Cheat or not?

ancapagan

i'm wondering , it is considered cheat if we use base mesh from someone else or use alphas and others source in zbrush?
or its totally ok to do it so in this industry?
i kinda feel bad to use someone else base mesh/imm/alphas and then hearing someone "u did awesome" but then again at school the teacher told us on the industry you receive a lame base mesh as start off and then on zbrush twitch they say "usying alpha is cheating" so now i'm a bit confused if its ok or not
p.s i might have bad grammar but its because my english is limited

Alemja

So long as the end result is not 1:1 the same final result, it's not cheating, you still have to learn and understand how to use that stuff.

You're teacher is somewhat right, you might make an armor set that is based around a body done ages ago, or have a rig that you have to adhere too. It's not lame though, it's about making things quicker and more optimized.

As for the zbrush twitch streamer, that's just like... their opinion, man. Do whatever you want to do, to get the result you want.

CrackRockSteady

If you're new to 3d art or if you're trying to learn some new technique I would recommend not "cheating" as you'll be skipping important steps needed to really understand what you're trying to do.

If you already have a base knowledge of what you're doing, for example if you have a solid foundation of anatomy knowledge as a character artist and it's not something you're trying to learn, then go ahead and cheat, use a base model as a jumping off point.

Especially in a professional/production environment, there is no "cheating".  Use every trick up your sleeve, beg and borrow (but don't steal) to get the highest quality work done in the shortest time possible.

JordanN

ancapagan said:

i'm wondering , it is considered cheat if we use base mesh from someone else or use alphas and others source in zbrush?
or its totally ok to do it so in this industry?

Alphas, as in the brush stamps/stencils used to add final detail on models?

That can't be right. I don't know anyone who sculpts every detail by hand and doing so would take an eternity.

Alchemical

If you're learning, you don't cheat. Make all of it yourself (depending on what you're learning). Then when you have to cheat, you can cheat well. What counts as cheating specific to what you want to do, I wouldn't know. Just don't take shortcuts when learning.

ancapagan

CrackRockSteady im kind of noob, as i am trying to learn better the anatomy 
Alchemical  yes ,im still learning and its feels wierd to use source at least at the moment
but im glad to see "cheat" is ok, in the future i will use base meshes and alphas for sure thank you for the response, it helped me to understend better
Alemja  thank you too!! this is a big help!
JordanN yes exacly and i dont know this guy on pixologic twitch he was doing a 3d model for printing and at some point he said usying alpha and others things is cheating  

JordanN

An actual Pixologic employee or someone related to Zbrush saying that is strange. Right on their website they offer free Alphas for anyone to download. 
https://pixologic.com/zbrush/downloadcenter/alpha/

Are you sure you might not have been hearing something else? 

Alemja

If it was on a stream, it could have just been another artist who was hosted by Zbrush and not an official Pixologic employee.

Tommy85

Its all about having an efficient workflow, doing everything by hand when everyone else is using alphas is not efficient and its definitely not cheating. 

This streamer that said that is probably very unemployed as he would probably use 5+ months on an character asset.

ancapagan

yes, it was on pixologic twitch and he was doing for 3d printing a tree girl something like that, i cant remeber his name, but he got me confused when he said that

almighty_gir

this is game art maaan.

do whatever is fastest, looks best, and is most efficient. fuck the haters.

Prime8

It's only cheating if you claim that you made all the brushes/alphas, base meshes whatever.
On the other hand, if you make everything by yourself you can point it out to show that you can do it, thinking of portfolio work.

Elithenia

I think I know who the streamer is, and he has done this for many many years. He can also take all the time in the world to create and do exactly what he wants. 
However, using alphas CAN be 'cheating' but it can also not be. it is down to how you use it and what you do with them.
There's plenty of cloth fold alphas as an example. You can use them, but you still need to work on top of them to get a right feel for what you are currently working on.
See it as a help, not the end result.

As others have said. If you're learning for your own benefit, try to make as much of it as possible from scratch, using all the references you can find etc. If you're doing it for money/work/commissions etc... then do what's fastest, looks best, gets you the desired results etc... 

PixelMasher

all that matters is the end result. In a production environment you are not going to be very popular if you take 4x as long to finish a character as the other artists, because you were hand sculpting every fold, stitch or wrinkle. 99% of the time with finished pieces you cant even tell if it was achived by hand or with alphas, procedurals or some other method. 

Statements like "its cheating" are totally derived from having an ego and thinking you are better because you are taking the hard route. This type of mindset is what usually seperates a junior from a senior. While a junior is struggling to get 2-3 portfolio pieces done by pixel fucking and noodling on every inconsequential detail by hand, a senior has finished 5-6 pieces of AAA quality production art using "cheats"

in a studio, people share assets, alphas, textures, models and kitbash a shit ton to save time. work life balance is important and most of the time, done is better than perfect as long as the overall quality bar is met. 

heres my defnintion of cheating: buying a model off turbo squid and re-selling it unchanged or just posting it and taking credit for it. 

from an environment artists perspective, i see this debate about using asset packs or mega scans librarys, people asking if its cheating. Its all about the end result, oftentimes overall composition, lighting, layout and object placement are far more important than if that branch or rock was modeled by hand. context and the big picture is everything.

ancapagan

amazing! thank you all for the time you took to answer! i will definitely do in my own as much as i can and use alphas and things i paid for them thank you! 

Neox

in production, unless you are leading the character department. the chances are hight that you will not touch the basemesh. A ton of characters will have to be based on this one, it is a crucial part in production and makes a lot of things easier. If everybody had their own basemesh, good  luck transferring the lowpoly to new shapes, good luck transferring the skinning from one lowpoly to the next character in line. A lot of stuff goes down the drain is every artist just wants to express themselves.

The same with alphas. I mean, for your personal art you can develop your own basemesh and your own alphas.
But this stuff helps with consistency in production. Overwatch for example has a set of brushes that everybody uses. Dirt, Scratches, Leather, you name it. We even produced standardized floaters for screwheads, rivets, insets etc to make things more consistent on our end.

PixelMasher

Such savage points @Neox , especially regarding consistency.

also, when it comes to textures and materials a lot of the time most artists are not even supposed to make their own from scratch, but rather pull from a curated library of base materials that are already properly calibrated to look consistent in the engine. Even with PBR being the standard, Its still really common to see artists not understanding how to use it properly, having their diffuses waaaay to dark etc, which just makes more work for the texture artists. On a lot of larger productions I have worked on, you are required to request a new texture from the texture art team.

This also helps keep everything tracked and managed in terms of scope and budget.