The Diigitals
Hylas
Posts: 4,891
So, Daz Studio has a collaboration going on with with what appears to be a 3D Illustration & Animation Studio geared towards the fashion world.
I happen to work in fashion so this is somewhat interesting to me! My expert take is... that I don't have strong feelings about it either way 
There's a novelty factor to it and the fashion world loves novelty. But my feeling is that the current general long-term trend is towards "natural beauty" (whatever that means), so I don't see digital fashion illustrations blowing up anytime soon.
However, the most important part in all of this...
-min.webp)
https://www.thediigitals.com/koffi
Can we pleeeeeease have Koffi for G8M?
*weeps hysterically*
*faints*
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I have such mixed feelings about this as a general trend. On a personal level I dig the concept of virtual models the same way I dig vtubers--I grew up in the age of Weird Internet where everyone was playing with identity and presentation and almost no one used their real name, and that's still where I'm most comfortable. I'm probably too early for an android body, but being able to customize how other people see me online is a step!
On the other hand, I don't feel any connection to it when it's used to create perfect models for high end products and glamorous-but-relatable lifestyles. I'm not the first to point out that some of these virtual models are people of color designed and characterized by white creators, and that gets super weird when they don't disclose that it's not a real person or they try to do a kayfabe thing instead of clearly treating the character as fictional. With 3D you can add just enough body diversity and realistic detail to your models to make sure they're not horrifyingly picture perfect while still having total control over everything they "write," "think," and do with their bodies. I don't think this will take off to an overwhelming degree either, but it's possible to use it to get all the branding and aesthetic benefits of diversity without actually ever speaking to or paying or supporting a real, autonomous diverse person.
I love this, jumped in my cart
Yes, but you get all the virtual virtue without the diversion into diversity.
Where is Richard Hasseltine when we need him?
I think the "brand" of Cameron-James's company relies on exclusivity of the models, so I doubt they would be released to the public.
Yeah, you're probably right.
I can dream!
@plasma_ring & @xyer0: I suppose the counter argument would be that the creators of these virtual models could be literally anyone, regardless of not only ethnicity but also age, body type, etc. So in that way it's less discriminatory? I don't actually believe these words as I type them.
I agree that the conversation in fashion modelling is all about diversity and these virtual models are not exactly anti-diversity, but they do sit awkwardly in that whole discourse.
While I understand this sentiment, how come our renders don't look exactly the same? We buy the same assets, yet the digital art we create looks totally different. (And often to the point where people gotta ask what we used and it's something that is already owned.) There's more to a DS/3D signature look than a specific character.
The renders these digital models are in often have bold colors and contrast a lot, which has to their striking appearance. Like, if I were to purchase one of their characters (that would theoretically be for sale) and plopped it down into the default HDRI and then shined a bunch of white lights on it, it would look nothing like their art renders. Yet, it is the same character they're using to make their good art.
Fine, but how is that different from what we do, other than it's, perhaps, more commercially successful? Are we to restricted to renders of our own gender, body-type, class, race, sexual orientation, or political/religious persuasion?
That's what I was thinking. If it is an issue, I may as well just hang it up and find another hobby. LOL
Laurie
The argument for diversity, in this case, has to do with actual people, the content creators. It seems a bit weird to say it's representative, when this isn't the case.
But the call for more diversity gets easily twisted, to be exclusionary.
I agree with everything said here. I don’t think the issues apply so much to the renders people do with Poser and DAZ Studio, and maybe not even to this specific company. Maybe they do. But the concept of digital people gets problematic in certain situations, at least for Black people.
Particularly, cultural appropriation gets bad when people are paid for the final images. There are actual people who have been told they can’t star in certain roles because “people won’t pay to see Black people”. Not even as ancient egyptians. It would be awkward for those people to see images of Black people out there that people are paying for, now that it can be done without any actual Black people benefitting from it.
There is also the issue of misrepresentation. Black people have to deal with being stereotyped… things like people believing whatever somebody said they did was true just because they saw a similar looking person do it in a media image. A digital modelling company probably isn’t doing images of Black people robbing stores and whatnot, but there can be problems with convincing people the CG Black people are real, and the decisions the CG people made are what real Black people have done. It doesn’t have to be a crime to be bad.
Some of these issues probably apply to what all of us do with DAZ people, but I think it is less of a problem due to people being aware they aren’t real people. At least for now.
