Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's.

July 25, 2003 8:20 PM

3D Artists is another online art collective. This time, the artists specialize in using 3D rendering tools. (Note: some images may not be safe for work.)
posted by crunchland (8 comments total)

I love this one. (Saveable link to 4.7MB video.)
posted by aeschenkarnos at 4:45 AM on July 26, 2003

Cool.
posted by eddydamascene at 11:45 AM on July 26, 2003

One of those sites I visit whenever I get frustrated with the learning curve involved in 3ds Max, and other frustratingly difficult to master pieces of software. Great for inspiration, though sometimes overwhelming.
posted by Grod at 12:22 PM on July 26, 2003

This is impressive, not because it is spectacular, but because it was built in povray 3, and I am assuming that it was written by hand in povray's scene language, since there isn't any other software listed. for those who don't know povray is a free, open source raytracer, very powerful, but lacking any gui, though you can export from other modeling programs to the pov format
posted by Grod at 12:43 PM on July 26, 2003

oh damn, sorry, last post, just noticed that eddydamscene's link was also done in povray.
posted by Grod at 12:45 PM on July 26, 2003

Is this something you would have to play videogames to appreciate?
posted by dydecker at 1:01 PM on July 26, 2003

Not really, dydecker. The quality of characters in 3D video games (like Warcraft III or Quake), is much, much lower than these, for practical reasons. Most of these renderings would have taken the artist's computer upwards of an hour to process. (Not the artist: he/she probably worked on it for days or weeks.)

And as Grod said above, some of the rendering programs are what amounts to programming languages in themselves, so the artist would have had to write descriptions of every single element (every surface, every light source, every hair, every freckle) to go in the final picture. As I understand it, having seen "making ofs" for Shrek, Toy Story, etc etc, the rendering programs can do quick-and-dirty previews, just as an oil painter can do a pencil sketch first. Making these is no less an art than sculpture or painting.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 6:51 PM on July 26, 2003

having a bit of experience with 3DS (approached from an engineering background not an artistic one) let me just say that these animations BLOW MY MIND. fabulous link. Allot of the images are painstakingly done but unfortunately can only be displayed in 2D (for real appreciation of such images you have to see the model firsthand and then you can't see the rendered (mapped images such as skin or bark textures) image as you move around the model. The good news is that with the growth of processing and memmory speed we'll start to see renderings of this quality in movies and eventually in games. Thanks for the link
posted by NGnerd at 10:35 PM on July 26, 2003