So, sometime in the last 5 years it became trendy in the 3D community
to do these daily renders.
Whereby you an image a project
every single day and then you post it to a forum or an Instagram or whatnot.
The most famous example is BEEPLE, who's been doing it for I believe 10 years.
4,000 days. Something like that.
That's a long -- It's a long haul.
So that's the most famous example right now.
On the surface it has all the stamps of a good artist, right?
Like you're doing daily work, you're trying out lots of new ideas,
you're getting lots of feedback, you're getting lots of followers and likes.
So what's the problem?
Well, I think it's a bad idea.
The first reason I don't recommend it is that
most great artworks -- and I'm talking about the stuff
that gets like shared around by like recruiters or top studios,
and land you jobs.
Those artworks typically take a lot longer than one day to produce.
Even for seasoned professionals.
A daily render might gain a passing like from somebody that's scrolling through their Instagram feed.
But I really feel like the stuff that's gonna get you a result in your career --
something to put in your portfolio --
I think that kind of stuff is not something that really can fit inside of a day.
So that's number 1 -- takes longer than a day.
Number 2 -- I feel like almost by design of doing a daily render,
you're gonna be choosing topics which you know are easy to do.
And I feel like that's a problem as an artist because you need to challenge yourself.
You gotta choose stuff that you don't already know how to do.
Otherwise it's like --
If you're a soccer player and you think you're a pretty good soccer player,
playing against 7-year-olds is not gonna help you grow.
It's only by challenging and playing people at your level and better than you
that you're actually gonna get better.
And so I feel like it's the same with artwork.
If you're doing the stuff that you already know, you're often --
you're hitting a peak, like a ceiling of what you're learning
Yeah you'll learn a couple of things every project but not like you change and
did something really challenging.
And I feel like as a "stuck in a daily render" sort of thing.
You're not ever gonna choose that.
I do environments. If I was doing daily renders, I would be choosing simple
environments that I know could do in a day.
I wouldn't be doing characters, because I know I couldn't finish that in a day.
I wouldn't know how.
So I feel like that's kind of important
Ok, so that's number 2 -- You're not gonna challenge yourself.
Number 3 is that if you're not careful you can very quickly
develop sloppy, lazy habits.
So the best example I can think of is a brick layer.
If you watch on YouTube you can find videos of like brick layers --
rapidly building a brick wall.
But I myself, who have never laid a brick in their life, if I try to match their speed,
I would make a complete mess out of it.
And what's more, is I wouldn't get better if I just continued at that speed.
Obviously what I would need to do would be to slow down and do it right
the first time and learn what actually goes into making a good brick wall.
So likewise I see a lot of people -- I think especially in like the 2D art world.
But they see like these profesionals that say like "Knocked up this sketch in my lunchtime
like 2 hours or something.".
And it's like this amazing thing.
But then you look deeper into Artstation and you see beginners that are doing "speed paints".
And they should not be doing speed paints
because they haven't learned the foundation. They're just making a mess out of it.
Ok.
Exceptions though. Cause there are some exceptions.
Everything I've said hear so far has assumed that you want to make a career
out of being a 3D artist.
You want to get better. You enjoy the field and you want to do it.
If you're just a hobbyist and you're just having fun and you don't even know
if you want to do this long term.
And you feel that doing a daily render is good motivation to do stuff and you're having fun.
Go for it!
I've got no problem with that. Have fun with it.
It's a-- It can be very motivational and can be very fun in that respect.
So I'm not trying to put-- like say nobody should do it.
The second person that I think could do this
and get away with daily renders and actually learn a lot from it,
is people that are doing advertising or motion graphics.
Where it's sort of like posters or Instagram ads or something where it's text,
colors (and) lighting.
Maybe simple 3D objects. But like very simple scenes.
You're not going to be doing complex sculpting or detailed environments.
Which takes and requires a long amount of time.
I feel like with that kind of thing it's something
that's simple enough which you could kind of do in a day.
Probably not for a complete beginner,
but maybe an intermediate/advanced user I feel like maybe you could learn a lot
by doing daily work.
And the 3rd exceptions is that I feel like for a short sprint
for a specific skill.
I think daily renders could be good.
So say for example you wanted to get good at composition.
Which is laying out elements in front of the camera.
That's not something that requires a month.
You could get a pack of assets and then arrange them and try to make interesting compositions.
It doesn't take that long.
It requires -- I guess actually-- a volume of work. Like doing a large volume.
So if you did like one composition and one render every single day for a month,
I feel like that would actually be really good.
But again, it's sort of limited to a short sprint. Not really beyond that.
Maybe after a month you sort of hit a ceiling and go "Alright, now I should do some proper stuff.".
And then the 4th and the final exception is that if you are seasoned
professional who knows what they're doing and it's not something that they're --
like that's all they're doing.
You're also doing other stuff. I feel like that's good as well.
So I think that's where BEEPLE falls in, cause you're probably wondering
"What about BEEPLE, right?".
He's like one of the most famous 3D artists, I guess.
I mean, it's like a household name, I guess, for 3D artists.
Everybody knows that guy.
He does his daily renders and if you look at it,
it's not that detailed. Some of them are detailed, but if you look closely there's not a lot of detail.
Compared to his other stuff cause he also does these short films
and like these loop things.
And they are a lot more polished and a lot more perfected.
So he knows what he's doing and he knows where to put the detail in when it counts.
The daily stuff I feel like is a way to try out a lot to creative ideas rapidly.
But he's not also neglecting and just doing that.
So I feel like that's the crack where he falls into.
Honestly, I don't think most people can do what he does.
There are a lot of copycats and quite honestly, a lot of them are really bad.
I know that sounds mean but,
it's very rare that I find somebody doing daily renders and I'm like "Huh..
Wow!". It's just basic -- they're doing like spheres on a polished floor with light --
It's been done before. It's like stock imagery. We've seen it.
So devoid of --
I mean art is subjective obviously, but to me it's very rare to find
an abstract render that I actually like. It's been done to death I feel.
Anyways. It might divide The Room (2003) on that one. Maybe you like abstract renders.
So my suggestion would be the same advice that I gave in my advice for beginners video.
Which if you haven't watched, you can check that out.
But that's to do weekly renders.
And the reason is is that I feel like a week is enough time to do things properly
to pick like a relatively challenging idea.
Like obviously if you've never done characters before, you're not gonna be able
to do a good character in a week.
But you might be able to do like a good arm. Like sculpt the anatomy of --
get the muscle and the bone structure and all that.
You could do that in a week.
I feel like it's enough time to do that without becoming a perfectionist.
Which is what happens when you don't have a deadline.
So with a week deadline. You're still gonna be doing daily work.
It's not the daily effort that I think is bad.
In fact, the opposite!
Daily work is required. And it is like one of the best things you could do as an artist.
I just don't think completing an image every single day is enough time to do things properly.
Generally speaking.
But that's my opinion. Right? There's people that have been doing it for a long time.
Maybe it's worked for you. Maybe it's going gangbusters. I wanna hear your opinions.
So let me know in the comments. You know what to do. You can call me an idiot.
(laughs) Right? You know how this works.
So yeah. Let me know what you think.
By the way, as a final sendoff.
If you find that you wanna stay up to date with the 3D community and 3D artworks
that people are posting, but it's too much work to read all the forums and stuff.
I recently started a weekly newsletter where I just list the top 5 things that I found in the week.
Whether it's artwork or a news story or a YouTube video or something like that to watch.
And then I just share it.
So it's written by me, it's casual.
And it's just once a week in your inbox.
So you can subscribe to that. Link is in the description. Thank you for watching. Bye!