Is the Gallery section starting to resemble 3DWH?

hobbnob · 20 Jun 2010, 17:11

@chris fullmer said:

lets at least get [WIP] added to all titles so we can easily ignore them

My point exactly, people aren't willing to help out anymore.

Chris Fullmer · 20 Jun 2010, 17:21

Hmm, not necesarily. I've never been a great help in the gallery. Its not where my strength is. I help everyone vey often in pretty much every other forum. Spending time telling people how to light something differently in a model is not something I really enjoy doing. I'm also not that fond of WIP's in general. So I'd rather ignore them. BUT, putting [WIP] in the title (like quite a few people including yourself) are doing makes it easy to ignore WIP threads. AND (this is the part you conveniently ignored in your quote above) it also makes it easy for people who ARE interested in those threads to target them and follow them closely.

How many questions have you answered in the ruby forum? Should I think less of you for it? No, of course not. So please don't think less of me if I choose to stick with what I'm better at.

hobbnob · 20 Jun 2010, 17:27

That's fair enough Chris, and I am sorry for taking your quote out of context. What I am trying to say is that there are many people out there who are good at modelling on su and who could help out, but they simply don't because they have something against newbies, as many people have said before.

NOLASaintTM · 20 Jun 2010, 17:31

But what about non-newbies? They get ignored sometimes as well, so its not really just a focus on newbie users...

hobbnob · 20 Jun 2010, 17:47

If by non-newbies you mean users who aren't new to su but aren't considered 'experts' then they are very much in the same boat as the newbies IMHO, not very much critical posts from the experts. By critical I do not mean "it's crap", I mean "this need's work, and this needs changing to this". A very good example of what I consider a 'good post' was from liam887. He said what he thought of the work, and gave advice on how I could improve. It's people like this that I came to this forum for. Good modellers that are willing to help out a guy in need

pbacot · 20 Jun 2010, 18:00

I find that people here are very helpful. I think it involves asking a real question and that depends on the OP.

Also don't forget the WIP's by experienced modelers/renderers. There are many of these and I enjoy seeing the processes they use. Usually these posts are prefaced with something like: "hey guys I'm trying a new NPR technique, still working it out, what do you think?". Or someone may show the beginnings of a very complex model like Disc World, a movie set, a helicopter, or train. It's inspiring to see this, and makes sense when presented in context. Of course many such WIP's are presented artfully at the same time, e.g. by clay renders.

NOLASaintTM · 20 Jun 2010, 18:41

@hobbnob said:

If by non-newbies you mean users who aren't new to su but aren't considered 'experts' then they are very much in the same boat as the newbies...

That is the group of people i am talking about...

EscapeArtist · 20 Jun 2010, 18:43

It seems that there might be a prejudice against certain models, i.e. "yet another car model". I got into SU because of architecture, but I really enjoy trying to model different things with it - architecture only being about 70% of my output. To discourage or ignore modelers based on a dislike of non-architectural (or whatever one's preference is) items is not a good thing. I also hope this doesn't into a "pro" vs. "newbie" thing. Who decides what constitutes a gallery-worthy render? Does it have to be a native SU render?

Frankly if we could implement a rating system similar to that used over at the CGSociety Forums that allows the community to judge and vote what gets into the gallery it would be best, not necessarily an admin (not insinuating anything at all) that may have a bias or prejudice against models not of a certain type. IMO a gallery work should be a finished work subject to C&C, not a WIP; making it into the gallery should be a rarity, best of the best as it were, not just any old nice SU render of another house with a watercolor style.

Gaieus · 20 Jun 2010, 20:51

God save admins from judging...

Slimdog · 20 Jun 2010, 23:25

Just leave it the way it is now. We will never be able to police people on putting titles on there threads or getting them to put there threads in the right sub forum. And if we make sub forums this just makes more work for the people who run sketchucation which isn't a good thing.

