Requested feature overview description.
A new type of tag, in a new color, where people can tag the software that was used to create an image.

What this would look like

Why would it be useful?
Many users already try to tag art with the software used to make it (especially when it comes to 3D models). As such, you'll find tags for Blender (mostly removed due to TWYS), SFM, and probably others. There are thousands of posts tagged in this manner, yet the tags almost never apply under the current system because you can't see blender or other software in the image.

However, there is a distinct difference in quality in images using different programs, in many cases.

Examples:

Here's some (safe) recent posts using Source Filmmaker
post #1593025 post #1591000 post #1583816

Here's the most recent posts using Daz3D:
post #1578486 post #1578482 post #1578481

Here's some (safe) recent posts using Blender:
post #1594780 post #1591664 post #1590514

As you can see, there are pretty significant differences in style and quality based on the 3D modeling programs used to create the artwork. I personally like looking for 3D models, but I'm not really interested in the type of quality that comes from SFM.

Right now, an overwhelming majority of SFM posts are incorrectly tagged as they do not fit the "Tag What You See" profile. Recently, almost all posts tagged with Blender had the tag removed for the same reason (mostly by myself and an admin), but I feel as though these tags could be very useful under the right tag type.

From the standpoint of searches (which is what tagging is all about), we tag artists as often as possible, even when they're never in the picture. I feel that for the purpose of searches, it makes sense to have a "software" or "medium" category so we can actually sort posts in a more effective manner.

What part(s) of the site page(s) are affected?
Mainly the tagging / searching.

Honestly this sounds like a neat idea! Having a "medium" category of tags sounds rly useful; for the most part, it'd mostly just involve moving already existing tags into the medium category (digital drawing, pencil (artwork), etc etc)

I don't see a downside to this imho; it would help, for example, people trying to specifically avoid or find things like SFM content within the broad 3D artwork tag.

I'm skeptical, principally because you have shown examples of software that *are* relatively distinct, but there are many others that aren't distinct.

Basically all 2d paint programs cannot be reliably distinguished. Like, we can tell the difference between Paint and Photoshop, probably ;) But we can't tell the difference between MyPaint and Photoshop, GIMP and Photoshop, SAI and MyPaint, etc. This is because 99% of the difference in appearance comes from *how* the artist uses the software, not *what* the software specifically is. So tagging 2d software would definitely require off-site information (as opposed to 3d software, which might *sometimes require* offsite verification).

Even distinguishing one 3d program from another is fuzzy -- you don't "identify blender" so much as "determine it doesn't look like SFM or Daz3d" (In which case it could still be Maya or some more obscure modelling program. And a modeller like Blender can be hooked up to different renderers (eg. Yafray), the choice of renderer creates further subdivisions within the area of 'image feel')

One way of resolving that -- which I'm not happy with, but I am slightly more happy with than your solution -- is to extract program information from the image metadata. That is as close as possible to TWYS -- like resolution tags, it uses information that is definitively indicated by the image, even if you can't directly see it.
The downside of that is that it would be the artist's responsibility to ensure their images are correctly marked. Some programs do this automatically, some don't, so some manual intervention might be required. If the artist didn't include the information in-file, we wouldn't get to add it.

savageorange said:
I'm skeptical, principally because you have shown examples of software that *are* relatively distinct, but there are many others that aren't distinct.

Basically all 2d paint programs cannot be reliably distinguished. Like, we can tell the difference between Paint and Photoshop, probably ;) But we can't tell the difference between MyPaint and Photoshop, GIMP and Photoshop, SAI and MyPaint, etc. This is because 99% of the difference in appearance comes from *how* the artist uses the software, not *what* the software specifically is. So tagging 2d software would definitely require off-site information (as opposed to 3d software, which might *sometimes require* offsite verification).

