[Released] Now-Crowd Billboards - Modern City Life
RiverSoft Art
Posts: 6,573
The latest entry in the Now-Crowd Billboard series is our most massive yet, Modern City Life, with 33 different Figure Billboard Sequences! Paint your town FULL of people doing interesting things in high quality, flexible and easy to use billboards... perfect as a backdrop for the main action that you add!
Billboards are a fantastically quick and resource easy way to add background crowds to your scenes. These pre-rendered elements are great to play the background characters in your scene. The Now-Crowd Billboards improves on standard billboards by providing 72 different views for every billboard figure. Change a billboard figure to 12 different horizontal angles and 6 different vertical angles. When your camera moves, the Now-Crowd Billboards can be changed to match!
There are also great scripts to make these billboards easy to use! There is one script to turn the billboards to face the camera and another script to change billboard figure angle based on horizontal and vertical orientation.
For Iray and 3Delight
No figures are included with this product.
No other products are needed to use the Now-Crowd Billboards - Modern City Life.
Features
- 33 Figure Billboard Sequences:
- Autumnal Woman Walking
- Businessman Walking
- Businesswoman Standing
- Couple Holding Hands
- Couple Hugging
- Couple Sitting and Talking
- Couple Walking
- Couple Walking Arm in Arm
- Delivery Man
- Family Look
- Flirting Teenagers
- Man Hailing Taxi
- Man Jogging
- Man Sitting and Looking at Phone
- Man Talking on Phone
- Man Walking
- Man Walking 02
- Man Waving
- Men Walking and Talking
- Old Man Standing
- Old Woman Walking
- Policeman Standing
- Son Pushing Father
- Sweater Dress Woman Walking
- Two Women Selfie
- Two Women Walking
- Woman Reading
- Woman Riding Bike
- Woman Sitting 01
- Woman Sitting 02
- Woman Smoking
- Woman Texting
- Woman with Groceries
- Scripts Include:
- Now-Crowd Orient Billboard Script - Change billboards to face camera
- Now-Crowd Change Billboard Angle Script - Change billboards to use different figure angle
- 72 Texture and Transparency Maps (2048 x 2048) per single Figure Billboard
- 72 Texture and Transparency Maps (3072 x 3072) per single Multi-Figure Billboard
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Comments
Good job! Thanks for including some seated poses and changing the morphs up a bit. Thanks for the elderly as well. What's the Gigabyte total on this?
You're welcome! Unfortunately, it comes in at 15GB. There are 8 more billboard sequences than Party Time. I had planned for 30 total billboard sequences. Your seated request came in just as I was finishing up and pushed it over 30.
Looks great! (Now all we need are winter crowds, and I need a new harddrive to split up my content...
Winter crowds?! (gibbers in the corner)
Ok, I will add it to the list. Can't do anything about a new hard drive though 
Well, you also need student crowds, kindergarten crowds, home-for-the-elderly crowds and sunny beach crowds.
OooOOOOOooooo... home-for-the-elderly crowd? That would push me over the brink. That truly is diabolical!
Well, if you render the sunny beach crowds afterwards, you might just recover. Unless, of course, you render the "home-for-the-elderly at the beach-day", perhaps.
My eyes!!! It burns!
I am curious. What do you all think about the number of angles per billboard figure sequence? I assume noone wants more as their HD and download connections couldn't take it. But do you want less so there is less size? I love having the vertical angles, and I don't think you can reduce the number of those without it becoming obvious when you move a camera, but the number of horizontal angles could be reduced (from its current 12).
To me, the minimum would be 4 (front, left side, back, right side). This would mean each sequence would be 6 (vertical angles) * 4 (horizontal angles) = 24 billboards/sequence. This would mean the download size would be a third of what it is now at the cost of some flexibility. So instead of 15GB for Modern City Life, it would be 5GB.
You could also go with 45 degree increments which would mean 48 billboards/sequence. This would reduce the download size to 2/3 of the original, 10GB compared to 15GB. Thoughts?
