Is Quixel cheating?
I'm about to finish school and start my true portfolio but have a couple of questions first. I am always excited to try new programs and recently used the Quixel suite to create some textures. I was very happy with the results but I'm afraid of using any of the resulting assets in my projects as I was told using Quixel was cheating and it would be seen in a negative light to use it in my pipeline. I don't really understand this as I have a strong background in Photoshop, and still use it for the more refined work. Should I just stick with photoshop for my future projects?
Replies
I'm sure some people considered zbrush to be 'cheating' when it first came out.
if a 3500 dollar program is going to save you five minutes that's hard to justify to a employer, there is a calculation to everything.
The thing to consider is that if you have created everything in your portfolio using Quixel, or other 3rd party software, then you essentially come with the caveat that you're only as good as the software you're using.
I'd say from a juniors perspective, try and use as little 3rd party software as possible to show that you can work with the bare minimum. You can use all the bells and whistles in the future.
Yeah I do think it's important to have a good grasp of manual texturing first. But there's no harm in experimenting with Ddo, even if it's just to set up the base files/layers to work in.
"Cheating" as in knowing a better, faster workflow is good! We (as employers) want such knowledge! People who know state of the art workflows aways have an edge, because there's enough juniors (but also seniors) who don't bother to keep their skills sharp.
However, you need to know the rules before you can break them. Learn to do things manually before you automate or take shortcuts. This way you ensure that you understand what the tool does. This lets you predict the outcomes and the time you save. It also gives you an understanding how the tool affects other areas, such as quality.
Only if you understand this, you can make a decision if a tool helps in a given situation or not. This is what sets you apart from button-pushers who don't understand what's going on and who rely on memorization ("I have no idea why, but results are great when I use setting XY!") rather than on true understanding (i.e. knowing what and why you're doing something).
Sometimes it's good to know how to walk before you start running.
That being said, whatever makes you produce awesome results fast is a good thing and nobody would blame you for it.
Thanks again guys.
Rather than looking at it as simply another piece of software like ZBrush, I see it as being more like for Photoshop as Mel scripts are for Maya.
It would be perfectly fine to create a script to auto-rig a basic human model, but it would very bad to get such a script from someone else and rely on it without actually knowing how to rig yourself. That's the kind of situation I see this as.
Find whatever enhances your workflow and roll with it but try to know just what premise the additional software is trying to enhance since they may not be available to you 100% of the time. What everyone else pretty much said: Try to learn the foundational skills and techniques so you can work smarter as you variate from the core skill that the software is trying to enhance.
If you are capable of making the same quality of art without dDo, then no, it is not cheating. You're just increasing the speed of your pipeline. If you can't create textures without dDo, then it could be a problem from a knowledge standpoint.
The end result is all that matters. The overwhelming majority (pulled out of my ass) of people just want stuff to look good.
If you use ddo, make sure you also have work illustrating that you know how to texture without it.
Also, a mediocre ddo job is SOOOOO easy to spot. Keep that in mind.
Is it cheating to use something like the Quixel Suite as a productivity tool? Nope. It saves you time and gives you great results. Win-Win!
Is it cheating to use it for your portfolio? IMO, yes. More specifically when referring to dDo. Your portfolio is meant to demonstrate your skills and understanding of your craft. If EVERYTHING you do relies on dDo, that means that there is no way to tell that you truly understand texturing and surfacing.
Of course, using it for some things, provided you clearly demonstrate that you know how to do great work without it is probably more acceptable. Even better solution, call out specifically what things you used dDo on if you use it.
Personally, I don't use dDo for portfolio work for that reason.
Yeah this is pretty much it.
I think its really important to understand what dDo is. First and foremost its a toolset to automate a lot of the grunt work artists would normally do by hand. Setting up and managing layers over multiple input types, using baked content (normal map, ao, etc) to create base layer masks for various texture effects, providing very good base scan content so you don't have to create your own. All of this stuff you should be able to do on your own, and if you don't know how, you should probably spend more time learning how before relying totally on tools like dDo or substance painter. As again, if you get to a studio and don't have access to those tools, and lack the basic fundamentals of material creation, you'll be in trouble.