Gaieus · 21 Jun 2010, 07:27

Well, this is what moderators are for.
Actually, some better organization makes their job easier. And tagging topics is also something that makes it easer for us.

Yesterday Jim started to tag all "how to..." topics with the [Tutorial] tag. This tagging makes it possible to list [Plugin]'s in the search etc.

(Note that I am not necessarily on either "side" in this but trying to "provoke" people to express their thought about it)

numbthumb · 21 Jun 2010, 09:57

I am still pretty undecided about it. If this is about "rearranging" sketchucation and making it more organized, and as long as it´s not intended for the sole purpose of "segregation", so be it.

BTW I used to think WIP meant "work in progress" - until that "wanking" issue

Mike Lucey · 21 Jun 2010, 10:16

@numbthumb said:

...... BTW I used to think WIP meant "work in progress" - until that "wanking" issue

This is a good debate and I imagine we will reach a consensus on what is the best thing to do ALSO it looks like we are holding on to our sense of humor ..... most important

ScottPara · 21 Jun 2010, 11:27

I agree that something needs to be done. Most of us are mature enough to take critisim, whether it is positive or negative. If you post work in a WIP gallery it should be open for comments, otherwise why are you posting it at all? If it is in a gallery and by you considered finished, be open to comments. If that same work makes it into a "Showcase" gallery then it has already been deemed worthy of being in this arena and should be closed for comments. If someone can not be mature enough to hear a possible negative comment then don't post work. I think the reason some posts do not get much attention is that some do not deserve it. I will not point fingers but slightly modifying another persons work does not give you the right to collect all the praise for the complete model. Be respectful to the original modeler and state what you have done to modify it and then that portion of the work can be judged. Don't import other file format models and claim they are "your" work (most anyone who has been around long enough knows that is not yours). If the model was built in another modeling software, then imported into sketchup only to be rendered in lets say twilight for sketchup, then why is it on here at all? Should it not be on the forum for the modeling software or the twilight forum? Sketchup was no part if it other than a bridge to twilight. While I love this forum and have learned much from it I feel it is time for it to evolve. We have as much of a responsibility to showcase outstanding works in a place where they can be seen easily by industry professionals looking for talent, as we do for regulating crap.

NOLASaintTM · 21 Jun 2010, 23:52

I really think the "experts" dislike(hate is such a strong word) newbies, and want them ignored. Isn't the point of the section to get constructive criticism? How can anyone improve when and possibly become better if no one wants to help?
P.S. Hope you know "wanker" is a really derogative phrase here in New Orleans.....just FYI so no one gets offended

baz · 22 Jun 2010, 04:10

@hobbnob said:

lol I believe you were the one calling newbies a bunch of wankers. . .

au contraire my dear hobnob, i was calling the 'wankers' wankers. How can you say that no one wants to help the newbies. Its patently obvious, if you care to look, how much willingness is displayed by the members here. Check a few pages of 'unanswered' posts, only about 1 in 50 is a newbie forum post, I think that says something.
Have a quick look at this short thread, the poster (on his first post), asked if someone would model a gazebo for him. He received several strong hints, some helpful advice and a model to download to get him started! This was 6 days ago, he has not replied. Rude I think, or maybe just an idiot. What do you think?

baz
ps Jean Lemires gazebo model has been loaded 17 times to date so someone is getting knowledge out of it.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=29002

pps: Definition of wanker:
°(British AU NZ slang pejorative) An idiot, a stupid, annoying or ineffectual person.

solo · 22 Jun 2010, 04:14

@unknownuser said:

pps: Definition of wanker:
°(British AU NZ slang pejorative) An idiot, a stupid, annoying or ineffectual person.

Forgot the other ex colonial country, South Africa.

wanker!

baz · 22 Jun 2010, 05:21

@solo said:

Forgot the other ex colonial country, South Africa.

wanker!

how rude pete, anyway, should'nt that be 'vanker'?