Drool
I agree with you. The 72 frames/sequence is actually already a downsize from what I started with, where I tried 15 degree increments at first. 6 x 24 = 144 frames used a LOT of space
It was a shock when I checked after the first couple figure billboard sequences! 
But it did look beautiful. 
This looks fabulous!
Can we have billboards in 3D?
Just kidding
Thanks. I think I designed this product to avoid 3D for some reason, though I can't recall why now
Thank you for the kind words. I can't help trying to make the product the best it can be. I keep adding "just one more figure" because it would make the product so much better.
45° might be enough, but I have to admit that I was totally thrilled to see how the "behaved" like a 3D character from all angles. I'll have to give it a try by "renaming" the intermediate angles and see how that looks.
Maybe a solution is really to cut down the numbers of characters in a pack; so instead of having 30 in a single pack, make two smaller ones with 15. Maybe make them themed (standing, sitting, sleeping, jumping...), and offer them as a bundle. That way, people can decide what they want, and if the bundle price is the same as what you ask for the current 30 pieces bundle, you should be fine. On top of it, you'll get a better idea as to what your customers prefer.
I'll try the reduced angles this weekend; I was about to create some custom billboards anyway, so that is a good test.
Just go for the best one. Or create 2 versions .... Ultra and Low :)
Yeah, the first time I had the script turning the billboard, it felt magical
It might be possible to do smaller packs. I might try it with the Fantasy "add on(s)" to the Medieval City Life.
I actually thought of a low number and an expansion to make more angles, but I realized it would just mean more work for less sales.
I am leaning towards keeping things as they are. I organized Modern City Life so that there is a zip for each figure. If Daz keeps it that way (and keeps a naming scheme where you could figure it out), you could just download the ones you like after you buy.
YES!!! It ain't broke. Don't "improve" it. Less ain't more. MORE is more. I like your products just as they are. I got my 3TB drive this week so I'd have room for all your sets. So, rock on. I put in my vote for Winter crowd.
DING!
you got my interest :)
Modern City Life has been released
Downloading now. But where is 8 of 15? It's not in DIM, nor is it in my Product Library.
Very good question! I was mistakenly left off owning my own product until about an hour ago so I haven't had a chance to check files. I sent Daz a query.
OK, 8 has now shown up.
On the seated figures - how do those work with the different views? I'm assuming you need to put a 3D chair under them, but wouldn't the different camera angles have a problem?
You are absolutely correct. You have to be careful in how you position the billboard and the chair. Not all angles will work.
In the Now-Crowd Billboards - Party Time thread, I discussed this:
"In order for a figure to properly render with a chair, some of the figure needs to render behind the chair and some in front of the chair. In render 1 (I moved the figures away from the table to clearly show the woman), the woman facing us is ok as all of her is essentially rendered on top of the chair. The woman facing away is a problem. Her legs need to be behind the chair but her derriere needs to be on top of the seat and behind the seatback. Only by being creative can I make it look ok (render 2). "
The following text was also supposed to be on the product page:
* Note that shadows are a weakness for billboards from high up angles (where you can see the shadows clearly). With careful attention to lighting and positioning, you can minimize the issue.
** Sitting Billboards require particular attention to use as the billboard must be placed to interact with a chair. For example, imagine the sitting woman billboard facing away on a chair. Her legs need to be behind the chair but her derriere needs to be on top of the seat and behind the seatback. By being creative you can make it work but not all angles will work in this case.
*** Since this product uses encrypted scripts, it cannot be used in versions of Daz Studio below 4.9.3.166.
Compatible with the https://www.daz3d.com/billboard-nodes-plugin though it is not needed for the Now-Crowd Billboards product.
Great job. Additionally, I would immedistely buy an ancient rome or greece collection which includes cheering people in an ampitheatre or colloseum.
Thanks!
I will add this to the list. I could do the people but not the colloseum as I am not a modeller (yet)
There are plenty of those kinds of buldings out there, but nobody (nobody) else has so far been able to offer an efficient solution to populating historical scenes like those I described. You'd have the market locked on that.