Serious [Review] Art of The Week

Viper

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I agree, I find gmod much better personally. The rendering process feels more streamlined to me and I could never really get used to SFM's UI. but then again, every once in a while I find some insane artworks created in SFM and it just goes to show that as long as you know how to work with your stuff, you can make anything look good really.

with that being said, I think it comes down to preference really. gmod has no real advantages over SFM apart from not crashing and no real memory limit and maybe that lighting, such as lightbounce is a bit easier to pull off. other than those there's no real difference between the two.
 
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Dudu Fadende

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Despite the fact that I know I'll probably never get good enough with Gmod to replicate some of the stuff people make in SFM, Gmod will always feel more natural to me.
I've tried SFM before but that disconnect of having a bunch of menus and tabs in front of your face instead of just having that raw interaction of physgun and ragdoll/object will never be able to replicate the same feeling of true creative genius. Basically to me the difference between using Gmod and SFM is like drawing with pencil and paper vs a digital tablet.
You might be able to get prettier effects with the digital tablet but the raw effort you put into a pencil and paper sketch to get it looking beautiful can't be matched.
Basically I'm saying I'd take a slightly mediocre looking Gmod image I knew someone put some genuine effort into over an over-saturated pencil-eraser rubber looking SFM image.
 

steambored

Make no mistake, this is a one-way trip.
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Basically I'm saying I'd take a slightly mediocre looking Gmod image I knew someone put some genuine effort into over an over-saturated pencil-eraser rubber looking SFM image.
To each their own, there is only personal preference when it comes to GMod vs SFM.
From my experience, living with SFM is hell, the constant lack of memory, the quick FPS drain, the crashing when trying to load a model in model-viewer. To make something truly good in SFM is a massive test of patience and persistence, because it's going to be absolutely annoying to fight against the memory limit of 3.5gb when 2-4 of your models take up 1.5gb-2gb of memory alone, so from my experience it requires quite a bit of knowledge of the engine itself and editing to make most of SFM. At most what SFM offers is a familiar and easy to learn UI and skeleton rigs for ease of manipulation for anyone who works or is planning to work with animation, that's what it's main job is.

Part of why I haven't done much in terms of artwork, or why my artwork is simpler nowadays is because working within the confinement of 3.5gb limit is a nightmare with high-quality models and I cannot be bothered to work on a large-scale project when I keep crashing every 5 seconds or I can't spawn the model I want because SFM can't handle it's 32-bit nature. So yeah, GMod is better and I'd advise using GMod if you want to create posters.

VIkw34.jpg
This is the only example I have, but this scene has only 4 people in it, and 1 tank, plus some weapons, guess how much I struggled with this small scene alone. It was hard enough to spawn in the tank, operators and their gear without crashing, but spawning weapons was the worst part of this entire experience when you have the weapon itself, and then the attachments and being unable to spawn anymore attachments because SFM decides to kill itself in the model viewer the moment you view something and it makes the memory usage go above 3.5gb, the only attachment i was able to spawn in was a laser sight, no optics, no silencers, none of the cool operator shit you'd see on the weapons, I was lucky enough that I was able to spawn in an MP7 after the MK18s. Lighting wasn't easy either, there were times when it would spontaneously crash and if I wasn't running a custom auto-save extension from the workshop, I'd have lost this entire project because SFM would have deleted the project itself AND the auto-save backup that SFM creates, which I believe I remember Danny was very familiar with that particular bullshit quirk of SFM when he lost an entire animation project.
 
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Elan

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kher6nR.jpg

Hey everyone, been a while.
Been really busy with uni so i haven't had the time to do much of anything, though as you can see im still pretty shit at doing grass also the water looks a bit weird.
 
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Danny

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AOTW 11 of 52, 2021

Sorry, I just really wasn't feelin good last week
I know you said it wasn't for review but I think you'd like some feedback anyways; first pic is really good! The scene and the minimal use of subjects works really well, one thing that does not work well is the camera angle. What were you thinking big man, wanna see some sky - wanna see some citadel reaching the heavens shit dog, get on it. Second picture is pretty metal and has something going for it. Only thing to really quarrel about is the lack of lighting on the entire scene. Makes it look like it is under a spotlight or some kind of stage in a theatre. So yeah, think on your camera angles and lighting over the whole scene :^)

Third picture of the heavy is definitely my favourite, the way to lighting engulfs the model so naturally with the skybox behind is really a great skill. Maybe a way to develop your scene building could be to work with a single model and once you're happy with that - work on everything that goes behind it? Just an idea, keep it up Maxi :^)

Mhm that is very frozen. Has a crisp detail to it which I really enjoy. I probably would have over complicated the scene and made the back of the truck some kind of tent with a sniper in there or something? Idk just tryna give you some ideas as you've made a really cool scene and even though the one subject (being the car) is enough: developing these scenes and objects to be more what they are is a good way to further your abilities I thinks :^). So yeah, just maybe think about: ok I got this kinda simple scene, how can I adapt something that is in it to be something more? Great work

Looks like my CS:GO crosshair idk

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Trees are cool, sky is cool, rocks are cool - everything inside the rock lagoon definately needed some more consideration but I am intrigued as to what the glowing object is and what the butterflies are up yo. I think that maybe if the water was a more opaque blue colour with less of a reflection quality then the glow of blue object could've given a cool gradient too. As I reckon if you removed the object and just made a pond out of this it would have been a really beautiful nature shot. So to summarise: consider everything around your main object, maybe the water coulda been more bloo. Cool.

Unironically really good, love the aspect ratio and the copious amounts of film grain. The fog works really well too and feels just the perfect density. Why all the trees curving the same way tho? Kinda weird thing to pick up but idk just nit picking. Oh yeah the troll face was a little out of touch but I think it fits really well! Keep it up Piggo haha

Agh fuck this is cool, I've recently been trying to get into drawing and the way you've shaded the clothing is just insane and epic. Even the background and it's simplicity just fits super well. Even the added blood patches are well shaded and implemented. Great work here, Pad - maybe (as an idea) could be cool to see some light sources used in future to try and light up particular parts of bodies, overlap shadows and stuff. Something to learn at least, awesome
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I think we should highlight @PADEX and @MaXenzie this week!
xP2ryNw.jpg

Heavysmirk2.png


I made something this week too
 

Aleks

Vaporwaves Skeletons
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Glad to see the boys still making art! Our bald art father would be proud.
 

Dudu Fadende

Proton
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How do you delete an account by the way?
Every website seems to make it impossible these days.
 

MaXenzie

Sexually attracted to robots
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No one makes art anymore because they know the same 3 people are going to get picked every time so why bother?

back before i was a media dev i used this thread as my main motivator for becoming better with SFM

i made a bunch of shit messes that were near-incomprehensible and then made one good piece out of nowhere and lemon cuntcake was suspicious of me because of the sudden leap in quality

you dont get anything for winning, it's just there to motivate you to do better

How do you delete an account by the way?
Every website seems to make it impossible these days.

you PM alex and blackquill directly, they'll give you a warning that if you delete your account there is no returning and you will be banned if you try to rejoin on an alt
 
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