Usage of 3D Art

[Illuminarch]

I like to use 3D art in my RPGs because it is accessible to me; my free hand skills range from mediocre to deplorable. However, there are a lot of drawbacks as mentioned above, particularly the problem with photorealism in most 3D artwork. When done well, the results can be astonishing. When done just slightly off, however, the effect is significantly tarnished. For whatever reason, even cruder pencil and ink drawings above the level of stick figures don't suffer as much from this.

The biggest problem, IMO, is that for the average 3D artist, it's only about half accessible. For instance, I'm pretty good at cooking up scenes in Vue, Bryce, and Poser, but I'm stuck with using textures, figures, and elements that have already been created by someone else. This drastically limits your creative expression (and having worked in SF, horror, Dark Fantasy, and story-book fantasy, I don't know of a genre that can escape from this), unless you've got both the technical familiarity and artistic skill (oops, back to stage one!) to do it yourself.

Naturally, this isn't a problem to the consumnate 3D artists, but it is a huge obstacle to the casual user. After all, what good is the ease and flexibility of something like Poser when you can pay someone to draw something exactly as you picture it for the same amount of money? And that assumes that similar textures, clothing, gadgets, background, whatever is already available on the software market.

[daMoose_Neo]

...something like Poser when you can pay someone to draw something exactly as you picture it for the same amount of money?

Or less.
My CG artwork cost me $40 per piece. The Major Character artwork is simply STUNNING, I so love the guys the drew them. The cost of doing Mark Jarus, one of the characters, in Poser would be INSANE. Two models, one for him, one for a gargoyle, posing/animating a trenchcoat flapping in the breeze, lighting him with his glowing fist and energy pouring out...
Can Poser do that for $40? If I were the one animating, I'd charge quite a bit more myself ^_^

[ukgpublishing]

I use 3d art extensively in our Scifi products for a number of reasons.

The main reason however is that when I design a starship and want a frontal, top down, side view and wireframe model drawing the image once in 3d allows me to rotate easily and reduces the need to duplicate effort.

I agree that their is a of bad 3d art out their (hehe some off it may be mine) but used in the correct context, and not mixed with 2d traditional art, it can work.

Are you talking about the space ship in DWE-C Darkwing Class Escort? I think that makes lots of sense. And thats a nice looking model!

best,

Lynn

The Darkwing and all of our starships, Pegasus 29 Station and more. I also use a lot of 3d models to render top down views of furniture and such for floorplan tiles.

I'm glad you liked it :-)