Am I the only one who feels that there has been a marked improvement in the works uploaded recently? Beautiful lights, lifelike renders, tasteful facial expressions. I'm just amazed and trying to catch up with you all.
Hi there, now I can only speak for myself and what I see (and I don't assume you're necessarily talking about my renders) But I've been posting my renders for about 2 months now and just started messing around with creating 3D renders. I've been following the post for long enough to see marked improvements with almost everyone that's posting here regularly. Like myself, my first few posts were dogshit compared to my most recent work. I practice and I hope I'm starting to get an handle on lighting, posing, expressions. Most challenging for me is the lighting, It can make or break a render. So I see a lot of people improve with every new render they post, and you are right, almost all of them are great!
With that being said, and it relates only to my personal experience, and it might be something that is happening with other new artists out there, but tools and rendering software have become easier to use and learn (Or less buggy or better optimized). When I said I've started only a few months ago it's not exactly true. I've tried to get into rendering like 6-7 years ago but the programs were a lot less easy to navigate, it was buggy as hell, and would massively clog your machine resources to the point where everything was a choppy mess (Back then I tried DAZ and Blender). Also, learning sources were a lot less readily available as it is nowadays. The resources hungry software and lack of tutorials put me off rendering until recently.
But like you said, all of this helps but it doesn't account for artistry, talent and skill, but I think that we have a very talented bunch or artists posting here. So to everyone out there, you guys are great and don't give up!
Happy rendering!