I received a batch of 40 images from the book’s author for the next courseware chapter. I won’t necessarily use all of them in lessons; some won’t be relevant, and I may want to make my own 3d of some for animating.
The chapter repeats and expands a chapter in the previous edition. Running through the 40, I can tell immediately which are perfect copies of previous images, which are improved versions of the same object by a new artist**, and which are brand new objects.
The previous package had about 500 images for all chapters. This little experiment shows an impressive ability of our visual memory. We can compare hundreds of images as exact 2d pixel matches, as resembling the same 3d subject, or as brand new. (Raster vs vector matching in computer terms.)
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** Just FYI: There are two distinct reasons for a re-render. Some pictures were adequate by older textbook standards, but the baseline for scientific illustration has risen in recent years. Less like schematics, more like paintings. Some were good pictures copied from sources that are no longer available for permission or no longer affordable.
As I’ve mentioned before, copyrights and patents encourage creativity in a counterintuitive way. School “civics” class teaches us that paying the author encourages the author to do more. That isn’t how it works. Inventors and artists rarely own the patent or copyright, rarely receive the rewards. Copyrights are BLOCKERS, not encouragers. They force creativity as a workaround when the owner of the right blocks usage of the original, or makes the cost prohibitive.
Polistra's Mill 