Minimums for "high quality" and "broken" tagging

[joepal]

I'm working on a system to allow users to request that an asset be tagged either broken or high quality. But before launching that, I'd like to have a short discussion about what some hard requirements would be for either.

It's impossible to define "high quality" as such in binary terms. However, there are some things I think must be there before a contribution should be tagged as high quality. These are:

• It must not have any broken parts (misnamed files etc)
• It must have a render attached (otherwise people have to download it to see how it looks)
• It should have a thumbnail attached (I'm not sure this should be a hard requirement, but since it's really easy to fulfill and since it enhances the user experience, I lean towards it)

For "broken" it's probably a bit easier. It should match one of the following:

• Have missing or misnamed files.
• Have filenames containing characters that are illegal in some operating system environments
• Cause problems (stacktraces, crashes) in either MakeHuman or blender

Any opinions about these?

[wolgade]

Sounds sensible. An asset can't be "High Quality" if it's simply broken. "High Quality" requires at least the effort to present the asset in a way that you know how it looks. Additionally a "High Quality" asset should have a certain level of detail, however this is achieved. A "High Quality" assets looks very realistic. It's a potential candidate for promoting MH and its power.

One thing has to be mentioned here: An asset not being tagged as "High Quality" is in no way considered to be "Low Quality" or useless.

[badwolf]

i would suggest there be tags for "demo/test" and "resource" and "proof of concept" also to prevent folks from assuming that !high quality = low quality


Demo/Test= deliberately low vert items to test ways of setting up an item
Resource= items designed to be built on example the "crude" series (note these should have any notes on body type fitting in the description)
Proof of concept= items that are an attempt to figure something out may have severe issues if taken out of the concept scope (item designed for a small/mid chest used on a "hooters" type chest)

[CallHarvey3d]

right "quality" is a relative term. a high quality photo realistic asset is not the same as a high quality game prototyping asset, or high quality character design asset, or a high quality animation asset. one looks pretty, one is highly optimized, one is technical, and one moves well. all very different.
it's not an easy problem to solve. by being to defined in categorizing you may pigeon hole the asset or the product. i think that is more damaging than loose organization. once more assets exist people will use tags to filter and arrange the results by rating or poster name or popularity/downloads. i think that is a standard organization of assets and i think that would work the best. filter out anything incomplete or broken, flesh out tags and filters and let it be. imho

[Aranuvir]

Wolgade is right, we should avoid the term "low quality". I think to remember, Joel's idea of tagging some assets high quality, was to eventually move those assets upstream, so they get distributed with a community release.
And I also agree that hq assets should present a higher level of detail by either its geometry and/or its textures (bump or normal map or alpha mask).
Just reading the suggestions of badwiolf, which sound quite reasonable to me. Perhaps I wouldn't add a separate "proof of concept" tag, this can be added to test/demo and defined by its additional description. It would be desirable that not every test gets uploaded to the repos...
For the definition of a broken asset I'd add "messed up geometry" (due to bad helper association) or heavy texture bleeding of the model. Hq assets should fit to the average model of its targeted gender (average female, male, unisex). I'm not sure if we should add the condition, that a hq asset should also fit to a greater variety of models.

[brkurt]

I'm working on a system to allow users to request that an asset be tagged either broken or high quality. But before launching that, I'd like to have a short discussion about what some hard requirements would be for either.

It's impossible to define "high quality" as such in binary terms. However, there are some things I think must be there before a contribution should be tagged as high quality. These are:

• It must not have any broken parts (misnamed files etc)
• It must have a render attached (otherwise people have to download it to see how it looks)
• It should have a thumbnail attached (I'm not sure this should be a hard requirement, but since it's really easy to fulfill and since it enhances the user experience, I lean towards it)

For "broken" it's probably a bit easier. It should match one of the following:

• Have missing or misnamed files.
• Have filenames containing characters that are illegal in some operating system environments
• Cause problems (stacktraces, crashes) in either MakeHuman or blender

Any opinions about these?

In my opinion, a piece of clothing cannot be considered High Quality until it is in an action pose, especially ones that test armpit, groin, and knee. We have not yet created a standard mesh tutorial that instructs new MH contributors as to how to create the most realistic folds, and that I believe is essential.

Here is an example, to start the discussion. I'm of the opinion that the distance between vertices behind the kneed should be greater than the distance in front of the knee, allowing for more realistic folds in the back, and more realistic stretching in the front.

[CallHarvey3d]

what we are calling "high quality" maybe we should just pick a new term right off to avoid confusion and help define purpose. this "Primo" "gold standard" content that would get bundled with a release might be difficult to come by. individual artists working independently will create assets that look equally independent. ideally i would think a content set should look like a set. i would think it would(should) work best to collaborate on the creation of each asset. modelers model, texture artists paint, riggers rig. Even if this happens only as a touchup effort to existing assets to pull them together. - as an art director i think that's an extremely important and often overlooked detail.

[joepal]

Maybe "community pick" or "community favorite" instead of "high quality"?

My current idea of pipeline for these things is an interface where everyone can nominate an asset for a tag, but in the end a moderator has to set that tag. Thus the "community pick" tag might make sense.

[RobBaer]

I think CallHarvey3d rightly reminds us that each of us may have different downstream uses for MakeHumanCommunity content. The downstream artist may be doing a either a "still image" or an animation. They may want gaming render quality or feature film quality. The shader in the downstream application may require no additional work or lots of custom work after export from MH depending on the use-case and downstream target application.

Still, the community may want to recognize any one of these things with a tag like "community favorite" . I like this expression joepal!

That said, I am so excited that we have gotten to the point where such a discussion is even worth happening, and that is -- thanks to all of you! What a fantastic community!

So KUDOS all!

[wolgade]

I think CallHarvey3d rightly reminds us that each of us may have different downstream uses for MakeHumanCommunity content.

That's true. When I think of "High Quality" I think of these larger than life renders that took five weeks to complete on a machine with four GTX 1080. I always forget the guys who want to feed their stuff to a game engine. These people probably will prefer a low poly asset with a good normal map. That's what they consider "High Quality".

That said, I am so excited that we have gotten to the point where such a discussion is even worth happening,

We desperately needed a blood transfusion and finally got one. Yes, feels great.

What a fantastic community!

That's right. I've seen other places. Usually you have your share of assholes. I can't think of any single user in this forum, who deserved to be called like that. This is an exceptionally friendly and helpful place. Let's keep it that way.