Even distinguishing one 3d program from another is fuzzy -- you don't "identify blender" so much as "determine it doesn't look like SFM or Daz3d" (In which case it could still be Maya or some more obscure modelling program. And a modeller like Blender can be hooked up to different renderers (eg. Yafray), the choice of renderer creates further subdivisions within the area of 'image feel')

One way of resolving that -- which I'm not happy with, but I am slightly more happy with than your solution -- is to extract program information from the image metadata. That is as close as possible to TWYS -- like resolution tags, it uses information that is definitively indicated by the image, even if you can't directly see it.
The downside of that is that it would be the artist's responsibility to ensure their images are correctly marked. Some programs do this automatically, some don't, so some manual intervention might be required. If the artist didn't include the information in-file, we wouldn't get to add it.

TL;DR I'm all for it.

In that case, some users, like myself, would have to take the time to look up the artist and see what program they use (which is pretty easy because most just outright list it) and most of those artists aren't going to jump between Blender/Maya/3DS which look similar. Most just pick one and stick with it (unless they're switching from SFM to Blender/Maya/3DS in which case it's obvious to tell which is which.

I'm all for it, because you can now search for what you like within the quite massive >28k 3D library with SFM taking up a good 1/3 and that's just what's tagged as SFM. Speaking of, I should go through and tag SFM stuff as SFM. Would be easier if the Blender tag was there so I could filter all of those out. 115 pages is daunting.

If we implement this, It would be nice to expand this to also cover traditional media as well. We have tags for those already.

SnowWolf said:
If we implement this, It would be nice to expand this to also cover traditional media as well. We have tags for those already.

Exactly what I was thinking! It'd be easy to move those over imho since they're already existing and pretty detailed, they'd just need to be put into their own "medium" sections.

+1 new tag type: media type (line_art, 3D, SFM, etc)

leomole said:
+1 new tag type: media type (line_art, 3D, SFM, etc)

If you include line_art (which is not 'media' [eg. pencil, charcoal, ink, mixed, digital] so much as 'artistic restrictions'), are you also going to include "palette format" tags like greyscale and monochrome?
What about hi_res / absurd_res? animated?

Personally I would be in favor of all of those being included, we need to be clear about exactly what will be included though.

BDAnimare said:
TL;DR I'm all for it.

It looks like you are saying that you are all for the original proposal. While quoting my post in its entirety, which contains a competing proposal (put the responsibility of specifying the software used onto the artist, rather than requiring taggers to do this after the fact).

Is that correct? I found your post ambiguous.

savageorange said:

It looks like you are saying that you are all for the original proposal. While quoting my post in its entirety, which contains a competing proposal (put the responsibility of specifying the software used onto the artist, rather than requiring taggers to do this after the fact).

Is that correct? I found your post ambiguous.

Yeah, that's correct. Of course, I myself would still go take what I know is sfm/blender/maya etc but it would still be up to the artist to tag the medium.

leomole said:
+1 new tag type: media type (line_art, 3D, SFM, etc)

That's not really the original discussion (though media type would be nice) We need a way to be able to tag stuff like blender, daz, maya etc so sfm stuff doesn't always pop up for those who don't want to see it.

Eh, blender is like 3ds max/etc. It would be the same as tagging Photoshop for images drawn in Photoshop vwhich would be very redundant.
The reason we have sfm and daz3d tags is because these are often of low quality(high enough to meet quality standards but low enough to look bad).
Personally I feel we shouldn't allow sfm art because none of it meets my personal quality standards and it is pretty much no different than allowing second life images. This is why we have the tag, it's a courtesy tag for those who don't want to see often bad art.

Chaser said:
Eh, blender is like 3ds max/etc. It would be the same as tagging Photoshop for images drawn in Photoshop vwhich would be very redundant.
The reason we have sfm and daz3d tags is because these are often of low quality(high enough to meet quality standards but low enough to look bad).
Personally I feel we shouldn't allow sfm art because none of it meets my personal quality standards and it is pretty much no different than allowing second life images. This is why we have the tag, it's a courtesy tag for those who don't want to see often bad art.

Well for the posts that are tagged as SFM anyway. THere are a LOT of posts that are SFM but aren't tagged as such.

I'm responding to this year old thread because it didn't seem to reach a definitive conclusion and because the problem appeared again.

