Posted under General
post #3869745
this post as it turns out, is possibly a screencap from SL, judging by other tweets they have made, which is more obvious
https://twitter.com/moommymilky/status/1612555058398498816
This has been brought up on the discord server and I wanted to bring this up to the forum as well.
Thoughts?
Maybe a re-evaluation of the upload guidelines slightly?
I've thought this needs to be re-evaluated for a long time. The days where Second Life screenshots look like this are long gone. Content that looks way worse from SFM is accepted pretty much daily. We should be judging on the end result, not the medium.
SL these days even has third party viewers that allow for altering the lighting, posing and other various things. A lot gets heavy touch-ups, post-processing, filters, etc. in Photoshop. Edits like this also exist where parts have been fixed up and bodily fluids have been added. It even renders videos now, even though some are a little janky, worse content from SFM and Blender gets accepted regularly. 1 2 3
Second Life is currently explicitly mentioned in the uploading guidelines, alongside Minecraft of all things. It's clear the guidelines just treat SL as nothing but a game.
- Screen captures: Screenshots from games, still images from movies, video snippets from YouTube, etc.
- This includes all content created in sandboxes like Second Life, Minecraft, and similar.
- This also includes all ripped image files from visual novels and similar games.
3 other posts from moommymilky, approved by 3 different people, made it through the approval before this one was flagged, while post #3727218 was deleted.
post #3729364 post #3727610 post #3727589
That, in my opinion, makes it pretty clear that SL screenshots can meet the quality requirements if you're not considering the outside information of what it was made with.
Obviously some SL content is going to still look awful, and that should still be deleted, but at this point it makes no sense to delete something just because of the way it's produced.
IIRC, the problem isn't solely the actual quality of the piece, but also the general effort put into it. SL in particular has a proliferation of stock assets, where the "creator" basically just loads up a prefab model with a prefab pose or animation, and hits the PrintScreen key. A person can put a lot of effort and add unique flair to screen caps in most games to make good looking unique stuff, but if the general use-case is people hitting PrntScrn with stock assets, that's not going to work well with the rule. The moderators are also not going to be experts in SL to know when something is built from stock assets that anyone can grab and create the same exact image with, or when it contains custom work, making it a tricky proposition to let some through but not the majority.
watsit said:
IIRC, the problem isn't solely the actual quality of the piece, but also the general effort put into it. SL in particular has a proliferation of stock assets, where the "creator" basically just loads up a prefab model with a prefab pose or animation, and hits the PrintScreen key. A person can put a lot of effort and add unique flair to screen caps in most games to make good looking unique stuff, but if the general use-case is people hitting PrntScrn with stock assets, that's not going to work well with the rule. The moderators are also not going to be experts in SL to know when something is built from stock assets that anyone can grab and create the same exact image with, or when it contains custom work, making it a tricky proposition to let some through but not the majority.
Most the people uploading SFM or Blender content don't make the models either. The first source_filmmaker post I clicked on: post #3862655, followed to the source, found a link to the models at https://sfmlab.com/project/33534/.
edit: Okay that one's actually still pending, but the point that original models aren't required still stands. The artist of that post does have 80 approved uploads though, and I don't think they made any of the other models either.
Updated
faucet said:
Most the people uploading SFM or Blender content don't make the models either.
It's not just models, in SFM or Blender they do generally set up the pose/animation, scene, lighting, etc, themselves. In SL, all that stuff is generally prefab too.
Accepting SL screenshots seems like a natural step of progression between Blender/SFM and AI. At the press of a button, a wannabe artist lacking enough skill can hope to compete against an artist who's put the work in learning how to use Blender or SFM to, at the very least, work a rig, pose models, texture models, compose a scene, light it, and render it effectively. Even if they're using pre-made models, the Blender/SFM-using artist will likely need to model new material for, say, ejaculate, and then texture it properly to make it look right. Is this also true of SL screenshots? How much effort does it take to set up an SL scene compared to the same scene in Blender or SFM? How comparable are they?
Faucet does make a point that Blender/SFM-using artists frequently use pre-made models, but where should we draw the line with these Blender/SFM renders are good enough to stay but those Blender/SFM renders aren't? Are pre-made models overall bad for e621-worthy renders or are some good and some bad? Perhaps we should sidestep that question and give Blender/SFM renders some leeway by accepting them as long as they are at our artistic standards, because it does take some artistic skill and effort to make those renders, regardless of what pre-made assets are included or not. It seems to me that SL screenshots fall outside of that leeway. They're not as bad and low effort as AI-assisted pictures, but they're still the equivalent of someone taking photographs of scenes they run across, albeit of virtual stuff rather than real life stuff, while Blender/SFM is the equivalent of actively setting up a movie set; getting actors to look right with makeup, lighting, and good posing; adding in special effects if necessary (sometimes on-set, sometimes in post-production), all to make the scene you're trying to make.
IMO game screen caps aren't inherently bad, like any art medium, they can have good and bad results.
Like uh.. this artist, if I'm not mistaken, usually does some good art on gmod, but would you really be able to differentiate between gmod and sfm in every picture? Gmod content, theoretically, would fall under the no screencap rule, but visual quality isn't that different from sfm if the artist knows what they're doing.
https://www.deviantart.com/powdan/galleryI don't see why good SL pics shouldn't be allowed, if good gmod pics are currently approved, looking at the garry's_mod tag .3.
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watsit said:
It's not just models, in SFM or Blender they do generally set up the pose/animation, scene, lighting, etc, themselves. In SL, all that stuff is generally prefab too.
In SFM or Blender, the artist also can just download a pre-made map, pre-made session with the lightining in place, pre-made animations, etc etc. (Example: sfm ponies doors collab , camera angle and door models were already set up in a pre-made session at the time, if I recall correctly.)
And now there also is AI to generate 3d model textures, which is pretty much impossible to find out unless disclosed by the artist.
Btw, iirc, sfm models can have animations compiled inside their files, which can be played inside sfm, which is the case for all animated game assets for valve games.
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Trying to draw a line between "what is a game and what is a 3d art software" is a fools errand in my opinion, at least, it just makes the judging process harder than it needs to be.
A photo of a paper drawing can be as crappy as a mspaint drawing and a newbie sfm pic.
A photo of a paper drawing can be as good as a god-artist using mspaint or a render from an artist that just used sfm for the last 10 years.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQKlNfO9hgU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlxzpzMgb7Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkruJMimjNQ
As the uploader, I'm fine with it being removed, I was under the impression the image was partially set up in Blender or SFM and partially edited/painted in Photoshop or Clip Studio.
If Second Life gives you a set of scenes, assets, stock poses and all the camera filters/effects, then I don't think an image made with it fits here.
Updated
In a semi-unrelated note, now that I think about it, while "tagging what software was used to make the art" is improper at the current rules, it does sound like a good way to check which posts are probably screencaps, given people may tag the game they used to make the pic
I don't see why program used can't be a meta tag like the year or medium...
desertaisha said:
I don't see why program used can't be a meta tag like the year or medium...
I kinda see why, it is an outside info that can't be checked.
That being said.. if the artist posted the artwork and/or mentioned the software in description, then it should be valid to tag.
