On the usefulness of free art

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jjp
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On the usefulness of free art

Post by jjp »

This topic started it's life here: http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 541#232541

lonewolff wrote:Compare the availability of 3d models and programming code.
I am now leaving aside the point that there are people who keep their art for themselves for no good reason (especially if it isn't even close to a quality that would make it useful for commercial projects).

Comparing how much art and code is available for free use doesn't make sense. E.g. you can write some general library that will be useful to many people. It is easy for them to extend it, enhance it and use it together with other code. Putting together art from lots of different sources doesn't work, gradually enhancing it is often not possible as well and most important: chances that someone has use for your work are quite a bit lower.

Even if the same amount of art and code existed, you'd still have a harder time to find something that suits your needs. Plus the motivation to do free art is lower. I mean where would you start? Even stuff like trees, plants, crates or barrels is not that general.

Easier to reuse are texture resources, reference pictures (and if you want to consider it art shader code). And of this you do find quite a lot on the internet.
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Post by Aladrin »

jjp wrote: the motivation to do free art is lower.
Is it? I think the motivation is the same in either case: Because you want to help others, and you hope they'll do likewise. Or because you need to advertise your skills.

Seriously, what else is there? The motivation for art and programming is the same when it comes to giving away your work. Or even charging for your work, for that matter.
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Post by jjp »

Aladrin wrote:
jjp wrote: the motivation to do free art is lower.
Is it?
The chances of no one being able to use it are higher. Therefore the motivation for doing art mainly for the purpose of making it available for free is lower. Making something for a project and then releasing the art so others may use it as well again is different.
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Post by Aladrin »

And the chance of duplicating something that's already been done is a lot lower.

How many projects could I start that haven't already been done? It requires a ton of imagination and drive to do that.

With art, however, almost everything produced is unique enough that nobody can say 'that's already been done better.'

I think the art in this topic also goes completely against your argument. It was obviously designed for the purpose of being used in games, and it would be hard to say it is unlikely to be used. Other art, such as a highly stylized humanoid figure, would be more likely to be unusable.

But the same goes for programs. I've written plenty of small apps for myself that nobody else would have -any- use for. It's all a matter of focus. Artists tend not to focus on how useful their art will be, but rather how pleasing it is.
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Post by jjp »

Not at all directed against the art posted in this thread or the fact that it is released for free use: but yes, I think the chances of the stuff actually being used are rather small.
Aladrin wrote:With art, however, almost everything produced is unique enough that nobody can say 'that's already been done better.'
This doesn't make sense :) For art it isn't even possible to define if something is better than something else.

I'll phrase my point differently: art is inheritly case-specific, code not. You can easily throw together different libraries to avoid doing stuff that already has been done. You can't do so with art (well you can, but you'll end up with a "collage-style" that in most cases will look like shit).
Last edited by jjp on Fri Jun 22, 2007 3:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by jacmoe »

You are dead wrong, jjp.

Ever heard of the LowPoly Co-operative?
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Post by jjp »

jacmoe wrote:You are dead wrong, jjp.

Ever heard of the LowPoly Co-operative?
Continuing to explain my unpopular oppinion ;) Yes I have, and taking a look at their stuff and the news archives pretty much confirms my view to me. Within 1 year there were two posts about people using their work. One time some tables and chairs but with self-created textures and the other time an axe and a sign. Of course I guess there'll be some more projects making use of this but if it was significant I think they'd have it in their news.
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Post by Aladrin »

jjp wrote:
Aladrin wrote:With art, however, almost everything produced is unique enough that nobody can say 'that's already been done better.'
This doesn't make sense :) For art it isn't even possible to define if something is better than something else.

I'll phrase my point differently: art is inheritly case-specific, code not. You can easily throw together different libraries to avoid doing stuff that already has been done. You can't do so with art (well you can, but you'll end up with a "collage-style" that in most cases will look like shit).
That's pretty much exactly my point... It almost -can't- be 'already done better'. Unless the 2 artist were striving for exactly the same goal, the chance of 1 being better than the other (in every use case) is almost nil.