There is a tag blender_(software)) that around 327 posts used to have until 15 Dec 2019 when Pakattu_suojakaasuun removed the tag from 278 of them (which he did because the wiki clearly says that this tag should only be used when some part of the Blender UI, logo or related assets are visible).

So according to the rules out of 49 remaining posts that still have the tag, 48 should still have it removed as only one post has part of the UI visible. And if we want to be consistent then tags for other software like daz3d, cinema4d, autodesk_maya, zbrush etc. should all also be removed (though none of these have wiki pages so there's no precedent for this).

In other words the tag that was pretty useful for finding Blender created content will now be completely useless for everyone. How is this an improvement? Isn't the tagging system in place to enable people to quickly and easily find exactly what they're looking for? Because a rule like that achieves the exact opposite.

Chaser said:
Eh, blender is like 3ds max/etc. It would be the same as tagging Photoshop for images drawn in Photoshop vwhich would be very redundant.

I disagree and here's why:

In 2D artist's skill is the most important factor and software really plays a very secondary role - as long as it has pretty basic functionality like layers and tablet pressure sensitivity you're practically golden and can make a goddamn masterpiece. Obviously cool features help, but they're more of a comfort than necessity.

In 3D it's much different - here the software matters just as much as the skill of the artist, and in some areas it's probably even more important. Though it's true that there's not that much difference between Blender, Maya and Cinema4D but it's still there and usually these software packages have certain strengths and weaknesses that can be apparent in the final creations. A "style" if you will.
And of course there's a huge gap between those aforementioned software packages and Daz3D and Source Filmmaker even more so.

But if all else fails I still think it's cool to know what software something was made with and the tags don't really hurt anybody.

P.S. I understand that SFM might be tagged as a courtesy for people that want to blacklist it (because of lower quality) but it's not a 100% solution as a lot of SFM images are not properly tagged. Searching for a specific piece of software that isn't SFM though is a 100% solution.

AngryDraconequus said:
In 2D artist's skill is the most important factor and software really plays a very secondary role - as long as it has pretty basic functionality like layers and tablet pressure sensitivity you're practically golden and can make a goddamn masterpiece. Obviously cool features help, but they're more of a comfort than necessity.

In 3D it's much different - here the software matters just as much as the skill of the artist, and in some areas it's probably even more important. Though it's true that there's not that much difference between Blender, Maya and Cinema4D but it's still there and usually these software packages have certain strengths and weaknesses that can be apparent in the final creations.

I think that's a vast oversimplification. The difference with 3D is that its more common to share whole assets (most 3D images/animations with a canine dong use the same exact model and texture, for example), and use stock shaders and lighting effects, whereas with 2D each piece tends to be drawn from the ground up with the shared components being more limited to brush patterns. But it's entirely possible to make stuff in SFM that doesn't have the "SFM look" if the artist wants a more distinct style. So the way I see it, an "SFM" tag like discussed here would ultimately be for style or quality, which aren't valid things to tag given current rules.

Watsit said:
I think that's a vast oversimplification. The difference with 3D is that its more common to share whole assets (most 3D images/animations with a canine dong use the same exact model and texture, for example), and use stock shaders and lighting effects, whereas with 2D each piece tends to be drawn from the ground up with the shared components being more limited to brush patterns. But it's entirely possible to make stuff in SFM that doesn't have the "SFM look" if the artist wants a more distinct style. So the way I see it, an "SFM" tag like discussed here would ultimately be for style or quality, which aren't valid things to tag given current rules.

Well I don't want to derail the thread but I was talking more about software limitations and toolsets - for example the main problem I have with SFM content is that the characters are always really low poly - that's the limitation of the software and no amount of skill can change that. Also SFM doesn't have fluid or cloth simulation. Things like that.

To expand - in 2D you really only need one tool - a brush (and a color picker).