I do have the fear that moving from real to virtual models will reenforce cultural and/or ethnic stereotypes. Generate the "perfect" asian/caucasion/african male/female? Given the current set of virtual models from The Diigitals, this seems to be reality already. They are too perfect.
I hope future will prove my concerns as completely incorrect
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Not sure why this thread turned largely "political" (nor what value there is in that)..
But since it obviously has:
What, if anything, prevents any arts-prone person of ANY color, ethnicity, national origin, or sexual/gender persuasion, etc.,of putting in the time, developing the necessary skills, and creating 3D characters that reflect "their community" realistically or in any other way they want -- unless, of course, you think Blacks and other non-White people are somehow inherently less capable of doing such things ... in which case, you're starting to sound a lot like the KKK guy who lived one farm down the road when I was a kid in the 1950s?
Much of this discussion seems very much to be much ado about very little.
Is it just me or do all of their figures have exactly the same pouty lips?
So are we going to make money with them or what?
....digitalis...
That is all.
This thread has been edited too much and moderated beyond description so I am removing my post due to extreme lack of context.
If people thought those were real people, they need to get an eyeball transplant.
Unless there are a lot of deleted posts I just missed because I don't check this thread often, nobody has made an argument that comes anywhere close to what you're suggesting.
She's not merely a black female character created by a white man (which would be fine), she's a publicity stunt: "a mysterious model [who] appeared on Instagram in 2017 and quickly attracted thousands of followers wanting to know more about her identity. She was revealed to be a virtual model." The marketing that surrounds her feels artificial and calculated compared to normal 3D work you typically see, especially if he's going to court a diversity narrative through a a pretend black woman as a white guy.
She's described as "a world famous digital fashion supermodel, social media influencer, and diversity advocate" who "has graced the covers of iconic magazines and been the face of many high-fashion, global brand campaigns" but she can't be the former because she's not actually a person, and when she does the latter, she's taking paid modeling work from actual black models for magazine shoots and global brand campaigns that likely would've ordinarily hired a human. She allows them to get credit for embracing diversity without a single black person getting paid. Harsh as it sounds, and likely unintentional, she DOES "allow white audiences to indulge their intense fascination with blackness without having to interact with actual black people" (source: Shudu Gram Is a White Man’s Digital Projection of Real-Life Black Womanhood), especially if she's supposed represent and "advocate" for diversity.
At the end of the day, Shudu and the rest of the Diigitals feel like a calculated marketing scheme to cash in on the increased demand for POC representation and pretend that replacing human performers with digital ones is somehow unique and innovative by a guy who already had the necessary industry contacts and experience to pull it off (except Dagny, I guess, but she has the Daz-iest aesthetics of all the models, she doesn't look too much like a human woman). His previous industry experience as a photographer is likely relevant to his success, since for "realism" most of his work just isn't that good, especially if you look outside of the Daz ecosystem. There are plenty of more talented character artists around the internet (pretty sure that some of them are black too), though obviously few of them are aiming for his niche: fake humans working as "real" models for high-end marketing campaigns.
LOL yep.
(edited: I saw more images of these models after posting this and I'll take back what I said about them being expressionless. There's still something about all of this that seems weird to me, but the renders and characters are very good and I apologize for coming across as being too critical.)
I missed responding to this a long time ago, but at no point did I ever say or suggest that people could never render characters who don't resemble them or have the same life experiences they do in real life. I said it gets weird when the creators don't disclose that they aren't real people or don't clearly present the characters as fictional. I don't look anything like the guy in my avatar, but I promise you no one is going to assume I'm a nine-foot-tall demon IRL if I make him an instagram account and start roleplaying as though I'm taking real photos of him. If I did that with a photorealistic human model, there are easily crossed lines where letting your audience think it's a real person gets messed up. If I'm not getting the timeline wrong from various interviews, Wilson basically got famous because because his art of Shudu was boosted by Fenty and then by Black women, at least some of whom seem to have thought they were raising the profile of an actual person.*
It sounds like Shudu's creator learned from the feedback he got and that's great. But as @ArkadySkies pointed out, he has a solid background and that gives him a lot of leeway to fail upward. He has the typical "aw shucks I did it out of Mom's shed" startup backstory that glosses over how he had the security to quit a job as a fashion photographer shooting famous Instagram models and experiment with finding a new passion (or a hobby, according to the official website). His self-taught 3D modeling is framed as impressive, but in this interview he vaguely describes his process and it really sounds like he was mostly or solely using Daz. He and his friend decided to up and start a studio overnight, accomplishing this by....creating and rendering seven characters in 24 hours (whom among us, etc. etc.). And they very quickly had enough capital to hire a full team and open a second office.