I'm not denying that free art (even generated with a specific purpose) is less likely to be used. I'm just saying that there are other factors involved as well on both sides that pretty much negate any advantage for either side.

As for the Low Poly Co-op... eerrr... Why have I never heard of this before? :D -goes to investigate-
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Post by jjp »

Ok, at last I think our oppinions mainly differ in how we express them ;) I don't want to sound too negative about free art.

Something different: taking the point of view of a game developer/programmer probably makes one more itchy about artists being protective about their work than people from other professions. As programmer one is used to the concept of open source and as a game programmer one tends to see the world divided into code people and art people. However, if you look at the big picture: it is not only artists who often don't do work for free, the same goes for practically all other professions as well.
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Post by Aladrin »

I think benefitting from 'working for free' is limited to a very few professions.

Car mechanic, construction worker, CEO... How could any those benefit from donating their work?

Programmers and artists can genuinely expect to get something back from other people in the same community, or from their customers as donations.

Jonathan Coulton is a good example of a music artist who does this. He sells most of his work, but a fairly large portion can be downloaded completely free. By doing good work and using the free-ness to advertise, he's becoming quite popular. (I personally love the Mandelbrot Set song, and many programmers love the Code Monkey song.) In addition, since he is one of very few who do this, he gets free promotion by the fans because they respect him for it.

Let's face it. If we didn't benefit -at all- from giving away our code, even if only by feeling good about doing something for others, we wouldn't do it. But it also is great advertising of our abilities, and an opportunity to grow our skillset. Linux Torvalds is a great example of this. He went from a college kid making a hack OS to being paid to maintain one the most popular (geek-wise, anyhow) OS's in existence.

As for artists, this same kind of fame and advertising is possible. American McGee isn't a perfect example, since he didn't do it for free, but he's known as one of the best level designers for FPS's -ever-. He got so famous they started using his name to advertise games. American McGee's Alice is one of the coolest/creepiest games ever. I've seen a few people that have done free levels for Quake/etc and got job offers, but I don't remember their names. (I'm not really into that scene, but their work was amazing.)
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Post by Professor420 »

If you build it, they will come.

I've had a dozen inquiries about using the assets I open-sourced at www.robg3d.com commercially in different games and whatnot.

I've started (and am about to officially open) an open-source repository of fan mod art at www.twcenter.net .

There is less free art because, you're right, it is more specific; to really use it, you have to make the source formats and assets available, you have to take pics and screenshots, etc., and you lose any uniqueness you have to the visuals of your game. Blame project managers who get good artists and then the project dies, and nothing happens with the art. If you spend enough time you can come up with enough assets from failed games and mods to make a boatload of total conversions. However, code, you can find in tutorials, is easy to release (because its natively somewhat fit for consumption if you release the source code with a bit of documentation).

It has to do with the nature of art but only in the psychological sense. Artists need to be more open about releasing their work (their mediocre stuff as much as their good stuff, and let's face it, most non-professional work is mediocre). Project leaders need to be responsible to open-source the art when the project fails and be realistic when the project fails.

I feel that game artists who DO make their work available are setting a great example, and I hope more artists follow suit. I cannot imagine just throwing away the assets I used on Blood and Iron... what's the point when others can benefit from them? Its pure waste.
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Post by Jerky »

I think precedence comes into play. For the OS world, it is commonplace to release your code. Its a community thing. Moreover, there is a long history behind it. With art, there is no community. Its an individual thing. It just hasnt been done before (very often, or very successfully), and most good art tools cost money. Artists who pay for their tools do not want to release their work because, well, its worth money (to them). They invest money into their tools to create quality content so that it has value. Its very arguable that content made with free tools is not as good as content made with commercial tools. I don't want to start a discussion about it, 'cause we all know that that is the common belief (whether its true or not).

I do think times are changing, however. More people are using blender than ever before. It is being recognized as a professional-quality tool. Google bought sketchup and has created a whole community with free sketchup content. I think its happening. Scott (iirc the guy behind the Low Poly Coop) and Rob are just the pioneers, but it will happen more often. The art world will start to become more like the OS world, but only to an extent. They are two entirely different mediums, and really are two different balls of wax.