In 3D you need a whole variety of different tools that you use for different parts of the creation process and you can only create what the tools allow. Most 3d software have similar sets of tools but each software offers some exclusive tools and/or unique ways of doing things. For example C4D, Maya and Blender all have their own sculpting modes, but they're not nearly as good as Zbrush which is purely oriented around sculpting. Also the complexity of what you can create depends strongly on both software and hardware limitations.

And the whole thing about asset sharing also doesn't really matter because it's just how 3D creation works - doesn't matter if you're making a basic animation in SFM or complex VFX for cinema in Houdini.

Anyway it's best if we stop discussing the differences between 2D and 3D art creation and go back to the topic at hand.

This is a problem that has lasted for yyeeeearrs and there has nothing been done about it. Biggest issue being that SFM will be tagged and searched now and in future which isn't completely the same as generic 3D artwork tag and the official stance with the tag is still that it should not be tagged on post unless the UI, logos, etc. of the software are showing in the post.

With blender, there was already issue where majority of posts tagged were 3D artwork made with blender and not blender objects which the tag was for, so it was needed to be disambiguated. As sites official stance with SFM and other software has been that unless software is visible it shouldn't be tagged, so I made blender wiki page to reflect that but SFM and blender tags were never cleaned up.

So from technical point, pakattu_suojakaasuun did exactly correctly, but practically this would need some more thinking and ruling and implications/aliases.

Also I do understand both sides here, with 2D artwork this is not done and it's near impossible to tell the creation software without external knowledge which we do not use, but at the same time, I can kinda tell that what engine game uses by simply seeing the visuals of it (unless it's extremely stylized and do tons of post processing).

Yeah you can only do so much with generic 3d_artwork tag. There's so much that falls into this category that it's almost useless - you get things like GMOD images, actual game screenshots, SFM, Unity3D, Blender, Cinema4D all clumped together with very little means of sorting through them.

IMO just the fact that people are tagging the software (even though for Blender it's incorrect sometimes most of the time because of disambiguation) is proof enough that they think it's needed.

Mairo said:
So from technical point, pakattu_suojakaasuun did exactly correctly, but practically this would need some more thinking and ruling and implications/aliases.

Yeah you probably know by now that I'm not a fan of mindlessly following the rules. I don't blame him though, especially seeing his tag edit count. This is an issue that should've been resolved in this very thread a year ago. Instead people just forgot about it.

Maybe try tagging assets that are being reused instead?
That is as easy as character tagging and poor quality of model tends to stick to it no matter what software it's in.

Maybe these assets can be categorized by their origin.
Videogame_model for various WoW models and Skyrim argonian/khajiit
Movie_model for various assets taken from movies like Judy
?????_model for various custom built models that are up for download somewhere. Like renamon and two Krystal models
Custom_model for models that are built by the artist, like h0rs3 or ruaidri.

That would be enough to separate 3d into several sections. It would feel like tagging by software, custom_model being blender or other professional software, videogame_model being sfm. Still less confusing. As you don't need outside info, and even if someone decides to take their 300 poly WoW model into blender and get same crappy result as in SFM, it would still land the same tag.

BirdOfGrain said:
Maybe try tagging assets that are being reused instead?
That is as easy as character tagging and poor quality of model tends to stick to it no matter what software it's in.

Maybe these assets can be categorized by their origin.
Videogame_model for various WoW models and Skyrim argonian/khajiit
Movie_model for various assets taken from movies like Judy
?????_model for various custom built models that are up for download somewhere. Like renamon and two Krystal models
Custom_model for models that are built by the artist, like h0rs3 or ruaidri.

That would be enough to separate 3d into several sections. It would feel like tagging by software, custom_model being blender or other professional software, videogame_model being sfm. Still less confusing. As you don't need outside info, and even if someone decides to take their 300 poly WoW model into blender and get same crappy result as in SFM, it would still land the same tag.

I actually genuinely, really like this idea.

There has actually been already problem with petruz as their models are extremely easily distinguishable and they have managed to gain reputation from them, so they are constantly tagged as artist, when models used are not to be tagged with the creator as artist unless the creator made the render itself.

We do already have couple of their models tagged with character tag, but I haven't had the time to go trough the artist tag to clean it up.

