renderosity.com

Calling all artists, art lovers, art enthusiasts and arty people in general. This site is for you. And hopefully by the end of this op you will have developed enough curiosity to go check it out for yourselves.

I first stumbled upon it by pure chance. Being into graphics and art, I go on for hours exploring the internet jumping from site to site looking at artwork and artists. Artistic communities have always sounded to me like a good idea but I had yet to find one which I could fully endorse for its quality and/or organization. Enter www.renderosity.com.

On first accessing the site, navigation is very straightforward. Two link bars ( one on top and a more detailed one on the right of the screen ) give you a series of possible locations to explore within the site. In the centre there are a series of small text inserts which you can read in more detail by simply clicking on the article that interests you. Word of warning though, you will not have full access to the site until you become a member. If you only want to look at the artwork then no membership is required and here I begin to hear some of you groan and roll your eyes at the prospect of having to pay something to join this site….absolutely not. The site is one hundred percent free ( except for one section that will be mentioned later ) . You become a member simply by submitting your e-mail address, to which they will send a link to the member application page. Fill out what you want and it’s done. The site is yours to explore.

The first thing that struck me about it was its size. When I accessed it for the first time I went, quite naturally, straight to the gallery section only to find that it has over 4000 individual artworks. Quickly realising that they have more than one gallery section ( they have in fact 30 different galleries for different artworks created with different programs ). The different galleries range from 2d art to almost any kind of image software you can imagine, including mixed media and ‘other apps’ it basically leaves nothing without it’s place. The 4000 plus artworks impressed me. The 70 000 plus members impressed me even more. This is a huge and continuously growing community ( just like this one ) with artists working in the most different styles and ways.

The navigation through the galleries is incredibly simple. A page of thumbnails of the artworks will load, all you have to do is click on the artwork you want to see or, if nothing interest you, go to the next page. With works being uploaded continuously and a backlog of over 4000 pieces it’s unlikely you’ll exhaust your possibilities any time soon.

Assuming you wanted to become a member you then have a few more options when visiting the art galleries. As a member you can leave a comment for the artist to read about his work, even rate it from a scale of 1 to 10. maybe you were so impressed by that one work you would like to see more works by the same artist. Simple, there are two links at the bottom of the work that can take you either to the artists homepage within the site ( or outside it if he or she happens to have a site of their own ) or to the artists’ gallery, which displays all the works the artist has submitted to the site. Still as a member you can e-mail the person or send them an instant message ( they will receive these instant messages when they log on next) . and above all as a member you can start to upload your own artwork so it can be appreciated by others. If you are going to load up your work there are size limits to the image ( these tend to be flexible ) and other options such as a thumbnail ( you can create one for your picture and load it up too ), allow other people to comment on the image and rate it, you will receive an e-mail notifying you every time you get a comment posted ( if you’re not interested about what others have to say you can leave this option unchecked) and whether or not the image contains nudity. Any type of obscene or extremely violent material is prohibited, but nudity ( as long as it is depicted in an artistic rather than vulgar way ) is accepted. Some people when they joined will have opted to not have any images with nudity load up, this way if the image you created does have nudity they will not see it. An option I guess aimed at parents with young children or easily offended adults.

The rest of the site is composed of extremely interesting and valuable things for the aspiring or established artist. Tutorials on all the major image software apps and tutorials in numerous traditional media. Forums on the major image based software apps ( e.g. Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop, 3d Studio, Maya etc…) . Forums on artistic topics in general ( 2d art, Photography, 3d modelling, gamming graphics etc..) There are also the administrative Forums ( current affairs, Jobs ( hiring and looking to be hired), suggestions, copyright laws etc…), its very own chatroom that you can log on and talk to the other artists or art enthusiasts that are in the site and an extensive list of links leading to other artistic communities or individual artist’s sites. The information is vast and continuously improving. The one part of the site which is not free is the market place. Accessing it is free but the products it has are not. If you are interested in buying 3d models, textures, poses for 3d characters or other generally 3d art related materials then this is the place to be. Some of the stuff for sale is of amazing and professional quality and the artists/creators are always around to give you a helping hand with the product if there are any queries. However the free stuff section is also very good. And the stuff it has for what you don’ have to pay, is equally amazing. Thank goodness for generous artists.

There are a few little annoying things about it. The site has a definite 3d-ishness about it. There is a tendency to hold this type of art slightly above the rest ( the logo of the half mesh hand kinda gives that one away ) but nothing really substantial of harmful for the more traditional artists among us. Also as a community everyone tends to not step on anyone’s toes for most of the time ( I guess the same applies to Ciao) . You’ll get the token ‘good guys’ who have the generic ‘ Love the work, great stuff’ but who don’t really give any helpful comments. But there are also the more serious participants who will genuinely give helpful input without slagging it off ( the real Artists or Art lovers ). Those are the most valuable bunch.

I thoroughly recommend this site to artists, people who enjoy art, graphic designers, web designers, game designers or those who just want to look at pretty ( and sometimes not so pretty ) pictures for awhile. It is well organized, has a lot of very talented artists and if you’re wondering what Snort28 gets up to in-between his degree work search for Legion-Khan…all comments welcome ;)