When Reality Fades Away: Surrealism Invades 3D Art

Posted on May 3, 2013 by victoria

Watches. Heat. Melting. Awry forms. Devastated settings. Torsos of the dreams. It coalesces. Then it detaches. Surreal visual art reminds us of something. Actually, it awakens the most latent parts of ourselves.

Surrealism is like a potion, made in the 1920s for the first time. But it still flourishes and inspires contemporary artists. Surrealism is being used as kind of therapeutics, enabling the artists to analyse the depth of human nature by mixing the most distinct feelings and experiences together.

“Surrealist manifesto” was written in 1924. There surrealism was defined as “philosophy, based on the belief in superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought”. Salvador Dali is considered to be the Duke of surrealism. People, who do not know about surrealism, definitely know about Dali. When he was formally expelled from the Surrealist group, the artist only replied “I myself am surrealism”. S. Dali’s early work “The Persistence of Memory”, a painting set in some kind of existential desert, depicts melting pocket watches and stands as one of the best surreal painting examples ever made.

Surrealism surprises and will never be played out. It invaded the whole art of 3D and reality just fades away. Surrealism stimulates to write one’s dreams down every morning, to free the mind and indulge into a process of automatic creativity. 3D artists impart their inner state of mind into each artwork. Some of them seek for the meditation and others share their dark sides of the moons.

Self-examination, alienation, loneliness, madness, sadness, euphoria, mania, suspicion of a gone dream and all the possible human feelings create a particular and peculiar atmosphere of every work of a 3D designer. Tree-dimensional art makes surrealism to thrive: while providing precise level of photorealism, it includes the most unreal objects, forms and design decisions. I am wondering, if Salvador Dali had such tools, how would his most prominent painting look like?

Grab your inspiration for the mind-blowing masterpiece, while exploring this gallery of surreal 3D artwork.

Caravan Dali by Aram Vardazaryan.

Just imagine what would happen if S.Dali would live nowadays…

Gnomon School: The Fast Track To VFX Industry

Posted on April 23, 2013 by victoria

The development of 3D technology sees no boundaries. Nowadays the amount of 3D effects in movies easily breaks the limits of fantasy. The last animation “The Croods” made by “DreamWorks” required 80 million hours of rendering. If the rendering was performed on a single computer, it would have had to keep rendering the information for 9,127 years in order to finish it. There are thousands of tools, but not enough 3D artists to control them properly.

And it is not the 168 hour working week that could scare 3D designers. But there are actually not that many qualified places on Earth to learn and acquire the real art of visual effects. Most of the forums all around the web twinkle with posts asking which one of the schools is the best to really learn to govern VFX tools. Almost each answer (seriously, no exaggeration) highlights a Hollywood-based Gnomon School of Visual Effects as a must-attend school of dreams. So..is it really the Mecca of visual effects ?

CGTrader Goes eBay

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Marius Kalytis

There are several ways to go about implementing a vision. We have ours. For the last 4 months we had a single goal. It got us so addicted to what we do that it made our office our second home. It resulted in bottomless cups of coffee and tea, sleepless nights for the programmers, loads of stress and code combinations, dozens of chocolate bars and a serious headache on how to make a dream come true.

Today we are proudly announcing the grand launch of the improved CGTrader platform! This product is built from scratch by our talented team – which gives us freedom to easily add extra features and improvements in the future. We are excited to tell that our vision is now closer than ever before.

CGTrader was started with the aim to democratize the rapidly growing 3D model market. We had the goal to establish a buyer and designer friendly, low-commission marketplace, where interaction between both sides is convenient and direct. Although creating a new platform is just a small step in our quest, we hope that it will make buying and selling easier and more enjoyable for everyone. Get to know more!

Results Are In: Winners of 3D Model Competition

Posted on March 22, 2013 by victoria

For a few days already we have been receiving emails from you. The question was: “Sooo, who are the winners of a competition?”. We told to wait a bit. And we were answered that there are some of you, who cannot. So, finally we stopped discussing…

Challenge was accepted. And winners are selected!

But wait, wait a little bit more. Yes, I know that you can scroll down, but wait. Enjoy that pleasant feeling before you find the results out. There is something to be said.

We have to admit that this 3D Model Competition was extremely exciting. The entire month your 3D models were flowing to our marketplace shelves as a stirring mountain spring. We are more than happy because of that. Are you ready to check the results out?

A Good Look at The Real World by Marek Denko

Posted on March 18, 2013 by victoria

Marek Denko is a 3D designer who attracted the whole computer graphics community with his artwork. The artist had no training in the field of 3D design. But he was always learning from his own mistakes and successes.

Marek Denko’s first job in the industry was as a low polymodeling freelancer for a company in Bratislava. Today he is a world-known 3D designer. The designer’s artwork is highly distinctive with a peculiar touch of his. It definitely bewitches with the level of realism and intense atmosphere. Marek Denko shares with us the secrets of his profession, inspirations, and reveals how to find a way in the labyrinth of computer graphics world.

