2's company....250 is a crowd
whispers65
Posts: 952
Ok I like to stretch the limits. This time I'm just not sure how possible it is. I have an i7 machine, not the greatest but ok.
Usually I can get 6-8 Genesis figures in a scene and then it starts to behave like an antivirus program is running, you know slow and sluggish. And I do plan on using studio for this.
I would like to do this really big scene I have in my mind. I won't say exactly what it is but it'd be filling about 250 seats. I do have most of the LoRez people. I'd have to see how much I can customize.
So feasible or know to do a scene with 250 low rezzes plus others? now I also thought about doing the scene in passes where I render different sections and then splice them together. I've never done that but I'm trying to think outside the box on this one.
Pro's and con's?
As always thank you for your time and effort! It is much appreciated!
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Comments
250 big ask for even the the most pwerful of home computers, as far as I know that is. ;)
I would do this as you suggested, in different passes. Just make sure you render in such a way that shadows fall in the right place and so not to get removed by another pass.
I think that 250 individual figures would be ambitious, although using the LoRez figures might just make it possible. As far as I know, Studio doesn't support instancing, where you can have multiple copies of the same object at different locations. Send in the Clones will clone objects, but it will actually produce new copies, each of which takes up memory.
I use Carrara's replicators a lot for crowd scenes, such as this one and this one. In those examples, all the figures are posed identically and drawn up in formation, using single figures and simple replicators. Attached below is a slightly more complex example, a fragment of a WIP using LoRez figures and multiple replicators. You could, however, make a fairly convincing 'mob' by using multiple different base figures, and a surface replicator (which allows random placement of the instanced objects).
But that's Carrara, and you want to use Studio, so I'm not sure what to suggest, except huge amounts of RAM and a great deal of patience.
Yes Daz Studio does have Instancing now and has done for a year or so.
Why so it does. I'm behind the times.
In that case, there's a solution. Provided not all the figures need to be visibly distinct (i.e. different poses, appearances), you should be able to crowd your scenes with figures to your heart's content.
Thanks to @Szark for the correction.
My pleasure. Even though Instancing reduces memory needed it will still use up a lot of memory with a lot of instances but it should help with rendering larger groups that without using it.
You could also use a Geomtry Shell which is just a plain basic mesh with no movement or morphs, a clone if you will but with one added bonus is that you can use different textures as opposed to Instancing where you cannot change textures. So you could Instance the distant crowd and as you get closer to the camera you could use some Shells and change the textures to make then look a little different at least.
Don't know how complex the scene will be but I'd try to render the people row for row and then add them together in PS or Gimp.
Start from the back should work.
This way your audience won't look so static as you can pose and differ them.
I was wondering about instancing. I have used that before. I want the "crowd" to be distinct enough that they all don't look the same but duplicates and triplets will be fine if I can space them out.
I'm going to do some experimenting this afternoon to see if what popped in mind will even work. I'll know shortly. If not, I may have to try it a little different way.
As always the problem isn't coming up with ideas, it's bringing them into reality.
Yup exactly. So in this case, I'm rendering more people that I have ever done before. Getting the lighting right will play a huge part in it (and I suck with lighting). And I will be using some kind of volumetric lighting which I've never used before.
So all in all a good learning experience. And if I have to splice things together or use several renders, etc then even more learning.
I may have to use all kinds of thinking outside the box for me on this one. And that is what makes it fun.
You have a good attitude so you should be able to get it done.
What sort of lighting are you after, indoor or outdoor?
It'll be indoor. Most of what I do is indoor.
Well to start you could use Uber Envrionment 2 set to Ambient light only which will provide the overall ambient light that will not cast any shadows. Then start to add your indoor lights, point lights http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/23911/ might be the best choice. If you are going to use Volumetric then lowering the ambient light will help keep the exposure down.
The hard part so far is getting the scene loaded and working. I have a choice of either FBX or OBJ, neither of which will load into Studio nicely although there is an import option. I can load into Carrara with no problems. I can save as FBX again and then I am able to load into Studio. I then try and save as a scene file. But I can't open it after saving.