Chris Fullmer · 22 Jun 2010, 08:48

I don't understand why a WIP threasd is considered a place to ask for help and expect the whole community to chime in. A WIP thread will only have its regular followers reading it. Once someone decides they are not interested in that work that is in progress, they will no longer follow that WIP thread. And will therefore never answer a question that is posed in that thread because they will never see it. Wouldn't it make much more sense to ask questions in separate threads, in the forums designed to ask questions and ge answers (the Newbie and regular SketchUp discussions forums).

I really dislike (most) WIP threads for the most part. I dislike them when they are a mishmash of indecisiveness. I dislike the ones that go from showing off stuff that is barely begun, then asking questions, then showing another peoject that is equally barely started then more bragging shots, then looking for compliments, then posting more questions, and on an on. Its all a circular mishmash of what I generally think of as separate threads.

Start a new post that asks a question about how to do something on the model. Then once it gets answered, thank everyone for their help (and their WILL be help if a direct question is asked in its own separate, well thought out thread). Then later, once the project is to an interesting place, go show it off in a gallery thread. Even if it is only part of the whole project, its probably ok to make a thread for it that shows off that nicely complete and well detailed piece. Then as more questions arise, feel free to keep making new threads asking new questions. Also do a quick search first though to see if someone else has posted the same question. If you don't see anything, then post the question.

I think many of us here enjoy answering questions. But speaking for myself (as I've hinted at in the previous posts), I'd really rather not have to follow a 30 page thread to find a few questions in it once and a while. I'd rather the questions be separated out into their own topics. And gallery images be put as their own topics in the gallery.

For me this is the easiest to manage and follow method of posting projects and asking for help.

But please go easy on me and my lame opinions. They are not designed to hurt anyone's feelings, so I apologize if anyone feels I'm trying to slight them. I'm really not. And to the people who really like the WIP method, thats fine. Just realize that this is the reason I rarely chime in on WIP threads. Its too indecisive of a posting format. Questions, comments, feedaback, switching projects all the time, on and on. I think its an innefecient strategy. And if I don't even like the work that is in progress, then there is no way I'm going to read each post to see if the original poster has a question I can help answer.

Chris

(But Chris, you said you dislike 'most' WIP threads... True!, there are some I am interested in. And they generaly don't ask questions. THey just show the Work In Progress. Dolphus's train thread is great!, Paul Russum's church thread is amazing (I've been following it for years and I always look forward to the newest posts), and anything that SilverShadow posts. Those are lots of fun to follow. They show works in progress and leave out the rest).

Now go back and think about the first paragraph again. Its an important one.

Andrija Posarić · 22 Jun 2010, 10:04

Hello folks

This is really interesting read. As a loooong time SU user, since version 3 I believe, I feel like a senior here and here comes my rant ;

I must admit, that I come here allmost every day, but I don't post my work here as often as I would/should, it is just over crowded in the gallery, there is a huge amount of high quality wip threads, a lot of google warehouse models modifications and most of them are not finished, but open for discussion, which is really good, and it gives a strong base for quality debates.

I agree with most of you, there should be a WIP gallery, for constructive critic. There is a cronical lack of CONSTRUCTIVE critic around here
There should also be a gallery for finished work here, also open for critic, where the younger population could learn a lot, and olso the older ones, and proffesionals from each other, and it wouldn't be crowded with threads like ; "oh look, I made a cube in three dimensions, and I painted two of the sides in brick-like pattern, and put it all on gray background, and rendered it for 4 hours in the latest Vray4SU version plugin" ( no dissrespect to anyone, but it is not inspirational to anyone ).

I browse most of the 3d galleries searching for inspiration, and I get a good creative kick in the ass when I see high quality work, and I am affraid that it gets burried in bunch of mediocre, or unfinished posts here.

Just my 2 cents, I didn't mean to offend anyone, just some constructive criticism

Cheers folks