Sunrise of the 80′s

Read an interview!

Best 3D Models of February

Posted on March 7, 2013 by victoria

The whole February new uploads from old and new members of our design community were flowing like a stirring stream in early spring. Two days ago we just hit a pulsing boundary of 10’000 models. Everything is getting better and better: our 3D model collection is renewed with a variety of fresh ideas.

Surprisingly, the most popular shape of February was not a heart. Actually, there were just a few Valentine-related models. But this is another topic. Today CGTrader team has a piping-hot top of the Best 3D Models of February for you. All of them are different in terms of realism, particularity, techniques, and inspirations. This is the reason why they are on the list. Here is a top of 10 best 3D models of February!

Grab An Inspiration: 30 Most Photorealistic 3D Renderings

Posted on February 27, 2013 by victoria

Some people like to highlight that all the glorious art has already been created. Those who say so perhaps forget to count in the endless possibilities of 3D design. Today movies can be filmed in a quarry of stone and 3D designers will add the turquoise sea, verdant pinewood and a surreal house on the shore.

The audience could suspect a house being improved using 3D design technique. But it is much easier to bribe with a landscape selling a matte-painting as the real one. Moreover, 3D designers are passionate to confuse questioning: “What do you think: is this a photograph or the art of 3D?”

This phenomenon is called photorealism. It is like a magic wand that brings a fantasy into the life while is used by a skilled artist. Obtaining render which is indistinguishable from a photograph became the Holy Grail of 3D design since 1960s. The target in this work is to reach perfection. In this particular case it means to imitate the reality to the smallest dots. It requires high level of attention even to the rarest details.

So we want to share our thorough list of the highly professional 3D artwork of photorealism. Hopefully, it will give you new ideas and inspire for the masterpieces.

A Vespid

We prepared a lot of more of the amazing photorealistic 3D renderings!

Introducing CG Blogs and Websites #1

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Ieva

On this blogpost we have gathered some great web links you might be interested to look at, regardless if you are just amateur or professional designer, or maybe just someone who has a great interest in CG. We all know that sometimes it’s hard to find decent information on the Web, so have a look at some of those websites. You will find some educational sites, community sites packed with useful information, or some galleries for your own inspiration…

3DVIA

3DVIA belongs to one of the biggest companies in the market specialising in 3D software and PLM – Dassault Systèmes. 3DVIA website provides a platform to sell your 3D models, buy 3DVIA software. Also, users can join the community, participate in forums, share information and read blog, that provides a lot of information about what’s been going on in the market, new software launches, many tutorial videos and monthly update with best 3D model sellers.

Max Attivo 3D Stuff

Very good quality amateur type blog where you can find quite a few free 3D model examples (with given links to buy them), also the blogger shares his knowledge and tips of 3D modeling, how to improve your skills and use them to your advantage.

Official Google Sketchup Blog

Whoever knows Google Sketchup Program, will definitely know this blog too. This is an official Google Blog page designed to support their program. However, the information provided on this web-page is not only about SketchUp, but also blog provides wide range of information and new ideas that could be picked up by professionals as well as amateurs. The variety of topic suggestions helps to navigate easily and efficiently. It’s a great tool to keep yourself updated with latest software launches and updates.

GetMethod

Well designed and appealing website provides great amount of information about 3D modeling. This blog-type page could be rather used like an educational tool. The variety of videos and in-depth tutorials reveals great amount of tips and suggestions of how to improve your modeling and master the software.

Free CG

One more blog page sharing a great deal of information and tutorials about CG. Unique selling point – everything is for free, great database of tutorial videos and most important really simply explained with loads of links to relevant websites. A great tool to use for somebody how is relatively new to the CG field.

3D Design

News page about 3D design and CG. Blog-type articles introduce what’s hot in the market, the launches of new software and upgrades. Even though this blog hasn’t been updated with a new posts for quite a while, still information in there could be useful and relevant today. Diving deeper into the blog you could possibly dig out some great tutorials too.

CG Persia

This blog site shares information about CG modeling software. Most of the attention is paid to presentation of new market releases and gives a chance to the users to use program trial versions too. If you feel like sharing your blog too, feel free as there is an option to join the blogger community!

CG Sharpe

Another blog about CG modeling programs and tips from all around the world. Besides, you can find quite a lot of tutorial videos that covers very specific modeling techniques and methods.

3D System Blog

Community website for the global American company that focuses on 3D designed and printing 3D Systems. In here you will mostly find what’s new in the corporation, what were their new launches to the market etc.

We’ve just scratched a surface here… Many more great treasures could be found on the web. We will keep you updated with our findings. And by the way, if you know some great website, please share with us by leaving a comment below.

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Tag Archives: Computer Graphics