What level of detail do you expect in an outdoor environment?
sriesch
Posts: 4,241
What level of detail do people typically expect in a premade outdoor environment, and what range within it will the camera typically be placed?
I have been trying to determine the best way to make a DS environment scene that would be useful to the majority of people, and I'm not sure how best to approach it. This problem doesn't exist when creating my own scenes, because the camera is fixed in one spot as is the scene itself and I have chosen the objects in it to be of the appropriate level of detail, whether something held up to the camera with details down to the millimeter visible, or mountains on the horizon where details a mile in size might not even be visible.
Obviously it will be impossible to detail a scene all the way to the horizon so that any part of it can be within feet of the camera. I'm going to have to draw the line somewhere, but where? Would people happily accept a scene designed to place a figure only in the exact center and keep the camera far enough back for the full human figure to be visible? Or would people expect to be able to get close-ups of that tree or plant or ground in the scene? Or move the figure anywhere within a range (50 feet? 500 feet? a mile?) Or something else?
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I like doing closeup shots with outdoor scenes. I want hi res rocks and textures to make this possible.
Exactly how hi res? If you zoomed in as close as you wanted on an object in the scene, what would be the distance on that object from the top of your screen to the bottom of your screen? (1 foot, 1 inch, etc.)
How far from the center of the scene would you expect to be able to move the camera and still be able to zoom in this close? (10 feet, a mile, etc.)
My personal wish list:
1. Nicely detailed ground plane, preferably morphable to create slight undulations nothing drastic. Anywhere from 10x10 to 50x50 feet would be good for most things.
2. The above to either have multiple texture maps or multiple texturable surfaces so that I can create anything from a meadow to a forest clearing.
3. A stream morph would be good to allow the creation of a small stream on this ground plane.
4. Some nicely detailed rock props to go along with the ground plane but separate so I can position them as needed. Morphable would be good so I could create different shapes.
5. Same with trees but there are a lot of options elsewhere for trees, still some lower poly but highly detailed texture trees would be nice. As would some grass that's not to hard on the system.
Overall I'm not really looking for an environment that I can zoom to any level at any point and get great details. If I need close up then I don't need the mountains in the distance eating up my memory. What I really want is more of an outdoor construction set with decent ground plane and props to allow me to build my own environment.
If you could do something like Room Creator or even a series of sets like Jacks Curious buildings or West Park interiors but for exteriors that would be cool. Especially non-urban exteriors.
I find myself using the Woodland Realm Playsets quite frequently and I'd love a more detailed version of those.
Exactly how hi res? If you zoomed in as close as you wanted on an object in the scene, what would be the distance on that object from the top of your screen to the bottom of your screen? (1 foot, 1 inch, etc.)
How far from the center of the scene would you expect to be able to move the camera and still be able to zoom in this close? (10 feet, a mile, etc.)
Depending on the environemnet, if you can take it apart, say.. Move rocks around or use those for other purpose, then having both a high res set and a low res set makes sense for distance and far work. Predatron, for example has a high res rock set, and a low res rock set, so depending on what you are using it for you can switch the map.
I tend to have a figure as the center stage to most of my renders, and I want at least a portion of the scene to be suitable for close up shots and portrait work.
If a scene is an environment, I appreciate some high res rocks and a tree or two, that I can use in more than one scene.
...I have DimensionTheory's Ecomantics and often use the tree planes for mid range to distant background fill as they have nice detail but being billboards do not place an extreme load on the processor/memory during rendering.
Basically a mix of fully modelled (for close up) and billboard trees/plants (distant) would work to keep render times manageable while still giving good overall detail. The idea of morphing rocks and possibly even a morphing ground terrain (similar to First Bastion's Rolling Plains) (along with a separate loadable water plane) would be nice as it would allow one to create their own creeks, ponds, and hollows.
Separate props like fallen limbs, stumps, and even tree trunks that could be individually loaded and placed would also work to help make a scene more complete.
I too use the WRPS a lot (have both 1 and 2) and often end up adding other plant and terrain based content (like rocks) to the settings to "fill out" the scene more.
Go over to RDNA in their Deep Freeze and take a look at Microcosm. It's inexpensive and has multiple ground planes with morphs, water, transmap edge blending and a more. There are a load of freebies for it in RDNA's free stuff. Most are Poser 4/ProPack materials but they use standard surface settings rather than Poser material room settings found in later products like TerraDome. The original water material uses surface and texture maps. The product update for it found in the free stuff uses the P5 material room but that is easily tweaked.
It also comes with a decent pdf manual.
Greetings,
A nice long detailed answer sadly just got eaten; I should know better an to use Fast Reply. :(
Fundamentally, it depends on pricing. If its priced like a Stonemason set, I expect it to be textured like one, which typically means I could have a superhero flying over and it'd look good, or I can have a brawl with a close-up of a drunkard losing a tooth to an impact with the curb, and it'd STILL look good. :)
Few people can be Stonemason, though.
Just...don't pitch a cityscape with lots of nooks for scenes to happen in, but then make the textures so abysmally low res that you can't actually render a shot of a person IN one of those nooks. :(
Buy a few of the outdoor scenes here (Firstbastion is particularly good), and figure out where you want to be, price-wise in comparison to them, and look for tricks like using barriers to make it hard to see repeating textures, reversed textures on different rocks, etc., to make as much of your environment unique as possible without killing yourself texture or time-wise.