I would say that if you're just loading dDo up, applying some preset materials and calling it done, you're cheating yourself as much as anything.
If you're using dDo to automate a lot of the menial tasks you would otherwise be doing anyway, then its simply a huge productivity boost and only a fool would think that is cheating.
Sorry, but I call BS on this, at least when we're talking about putting real effort into the tool, not simply loading it up, pressing a few buttons and calling done (again I don't think this helps anyone). Your work should speak for itself, no matter how you create it. Its a very slippery slope when you go down the "which software is ok to use for portfolio" path.
At the end of the day, you need to show you can create high quality work, regardless of the tools that you use. Avoiding tools like dDo that can cut a lot of the menial work out of the process is a pretentious exercise in futility. Sure, its great to challenge yourself to work with very basic tools, but you don't get gold stars in the games industry for making the process harder than it needs to be.
What if you spend 5 times longer making the same asset at the same quality simply because you refuse to use a tool that speeds up your workflow? Are you going to say on your portfolio "I didn't use dDo but I spent 5 days on it instead of 1"? If not, how is that any more honest?
I think its very important to remember that tools like dDo don't actually do the work for you. First off, you need to feed them good art content to start with, garbage in, garbage out, as they say. Secondly, I think the most important skill when it comes to material creation is not how well you paint, not which tools you know how to use or any of this stuff, but rather your taste level and how well you understand material properties and your ability to recreate those materials in a convincing manner. dDo can't automate that taste level, and whenever I've been involved in hiring material artists, taste level is the most important thing. Technical skills are always secondary as they are more easily taught/learned.
I'm sorry I have to disagree a bit. While quixel is a tool it is not the same as using 3d max or zbrush. 3dmax is not an automation toolset. You have to do the majority of your work by hand in 3d max. Zbrush is a sculpting toolset that allows you to create high detail models quickly and the work is done mostly by hand. DdO is an automation toolset. The purpose is to automate the majority of the work so as to speed up the work flow. If you don't learn how to model or sculpt you can't use zbrush or 3dmax at all. If you don't learn how to texture you can still use DdO to make ok quality textures. Similarly Marvelous Designer is an automation toolset. It uses cloth simulation to automate the cloth sculpting process.
Basically the bottom line is before using any sort of automation toolset (like quixel suite or marvelous desinger) learn how to do by hand to a high quality. There is no guarantee the place you get hired at will have specialized automation toolsets so you better know how to do it by hand.
Case in point. Uv mapping. There was a point where you had to break the model into pieces to unwrapp it properly, or the old Paul Steed Method of Editpoly/UVmap stack mountain. But now we have tool that streamline the whole process.
how is DDO any different than the evolution of a toolset?
Artists should embrace automation if they intend to be working in the future. The art meme that you can become stronger by doing things the hard way is a whimsical platitude, the reality is that to do this job professionally you need to deliver good shit fast. Quaint principles cost you.
There is a very large difference between using a photo as a texture overlay and having a program generate diffuse, spec, and gloss for you based on presets and your model. DdO isn't cheating, but if you can't do the same thing by hand then you shouldn't be using it. Ideally DdO is a baseline that you would edit until you get something great not a replacement for the texturing process.
@ Amsterdam Hilton Hotel - I never said max doesn't have automation in it. I said the majority of the work is done by hand in max. Also I am simply saying DdO is great for making a game it speeds up the texturing process a lot, but if you are learning you should do it by hand first.
"cheating" is ripping models from another game and kitbashing them together as your own original work. It's taking copyright photos or textures and using them in your work.
Like many of you said, is your skills and not the tool.
I think you missed my sarcastic point. Having a camera generate the process of painting a photo-realistic texture, is pretty similar to having dDo generate some photo compositing presets. If anything, using the photo is the more egregious cheat.
You're saying that if an individual cannot composite some photos together in photoshop manually, that they shouldn't be allowed to use a script to do the process faster. I'm saying that if you can't hand-paint a photo-realistic texture from scratch, you shouldn't be allowed to use photos as a shortcut. Being able to paint by hand is a much more valuable skill than being able to do some photo compositing.
This whole argument is ridiculous because photo compositing, no matter how you do it, isn't ever "by hand".