With many SFM models like renamon one, there should already be title for them in various places like steam workshop, so they could simply be called character tag model_name_(model). Also the Blender Judy Hopps model I would definitely want to get tagged, because it's literally the only one used (comment #3619641).

Of course only problem with general umbrella terms would be that if someone makes great model themselves, some could be fooled to think it as original and it to be tagged with generic tag.

BirdOfGrain said:
That is as easy as character tagging and poor quality of model tends to stick to it no matter what software it's in.

That's only partly true as in Blender etc. you can usually use subdivision modifiers combined with displacement maps to make any shitty model look way less shitty. And the lighting also plays a very major role and obviously Blender etc. will look much better than SFM just from that. Also you can modify the model in Blender which you can't do in SFM.

I do like the idea of tagging certain assets though, I just don't think it can replace tagging the software.

P.S. Another issue is that if you modify a model slightly does it still count as an asset? How significant the modification has to be to be considered a new model?

I think this is a good idea as long as the artist explicitly says what software was used.

@felix. That only works for artists that use e6, most don't and ones based in FA won't tell just because e6 has a new tagging plan.

@Draconequus. TBH, if they could learn systems like displacement maps, they wouldn't be SFM artists. You can make it better, but if you use generic assets constantly, it already means you are too lazy to bother improving the model.
Exceptions to that are few, like dreamertooth, but even then modification is minimal, he just adds a single particle system, no density changes, no length modification, no optimizations,rip GPU.
This is as far as modifications go.

Thinking about dreamertooth...
We already proposed tagging by software, tagging by models. There is another possibility.
Tag things like 3d generated fur (obvious to all), complex 3d materials (complex being if model has a displacement material or at least a specular texture (should be obvious to taggers when they get an example), simple 3d material (when it's just a texture and no specular mapping exists), simple 3d fur (polygon based hair).
Set up implications, simple features to simple_3d, complex features to complex_3d. Former acting for SFM and poor job in blender, latter acting for blender and other Prof software.
(just brainstorming of course. many posts would end up with both tags, and sfm has improved enough to have specular textures on some models)

BirdOfGrain said:
@felix. That only works for artists that use e6, most don't and ones based in FA won't tell just because e6 has a new tagging plan.

I did not meant it to be mandatory. I meant software tags are only used when an artist says what software was used, not forcing them to tell us.

BirdOfGrain said:
@felix. That only works for artists that use e6, most don't and ones based in FA won't tell just because e6 has a new tagging plan.

@Draconequus. TBH, if they could learn systems like displacement maps, they wouldn't be SFM artists. You can make it better, but if you use generic assets constantly, it already means you are too lazy to bother improving the model.
Exceptions to that are few, like dreamertooth, but even then modification is minimal, he just adds a single particle system, no density changes, no length modification, no optimizations,rip GPU.
This is as far as modifications go.

Thinking about dreamertooth...
We already proposed tagging by software, tagging by models. There is another possibility.
Tag things like 3d generated fur (obvious to all), complex 3d materials (complex being if model has a displacement material or at least a specular texture (should be obvious to taggers when they get an example), simple 3d material (when it's just a texture and no specular mapping exists), simple 3d fur (polygon based hair).
Set up implications, simple features to simple_3d, complex features to complex_3d. Former acting for SFM and poor job in blender, latter acting for blender and other Prof software.
(just brainstorming of course. many posts would end up with both tags, and sfm has improved enough to have specular textures on some models)

The tags you proposed are way too complex and require too much technical knowledge to be tagged reliably. Noticing things like displacement or specular maps can be hard at best and downright impossible at worst.

Also yes, you can create shit stuff with Blender and good stuff with SFM, but tags are not here for judging the quality of the piece - they're here to categorize it and make it easier to be found in the future.

So again I propose we go back to the original question - should "blender_(software)" tag apply to anything created in Blender, just like "source_filmmaker" already does?

P.S. While we're having this conversation people are still tagging their stuff with blender_(software) tag. So maybe just allow it and be done with it?