I try to restrict myself to props and sets these days, having an embarrassment of clothing and characters, so I'd be happy to see more open environments!
-- Morgan
I get so peeved off when I get a good looking builing and find the ground plane is so bad I can't get that close at all as the texture is one map stretched too far and poorly made.
Environments is something I feel is best pieced together of smaller sets or items. That way you can have the higher res stuff up front and lower quality or lower res in teh back for filler. Also, in terms of ground planes and such I like to rely on my collection of textures that I have picked up over the years and use them, crop and tile them as required. Helps make things more unique too.
My scenes usually include humans (full height or half-height). Like many others I was severely disappointed with the "environments" that have an ugly ground plane and some washed out textures. What was probably okay for Generation 2 does not cut nowadays.
I'd say that anyone doing streets, forests, pathways, buildings and alleys should expect to have people there standing, running, crouching, even lying down. And it should render nicely. I don't think one needs to prepare every scene for "Bug's Life" - this is too specialized.
Stonemason's products were mentioned as high-end. If you want to take look at reasonably rendering mid tier scenes, I'd suggest AntFarm's or Coflek-Gnorgs (not on this store) miniatures and vignette scenes.
I have access to e-on vue and know how great it is to have billions of polygons in the scene.
Unfortunately it is not possible to import vue scenes into ds without loss.
The UV wrapping of terrains is for example somewhat unefficient. It works for mountains in the background but not really for closeups.
On the other hand I do not anymore want to export to e-on vue because that render engine seems now very slow compared to a GPU based solution.
So we are back to compositing different renders together.
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So I am stuck with what is available for DS.
I would love to see more detailed close up to middle range ground plains with very detailed grass and stones.
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Awesome would be if people like MartinJFrost who sells vue plants in the DAZ store would start to create high detailed plants optimized for DS.
http://www.daz3d.com/martinjfrost
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Personally I am very happy that Andrey Pestryakov offers specialised versions of his environments that are optimised for DS and the Octane Render Plugin:
http://www.daz3d.com/tropical-bundle-for-daz-studio-plugin-octanerender
based on
http://www.daz3d.com/tropical-bundle
Very great is that there are medium and high resolution versions of the environments available.
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And yes last but not least a big thanks to stonemason who manages to create very detailed scenes that still do not take much RAM and VRAM.
I think what matters is how the texture map is made, how well the mesh is uvmapped and as Matty said above how the ground planes are split in to sections..
For distance, I'm inclined to use sky domes/boxes and so medium and close is what I'd be interested in. If I was to stand Genesis on/beside a prop, the resolution would need to match or I wouldn't honestly consider the prop a quality product.
To my way of thinking there are two ways to do this, the "Stonemason/Dreamlight" method and the "Orestes" method. That is, you can make huge expansive environments that look fantastic in wide shots, or smaller detailed environments that look great in closeup.
Trying to do both in one set will drive you categorically insane. I'd pick one for a given product even if your catalog ultimately contains both.
Whatever you do, allow for the figures to kneel on one knee, lol! I got really ticked at some of the forest environments because if I scaled to what I needed to expand the ground plane, it looked stretched too badly to use. I had to do that because the boulders and logs weren't able to hide in scene- they were all part of one thing- so make things as separate props so we can "lose" them!
Merlin is a good one to study so far as expanding the horizons- go to The Windmill and take a peek at the scope of it. I just did a product review of it a few weeks ago in my art studio and I didn't really "get" from the promos how it fades out into hills so nicely. Depending on the angle, you get a very different view, which is important too. I like being able to rotate and get something that is varied from the rest of the scene so far as topography.
As for me, I'm interested in finding the nooks and crannies for great photo ops, which is also what I've been showcasing. (Along the lines of "do you know this set?") I think it's nice to have mini scenes within the bigger picture. Gives us our money's worth. (aka MGM The Mill, great corner with barrels and a potted plant, then right down the wall is a water feature where you can put your character on the ledge.) So make use of every inch!
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/19756/P690/#383716
Take a peek here, it's where I showed the entire scene for The Windmill and you'll see the mountains, etc.
Here's one more.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/19756/P705/#383748
...a couple products I find very handy for the close in parts of a scene:
http://www.daz3d.com/pred-pack-grass-one
This is my "go-to" when I need a grassy foreground
http://www.daz3d.com/urban-environment-shaders-for-daz-studio
These I find very useful for creating different pavement and wall surfaces.
Alas, a couple other products I often use, Indian Grass and Tall Grass are no longer sold here.
I'd like to think my sets cater to both,they may be rather large in scale but you should be able to do good quality close ups at the same time, there's really no reason to be stuck with one or the other.
I'd like to think my sets cater to both,they may be rather large in scale but you should be able to do good quality close ups at the same time, there's really no reason to be stuck with one or the other.
Or you can do both, because you're Stonemason. ;)
P.S. - This is not to say that there's anything wrong with his sets, or Dreamlight's, in closeup (as is undoubtedly visible from my own promos, which often use Stonemason's smaller sets). It's just that some of them are so huge that I'd think loading the resources would be wasteful for a small close-in scene!
And on sale right now for 60%. We've all been discussing this is a must-have product in some of the threads- totally agree with you! :)
I like that you can raise or lower the plane too, to quickly get the grass the length you want (quick cheat.) (It does come with long and short)