Do you use the Medium sharing site to share your work?

[MattHickman]

As we continue to work on Medium and grow the application we're also continuing to work on the sharing site. The community that's formed around Medium both here and on Reddit has been incredible and seeing all your artwork, energy, 3D prints and stories really keeps us fired up. We've seen your posts and requests about the app, and we're working on all sorts of stuff as we speak, but we haven't seen a lot of talk about the sharing site itself. So we wanted to make a casual poll here to see 1) how many of you are actively using the site and 2) what would you like to see from it in the future or if you're not using it, why not? Feel free to comment below and discuss!

Thanks everyone for your ongoing support, we have some really exciting things to share throughout the year! 

[P3nT4gR4m]

For me the sharing site needs some browse options. Recent uploads or popular sculpts/tuts/brushes, categories maybe eventually? Some way to follow people, too. Right now it's no diff from uploading my stuff to google drive or something. Actually it's kinda more annoying cos I can upload to drive from out of the rift. I usually upload after I've finished it, so I'm ready to take the rift off for a break and then I gotta sit for a bit longer, staring into space while it uploads

[nalex66]

I've uploaded sculpts to the site since you opened it up outside of the US, and I've posted the link in my sketchbook thread here on the forums, but beyond that, I haven't really used the site. I don't know if anyone has looked at or downloaded my stuff, and I haven't really looked at other galleries or downloaded other people's sculpts. 

[Roaster]

The sharing gallery needs hit counters. A menu page listing available galleries with discoverable content is necessary for use.

[ozelon]

I shared two of mine but I agree with comments above about filtering and other options.

There is a little bit of an elephant in the room though. I talked to coworkers (artists as well) about sharing this way today. And they said they would never.
I wonder how willing people will be to share their work like this in Medium's future. A concept artist for example doesn't share a full Photoshop file in full resolution. Usually art is shared online in half res or lower as a JPG. Sometimes with water marks. The artists will always be the only person with the original file with all layers and in full rez.

By sharing medium files you give anybody full access to your original.

However there is really no other way to present your stuff properly.  No 2D image will ever do it justice.

Maybe it takes a little bit of a change of mind. On the other hand maybe there will some kind of VR water mark in the future.

I wonder how the other people on this forum think about this.

[P3nT4gR4m]

ozelon said:

I wonder how the other people on this forum think about this.

I can understand pros not wanting to give away their livelihood. From an amateur point of view I'd be flattered that someone thought something of mine was worth stealing.  😄

[Anonymous]

I've used it to try it out but there is no visibility from posting to the sharing site and whats the point in sharing if no one see's it?  🙂

The whole site needs full public facing options, and you need to be able to access it from the main Oculus.com website, even accessing this forum from it is painful. If whoever runs Oculus.com doesn't want a link to the Medium Sharing site on the home page or in your profile menu then you should really start a whole new domain. Think of creating the thingiverse of VR sculpting! 🙂 

A small idea:


Having weekly features of the 'best sculpts', a 'popular' page etc etc will give users more reason to post there and with all of that we can find other artists and download people's work who we don't know or don't post on the forums here 🙂

Look at all the 3D printing file sharing sites for some inspiration as they are all sharing 3D files like you and do some great stuff for the community around it:
http://www.thingiverse.com/ (Although a bit stale now)
https://pinshape.com/
https://www.myminifactory.com/

Having monthly competitions etc will help engage with users and will give users something to sculpt in Medium if they find it hard to find inspiration and will create some healthy competition between users.

Also people should be able to comment on sculpts so you can make friends and give advice etc. (You are owned by facebook after all! Connect the 3D sculpting world 😛  )

[nalex66]

Does the sharing site even have any sort of public front page? When I go to my gallery page, there's a Home button, but that just takes me to oculus.com/medium, and from there I don't see any sign that artist galleries even exist. There really needs to be some sort of discoverability, or at least some sort of portal to the gallery pages.

[Roaster]

I only upload sculpts that I'm willing to share, or give away as the case may be.
 
@MattHickman
Tell us how many users have upload content. Like ... six of us? World leaders in sculptography, I think.

[P3nT4gR4m]

How many of us is there, ayway? Holy shit! If there's only a couple of hundred people using this, that makes me one of the top couple of hundred virtual sculptors in the world right now. What a trip. This is like being my parent's second favourite kid all over again and I only had one sister