Regarding what Professor420 said: Now, as a project manager, I want quality control over things. Since, in a non-paid project/community, you can only expect to get learners, most of their stuff is not up to the standards set. This means I don't want people to see them until they are better looking because it represents the project/community as a whole. So, our assets are under wraps for now. However, if we were to disband, I would, as Rob did, make sure that they don't go to waste and release them. The same, actually, goes for our code, but thats another discussion.
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Post by jacmoe »

I think there is a difference in how we deal with what we make.

Programmers does not (well, not so much!) fall in love with their own creation - maybe as a whole, but not the code itself (as much).

When you draw a picture, model a creature, etc. it is easier to become emotionally attached to it.

Programmers often release code into the Open, hoping that others will help fix it! :P

It is more or less impossible to do the same thing with art. :wink:
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Post by jacmoe »

Except when you categorise your art as artwork. :wink:

Then we're talking about a craft, just like programming can be viewed as a craft.
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Post by jjp »

jacmoe wrote:Then we're talking about a craft, just like programming can be viewed as a craft.
More often than not game art is mainly craft I guess. The most extreme case I have in mind is an artist at EA who was doing for a month nothing but painting shoes of basketball-players ;)
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Post by lodi »

Well I actually agree with jjp completely on this one. Imagine if you had five artists (that liked to do things end-to-end -- sketching, modelling, texturing, rigging) and you were *paying* them to work on a project. Even then you'd have a huge problem getting them all to work together and come up with a consistent product. The truth is, every artist has a unique style and it's *very* difficult to imitate someone else. This is why even in commercial products you tend to specialize into concept artists, texture artists, and so on. And still it takes a huge amount of cooperation.

This is what jjp is saying: if you pull a car model and a building model off the internet, even though these are two completely different things (nevermind two car models), they still probably don't look visually consistent in terms of polycount, textures, whatever. The only way I can see this working is if some artist puts out enough content (20 car models) that you don't have to mix and match too much. I saw a link the other day of someone putting together a very full-featured tileset that you could use in a 2d game to make an elaborate 'village' type map. If you built your game around staying within a village environment the whole time then you'd have a consistent and professional looking product (you'd still have to carefully match up the character sprites somehow).

Here's the other problem. Let's say you pick up two disparate software projects and start hacking away at making them work together (ogre and some kind of additional lib for sound, networking, gui...). After a few weeks you can set up the necessary glue code and noone will see the mess (except maybe a handful of other developers). Users just see the end result. With 3d modelling, the users DO see the glue. Once you know what you're doing it's usually easier to just redo the model than to try and correct the parts you don't like.

Art just isn't as modular as code. This has nothing to do with artists, it's just the nature of the world. Music is the same way: you can reuse a drum loop or a rip off a chord progression that you like, but other than that you have to write every song from scratch. It has nothing to do with ego, this is just what's necessary to come up with a consistent and pleasing product.
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Post by sinbad »

There is one place where it works very well - mods for existing games. It works precisely because there are already standards in place, both in terms of the accepted poly count, style (within certain broad churches anyway), ways of tagging usage semantics like gun placements, standard animations, etc.

It would not be impossible for the open community to do something similar in a more generalised way. Categorise assets, have standard sizes (physical and poly counts) and usage semantics, standard animation groups, etc. People could build their projects to accept those assets (in similar ways that they sometimes re-use game formats), and artists have a standard to work to. It's not impossible, no-one's done it yet is all so you just have a chaotic situation where everyone does what they want. I actually think it would be a very positive thing for the artists as well as the 'consumers' of those assets, the former for getting their work out there and also learning how to work within given rule constraints, which is essential for working on real projects.
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Post by jacmoe »

OK. I think there is a huge amount of hair-splittery in this topic.

Professional game projects will probably not use free art. And that is obvious, really.

However, there's a lot of small scale projects out here, usually run by one or two programmers.

Yes: programmers.

We could really use some decent artwork here! :)


Then there's artwork for which the source files are given: They are a huge help for *lesser artists*. They get a chance to see how others are doing it.

I think that you are discussing this from a wrong perspective. :wink:
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