a dozen of them are 3D modelers. It took me 6 months to learn how to model, but 3 years to learn all of what comes next.

That's why I keep saying that people overestimate the 3D modeling part to the point of exaggeration. Unless the model is never to be textured and rigged, and will only be rendered once for a gallery picture before it is forgotten and never seen again - then the modeling work is indeed the only thing to praise about.

As a matter of fact, in my recent commission jobs, the 3D modeling part typically represents just a third of the work, where I actually spend way more time doing rigging, UV mapping, texturing, and all the rest of the 3D pipeline that is involved in the creation of a fully functional model. When people come and praise the modeling part alone, I just have to sigh and think to myself - "if you only knew half of it"...

But hey, 3D models are still new in the community and I can't expect people to understand what it takes here. The only thing that bugs me is the prejudice caused by ignorance, where people "accuse" me of using 3D assets I didn't model myself. There we go again - the only thing that matters to these people is who modeled what, where all the rest of the 3D pipeline work is [as usual] taken for granted.

I am by no means taking the merit of creating 3D models because I do that myself all the time. But I can have hopes that in the future people will understand that modeling is just one part out of many others, where none is more or less important than the others, because they are all integral part of turning a rigid statue into a living and breathing animated character. And as opposed to what I used to believe, postwork is essential part of it too, where I even believe that a picture is not really finished without it.

This is a perfect example where knowledge can really change your perspective of things, because it helps you see the big picture. ^^