I still think honesty is the best policy, and sometimes there's just no way to say certain things nicely. You can't fix something if you don't know it's wrong in the first place, after all, and if the newbie doesn't want honest appraisals of their publicly shown work, then he/she shouldn't even post said work in the first place.
This is just my personal experience, but the way I feel about it is essentially that I don't need the adulation or approval of internet forumgoers to self-actualize...and the sole reason I would post something is precisely because I would want people to give me a honest appraisal of my work. If it sucks, I need to know, because I can't fix the egregious suckage otherwise. If there's nothing wrong with it, then that's great...but what I'm expecting is honest critiques.
Anyone who submits work for public consumption, like writers, painters, poets, sculptors, or 3D artists, runs the risk of being harshly criticized. It's a fact of life, and it's something that everybody should understand and accept before publicizing any work.
Mindless, gushing praise can be nice at times, but not when it's obviously insincere. I also find it pointless to submit work for public perusal if everybody else on the forum in question is still struggling with the basics. I have to actually go to Polycount and other places for technical information because there's really not very many people on the 3D Canvas forums who I consider qualified to offer me peer-level advice and commentary.
I realize I probably just said something that made me sound incredibly arrogant, so let me present a real example. This is a model that I did in 3D Canvas Pro, and it was intended to become a cut-fold-and-glue 1/60th scale paper model of a science fiction VTOL gunship. In order to be practical for a tabletop wargame, it needed to be easy to construct, so I went with a lot of flat, angular surfaces in a relatively simple overall shape.
This is a 3D Canvas render of the finished model for the assembly instructions:
http://www.amabilis.com/gallery/Mel%20Ebbles%20-%20feiqiu_001%20-%20Large.jpg
And this is the exact same model, printed, cut, and assembled off my inkjet printer a year and a half ago:
http://www.papyrusminiatures.netfirms.com/ultinomicon/feiqiu.jpg
I posted that model on the 3D Canvas forums and the responses were all "Cool! Great! Wow!"...but those responses were
also given to others who posted untextured blobs or chrome delights, so I felt like these forums weren't quite objective or honest. And that's the primary reason I don't normally post my works in a public venue.
For the sake of completion, this is a quick and dirty articulated mecha I did to help Richard Borsheim test 3D Canvas's v6 subdivision surface modeling capability. If I had the time or the desire, I'd love to put a simplified (1x subdivision, this model is at 3x subdivision) and textured version of it in a DB/DBP game.
http://www.amabilis.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/Attachments/mels_bug_current.jpg
Again, I get nothing but "Wow!" and "Cool Bug!". I'd have loved to see just one person complaining about how it looks top heavy and how the center of gravity is so far backwards that the loading on the two rear leg joints would be grossly out of proportion to that of the two front leg pairs. Or even just pointing out that the interval spacing between the three pairs of hip joints are too close for a real hexapod walk cycle. Then I'd feel like somebody was being honest.
But my modelling is generally oriented towards CAD/CAM rapid-prototyping and tabletop gaming. Every once in a while I do make a 3D game model for no good reason other than because I can, and because it's neato to see something you made yourself come to life onscreen.
Anyway, I digressed too much. But my point was just that honesty should be the best policy for feedback, and if the poster can't handle that, then they shouldn't post. My two dollars.
-Misanthrope