If it sounds like I'm being really harsh on this guy, who I'm sure is very nice, it's because I want to point out that there's way more at play here in critiquing the rise of virtual models and who profits from them than the resemblance or lack of it between the character and the creator. He wasn't just at the right place at the right time; he was in a position to meaningfully seize the opportunity and run with it without much planning. There are times strategic evasiveness has helped him, although he tends to be low key in interviews and seems more embarrassed than manipulative. I might be too if I had a path to industry leadership via spending hours making my characters in Daz, although it'd sure help me justify my asset library.
It's not even really about him, but about how this sort of rapid viral sensation narrative is more common among white men, and how it's framed as unique talent to admire and emulate, and how often leadership positions are assigned this way. Wilson has a vision of digital modeling opening up opportunities to everyone to model as avatars, but if the world was just waiting for someone to think of doing what he did, everyone here would have been filthy rich a long time ago.
*I noticed my eyes got super acclimated to Daz models after using them for a while, and characters that looked impossibly realistic to me when I started now look stylized. People who don't work with them often can't tell.
Yeah, I genuinely don't see what is supposed to be special about his art outside of the way it was marketed (very effectively though). Can't just be the quality, among Daz artists alone there's plenty of promos in the store and images in the gallery that look just as, if not more realistic. Shudu's skin is freakishly uniform and her specular looks super weird in a lot of renders, and quite a few of the works he considers good enough for his site's portfolio section are really stiff. There were a few images I did genuinely like, but the portfolio as a whole not that impressive, and I dislike the way he seems to obfuscate what, if anything, he actually modeled himself and kind of just let people assume he's so talented at 3D modeling that he modeled the Daz figures.
I'm sure he means well and genuinely sees his success as a means to raise the visibility of Black women, and that he does truly see black women as beautiful, and isn't thinking of the fact that his "virtual model" is replacing real black women in ad campaigns.
Personally, I like Shavonne Wong's "virtual models" better: they're FAR more human looking, less statuesque in expression, face shape is beautiful but still human instead of cookie cutter perfection that IRL would have to be heavily photoshopped to achieve, no freakishly even skin that feels uncomfortably like a chocolate sculpture instead of a black human person's skin and none of them have names that feel like an uncomfortable food related pun about their skin color (I know "Koffi" is a real name, but here it feels like a weird pun). It's still rather dystopian, but hypothetically if human models are going to be replaced with virtual ones in advertising, I want them to at least feel like humans I might find in the real world.
If anyone is looking for extra eyeballs, I have a box of them laying around... some might even be human... I'm sure if you soak them in water, they'll plump up just fine and with a little hot glue to hold em' in place, probably work real good.
As someone who did some modeling back in the day, and then some photography, I'm going to offer a different take. Models beware! I can see why the fashion world would embrace digital models. At the end of the day, the fashion industry is an industry and they want to make money. This is a move towards efficiency. Computer models never have ztis, unless you want them to, they never gain weight, never get wrinkles, never have a bad hair day. They never go out clubbing and then are too hung over to work the next day. (That happens A LOT BTW). And they never complain about the clothes. That also happens a lot. I can totally see why the fashion industry would embrace this.
When I first learn about this agency, I was (as many of us) focused on the quality of the figures themselves so much so, that I failed to see the more complex aspect of how their usage affected real people's life. It wasn't until I was showing Esid (my brother and working partner) the website and telling him about the NFTs that he pointed out that what bothered him was precisely what @ArkadySkies mentioned. That digital models allowed a person to take away jobs from multiple people. In a world where competition between real models is fierce, adding a virtual component would understandably be a big deal.
LOL, I am so relieved to hear that fashion models complain about the clothing they are hirerd to wear. Hiring someone to wear a lot of those fashion designs is the only way a lot of those designs would get worn.
An interview I read from Cameron-James Wilson claims he was not even trying to make the models look realistic, or at least not in the way we think of realism. His goal was to match fashion photography after it had been heavily post worked (ie to remove blemishes from the models skin etc). As such people were fooled into thinking the models were real, not because they looked like real photos, but because they looked like fashion shoot photos.