You cannot exactly or easily paint consistent PBR metallic values which is what i love dDo for. I love having material value's that i can save presets for and not have to fiddle with specular maps
Yes you can. Everyone acts like it's hard to do proper spec values, but it isn't. As long as you are withing in range it works. You don't need to have super exact specular values and even if you feel the need there are countless charts for that purpose. It gets even easier when you go to the metalness workflow where the only thing you have control over is the spec of the metal. Again as long as you are in the range for the metal spec values you are correct. It's a lot more work to get a well painted gloss map made.
That is not exactly what i mean, i like having a database so i can keep consistency across my models, or perhaps i just suck ? lol
Yeah that is a nice feature, but it's not like you need DdO to do that. A lot of studios have photoshop swatches that they can just pull from.
I think DdO is a really cool tool. The reason I don't like to use it so much is because I am sacrificing a whole bunch of control and decision making to automation. I find I end up with a lower quality product when I use it as opposed to doing it by hand.
If people really want to keep automating thing you could automate a large part character pipline for realistic games. Scan in the actor you want for the character, use marvelous designer to quickly generate clothes, use zremesher to retopo, use an auto UV program to unwrap, bake, then use DdO to texture everything. With that character artists become more like technicians than artists. I don't know about you, but my ideal job is not to make tweaks to automated art. This is another reason why I am personally drawn to stylized art.
Honestly I think there is a big misconception here about what dDo actually is and what it can be used for.
The base core is a handy system for defining base values and working with layer masks across all of your texture maps. If you want to, you can completely disregard the megatexture scans and use your own values, you can paint your own masks and have have them propagated to all the texture maps, etc. So even if you strip it to its core its still very useful.
I guess if you paint every pixel in every map unique by hand it won't help your workflow much, but the basic core automation should be useful for anyone who uses base values and layer masks, which I assume nearly everyone does.
Stylization is another thing that isn't mutually exclusive to tools like dDo either, again you can make your own preset materials and effects that look exactly how you like. Unless your stylization comes from the specific way your brush strokes are painted, in that case that is very difficult to automate. For instance, the Airborn guys do a lot of very stylized work texture work, and they've managed to almost entirely automate the process. I won't talk too much about this, Steffen can pop in if he so desires.
PBR, normal maps, sculpting etc.. I've always had the "I can just paint this!" nagging whenever I try it out.
Process doesn't matter as much as the final results. I don't care if the model was scanned or the textures photographed as long as what the artist intends to communicate gets communicated.
I also don't know that I would call it automated art. Ddo and SD allows artists to leverage decisions they made earlier in the creative process in a non-destructive way.
Marvelous designer isn't automatic either. It's a software that lets you make clothing like a fashion designer, it lets you spend your time in the design space. It's a vastly more intuitive way to create virtual clothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez-YcVg5MnE
Well, you can to an extent. However there are certain things that are much, much more difficult to accurately paint than they are to model or sculpt. Like complex hard surface work if you need normal maps for modern shaders, painting isn't really an option there (as its nearly impossible to paint in the shading compensation that a baked normal map gives you).
Sculpting is really just painting in 3d, so I'm pretty surprised that you would have an aversion to it, maybe try it out again with that mindset.
Personally I'm sort of the opposite, anything that I can model in 3d rather than paint, I do.
Yes, absolutely. I think that some people have this sort of preconceived notion that if they aren't painting every pixel in the texture map, its no longer art. I'm not talking about anyone specifically, but this is the general impression I get whenever these discussions come up. Personally, I think this is a rather narrow view of what art is, and the less time you spend with the more menial aspects, the more time you can focus on the design and creative parts of the process.
I don't think the goal of any of these tools is to remove the creative aspect from the artist, but rather allow the artist to focus less on the technical points and more on the artistic.
When I said I prefer sylized art I was referring to being able to sculpt everything on a character more so than the texturing side.
Oh for sure, there is probably still a lot of room to further improve the workflows there and improve how intuitive that process is. I think this is something that the Quixel guys will continue to evolve. You should drop some feedback for them in the Quixel subforum if you haven't already.
dDo is a timesaver, not a "press button get art" tool. If you use it as such, it shows.