P.P.S. Also just remove "blender_(disambiguation)" and let the "blender" tag default to blender_(software) because blender_(object) is a very rare tag that would get quickly fixed if someone tagged software instead.

I like how there was modeler on Discord asking if they could be tagged if their models are used in material created by other artists and just reminded about how year ago already threw idea of tagging models and assets, but there has been nothing happening in this front.

mairo said:
I like how there was modeler on Discord asking if they could be tagged if their models are used in material created by other artists and just reminded about how year ago already threw idea of tagging models and assets, but there has been nothing happening in this front.

Surely we already do tag models and assets? For example: *_(petruz)

wat8548 said:
Surely we already do tag models and assets? For example: *_(petruz)

A model or asset is different from a character. You tag who the characters are, not the models used to portray the character. Just like if someone draws Gandalf as he appeared in the Peter Jackson movies, you tag Gandalf (the character), not Ian McKellen (the model used for the character).

If the work someone put into creating a model is enough to tag that model's creator on the resulting image, they would be considered one of the artists on the piece since they helped visually create it, but it doesn't make sense to tag the individual models as distinct characters if they're not their own characters. At best a separate Models/Assets tag group could be used, though I then wonder would that also apply to brushes used in 2D art?

watsit said:
A model or asset is different from a character. You tag who the characters are, not the models used to portray the character. Just like if someone draws Gandalf as he appeared in the Peter Jackson movies, you tag Gandalf (the character), not Ian McKellen (the model used for the character).

If the work someone put into creating a model is enough to tag that model's creator on the resulting image, they would be considered one of the artists on the piece since they helped visually create it, but it doesn't make sense to tag the individual models as distinct characters if they're not their own characters. At best a separate Models/Assets tag group could be used, though I then wonder would that also apply to brushes used in 2D art?

Yes, exactly. I got seperate renamon model for my commission, but if I try to search for that specific renamon model from posts, it's impossible and 99% is the same warfacemachines model instead, but because it's simply a renamon, it's technically not a seperate character either. We could simply decide that all individual models count as their own characters though, which would fix this issue.
Problem with tagging model creators as artists is that now modelers own renders become impossible to find if their models become popular, e.g. petruz does do their own renders but 99% of stuff with their models are created by someone else.
Additionally tagging assets as visual artists on post would result stuff like Valve technically being artist on every animation which uses TF2 enviroments and characters.

Because one idea would also be able to tag stuff like enviroments, stuff like TF2 maps and that one top floor bedroom and outdoors scene with tons of grass surrounded by rocks and trees are extremely common with 3D animations and could help with searching for content, but right now they are never tagged in any way.

mairo said:
Yes, exactly. I got seperate renamon model for my commission, but if I try to search for that specific renamon model from posts, it's impossible and 99% is the same warfacemachines model instead, but because it's simply a renamon, it's technically not a seperate character either. We could simply decide that all individual models count as their own characters though, which would fix this issue.

I feel that same pain when I want to look for, for example, a male renamon. It's impossible to search for, and a good 90+% is female or gynomorph, but it's not a separate character. Some people tried to make tags like renamale to distinguish it from the vastly more common female renamon depictions, but it's always shot down. Same for salazzle. Characters like Krystal also have problems (there's ftm_crossgender, but that's sometimes missing and could apply to someone else in the image instead).

mairo said:
Problem with tagging model creators as artists is that now modelers own renders become impossible to find if their models become popular, e.g. petruz does do their own renders but 99% of stuff with their models are created by someone else.

Isn't it possible to search for posts given the number of tags in a category? I've never done it before and I don't know the syntax, but you could search for petruz and artistcount=1 to find their own renders (unless they're also using someone else's models/assets that got tagged, I guess).

I mean, in theory one could use the Copyright category for images that contain other peoples' works, since the modeler would have the copyright on their models even when used in some else's image. But I'm under the impression that staff don't want to use the copyright category like that for individual people that have a stake in the piece (e.g. commissioners, owners of characters that don't have a tag).