Soooo still at this stage lol.
Have you tried saving the mesh in OBJ from Carrara as Poser settings, loading that into Studio and then straight away Export the mesh from Studio as an OBJ with a different name. Close Studio, open Studio and Import the OBJ, save scene, close Studio, reopen Studio and open scene.
I have had to do what you are doing, using Carrara or Blender as a pipeline to get meshes into Studio. I even use Bryce, but not often.
I'll try that. I've done another scene before and got it to work ok and can now open and save it. I'm working on learning to texture and use shaders so it gives me lots of practice.
This one is just bigger. Other than that it shouldn't be that big of a deal. And this one does have some textures or at least colored. The bedroom one I'm working on had no textures.
I really dont think DS will handle 250 character scene very well if at all.
Regardless of what you do I would make the following suggestions.
- Make the Interior scene, minus the people, a single save file and add to it all your lighting.
- Make each character with their clothing and hair each a seperate scene. In your case you may want to do more then one person per saved scene.
- The reason for separating them out like that is that it allows you to load just those you want to work on and make the changes you needs and save them without having to go through the hassel of loading everything just to make a few minor or major changes.
- If you're going to do this all as a single render then you will need to load the scene and then merge all the other saved scenes containing just the characters one by one.
- If yoy dont do a single render then you can load the scene followed by just one group of figures and render them. Then delete the unneeded figures and load up the next set and repeat the process until all figures are rendered in the scene.
- You will want to save each render out as a PNG file.
- If you do the multi render then its only obvious that you need to merge the renders together and remove unwanted parts of each so if gives the idea of everyone being blended together.
Hmm.. I've got a Brand new POWER PC I had built. I've happily gone well beyond the 20 genesis mark with a full scene set up and not hit slow down. But 250? I'm not even going to try that. It was a Stonemason set, they are well done for low foot prints, and I just loaded a single figure Sub Scene 20 times for the test that had all the standards, mesh hair clothing ect.
As said above, for multi Sets, remember your also loading all the textures for each set, your best bet is to use a multi layered render. In my old XP 32 bit days I often did 5 layer passes just to get 6 V4's M4's into one image.
I've tried instancing G2F. At 100 DS takes a bit more than 1Gig memory but the interface becomes sluggish. At 150 it becomes unusable. Instancing works great when not displaying the instances. The problem may come from either smoothing modifier or the graphic card can't handle all the instances. Side note I have 8 Gig Ram and 2 Gigs VRam
Another way to do that would be to render little scenes in RIB files and to a final render with 3delight standalone which will be just reading all RIB archives
I'lll post something about this method later. I don't know yet how that will handle memory.
Instancing works fine, but be aware of the limits: instances inherit the texture, pose and morphs of the parent and apart from individually adjusting their X, Y and Z Translation and Rotation (also Scale? not tried that yet!) they will be the same as their 'parent' More good news is that if you have a clothed and haired figure the instancing will take over all of that, too - presumably it will do so for all conformed items (not checked parented props yet).
Thank you for the replies! I may not be able to even try this unless I can get the starter scene saved and be able to reload it back in since this project will take a while to complete. I was hoping to have it done for Halloween.
A couple of notes though. Only about 10 figures will be Genesis. The crowd fillers will either be Low rez people like Lorenzo and Loretta lorez (I'll prob use as they have a lot of variety). Once I have a variety then I'm going to instance them. Or I could use Greenpots stadium people @ rendo. They are even more low rez but don't have quite the uniqueness I'd like.
So it shouldn't be as bad in theory. And I will probably try multiple renders in this case. It all depends.
So far I'm crippled before I get out of the starting gate. I have one starter scene that I can import, which I really like, but once saved I can't reopen. I do have another option but it's way on the other side of the scale. So it's 250 versus 16. Or I could take what I have and "custom" build something in between but that's a lot of work too and why bother when there's already what I want. There will be enough work without doing a custom build
Soooo...