After writing this post speaking out against Koikatsu Party (NSFW), I STILL keep seeing this opinion that Newgrounds hates 3D art and that the site is hypocritical with their stances, primarily from 'artists' who use SFM or Koikatsu or similar (a good chunk of them NSFW). Just search "newgrounds 3d" on Twitter and search each post by date and you'll find them.
If you are or know someone who's one of "those guys" who still think Newgrounds is wrong for taking down their 3D stuff, please refer to this page or share it on Twitter if you can. This is why I've written this FAQ.
Does Newgrounds hate 3D work?
A. No! They have their own official category in the Art Portal. Here are some brilliant 3D artists featured on this site: jumpbreak96, Avovet, Crisppyboat, NoodleDood12, ZayJax, Potatoman, or just search the Featured section under "3D Art". Most people don't specifically filter 3D art, or only ever check NSFW art, so it's really easy to miss.
Why are they so strict with 3D art? They seem to have some bias against it!
A. You are taking one or more 3D character models you've found online or some other 3rd party source, you're posing it inside a 3D scene, also taken elsewhere, and the only thing you've added yourself is that you've posed them a certain way and you've tweaked the lighting. That's it! Doesn't take much work. At most, you give yourself 10-20 minutes to make your own changes to the model (like with Koikatsu Party, where a "custom" model can be sized up and given different clothing)
The 2D equivalent would be to take an existing image (or worst, an existing artpiece) and trace over it. Tracing is heavily frowned upon within the art community, so why does it seem like this isn't?. In most cases, you're losing out on essential fundamentals, including but not limited to anatomy, composition, and stylization. Look at the above 3D artists (see the first question) and then look at your own shit. Is there anything missing?
I'm pretty sure the only bias you could actually detect is that I don't know a thing about 3D. At best I had a small low-poly stint with Blender that I never post here, but that's about it!
Are they "antagonistic" towards people who "can't completely create their own 3D assets"?
A. Let me put it to you in a different way. "People who can't create their own assets" in other words just means "people who are talentless with 3D art", not necessarily 3D animation or rigging.
From what I know, there do exist jobs in the 3D animation industry that mainly involve setting up and animating rigs given to you by different members of the studio, not necessarily requiring your own modelling skills. Similar to how in 2D animation, there are different jobs for rough animation, cleanup, and in-betweens, or for rigging and animating like in 3D, though you might not need all of them to hold a job, but you don't see people complaining about how they can't upload the Johnny Test rig in their works, or their storyboards.
But when it comes to creating 3D ART, where people are judging you based on artistic merit, it's best to have an all-around set of skills necessary to create the entire thing from start to finish, not just excel in one specific skill and suck at the rest. This ESPECIALLY includes 3D modelling and texturing, as that's where most of the "style" comes from. If you're not able to show any of those skills from scratch, you're probably not a good 3D artist, you're just playing around with fancy toys!
Why is my 3rd party stuff bad when they've allowed SPRITE MOVIES on NG for 20+ years?
A. Sprite movies, or movies that borrow Krinkels' Madness Combat assets, etc, fall under Movie Guidelines, where they're fairly loose with 3rd party assets, only taking down shit if it's low-effort shovelware or gameplay clips, so they are allowed within reason.
But these are NOT the same rules as with the Art Portal, which follow Art Guidelines.
Here, you pretty much have to put in the skill and effort to model the entire thing yourself, not just pose it and tweak the lighting.
Your piece WILL be removed if you primarily rely on borrowed 3D models or you use programs such as Koikatsu and MetaHuman, which are explicitly banned for being classified as "scene creators".
If you can't model for shit, stay away from the Art Portal.
There are whole sections tagged "koikatsu" or "sfm". Why should I suffer when these others haven't?
A. No, those are not part of a site-endorsed "section", those are just different submissions tagged with "koikatsu" or "sfm". Anyone can set those tags, and usually it means they're the first to be checked.
You may think you could just not use those tags to avoid detection, but if you have to go out of your way to HIDE yourself from potential consequences, like a criminal on the run, there's a good chance you shouldn't have done it to begin with!
Why is my stuff equivalent to "shovelware"?
A. Newgrounds prides itself on its creators putting in the work to create something amazing, whether it be for animations, games, music, or art. Again, all you did was pose a few existing character models and change the lighting, maybe you used a modelling template, which should never take more than 1 day. 2 days tops! You're not trying to be artistic, you just want to finish as many as you can to please a small crowd of paying Patreon supporters, and even if you are trying to be artistic, it clearly doesn't look like it.
Meanwhile, some works can take 3 days or even weeks to finish (especially if you're not working on it full-time or do other projects). And you're the one questioning if it's "shovelware". This attitude also exists with AI art (also prohibited), ie. the "AI bros" who think they're better then everyone and think their AI technology will triumph over human art.
What counts as a scene creator or third party assets?
A. Scene creators, as per the Art Guidelines, are defined as "Any software where you arrange pre-made assets"
In other words, they don't let you do the same things as "real" 3D programs (eg. Blender), like modelling, texturing, lighting, rigging, animating, etc. all from scratch.
NG has a list of programs you could use to create art, Multiple 3D programs are listed (including Blender, one of the most popular, as well as Maya and 3D Studio Max). Any other 3D program should be comparable to any of them.
Although they are fully-fledged professional programs, and not scene creators, they can still be used to create the same 3rd party crap, simply by downloading and importing already existing .blend or similar files, To mitigate this, there's this rule:
"Any 3D assets not modeled by the uploader should not be primary elements of your piece and should be credited and linked to when possible, to help us determine if the submission is suitably original / transformative."
Meanwhile, here are some programs largely considered as scene creators or commonly used alongside 3rd party assets:
- Koikatsu Party (Not allowed, period. here ya go!),
- CharaStudio (A feature in Koikatsu. Characters made with this could be classed as 3rd-party assets, so not allowed)
- Gacha Life (Not allowed, though it's 2D not 3D.)
- SFM (Works mostly with third party models, use only if you've created the models yourself, contact Tom if it's still removed)
- GMod (same as SFM)
- Honey Select (A NSFW sex sim, Similar to SFM, so don't use it for still-frame renders)
- Unreal's MetaHuman (Not allowed, the software creates human models)
- Daz3D (Not allowed, largely consists of 3rd party assets)
- Video game screenshots, ie. machinima, or anything with a level editor (Not allowed)
If you have more questions, or opinions, feel free to add them here in the comments.
