Smaller spaces

drafter69_696b99e42b

may I suggest developers create smaller spaces... an example is a classroom that holds 30 people will be useless unless you fill i at least half full of characters who will take a week to render.  A small classroom designed for 6-8 will look full with a min of characters...

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e

There ARE ways to make the characters who are a little more into the background have a lower imact on the render, though, various sorts of means of lowering the resolution of the fabric shaders and the skin shaders, for instance.  There might also be low-poly people to stick at the back of the classroom, though I dunno if there are any that specifically look like schoolkids or like college goers.

chris-2599934

There can't be many places where class sizes are that small; but if you want such a small classroom it would be easy enough to kitbash something together from a suitably sized room (maybe from a house) furnished with props from a classroom product. I'm guessing PAs would rather produce a classroom that looks like, well, a classroom.

There are ways of handling large numbers in a render. Low poly figures like Lorenzo and Loretta Lorez is one thing (though they don't work that well as children). You could make billboards to represent kids at the back of the class. You could shoot multiple versions of the image with different kids present in each image, then combine them together in post. You can use instances to lighten the load - rendering 30 different kids is going to kill most set-ups, but rendering 10 sets of identical triplets (suitably randomised around the room) may be less troublesome. Clever camera angles and blurry depth of field effects can help hide the duplication.

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e

Another idea might be to place out some different kid characters as you might want in the background, in ones and twos, then export each as an OBJ file, take them into Blender or something and do a reduction in traingles, then bring that back in as a static prop.  Dunno how that would work with some basic clothes attached, or if it would still be possible to apply clothes to them after bringing them back in.  I suspect someone else here probably knows the relevant fants and details on how something like this might be done, or if that aspect of it could be done.

FSMCDesigns

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e said:

Another idea might be to place out some different kid characters as you might want in the background, in ones and twos, then export each as an OBJ file, take them into Blender or something and do a reduction in traingles, then bring that back in as a static prop.  Dunno how that would work with some basic clothes attached, or if it would still be possible to apply clothes to them after bringing them back in.  I suspect someone else here probably knows the relevant fants and details on how something like this might be done, or if that aspect of it could be done.

The decimator plugin for DS will reduce the mesh along with clothing to any level you want. You can also use the texture atlas in DS to combine all the textures on one sheet for even more of a savings on resources.