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West Jordan, UT 84084
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kakman - So pleased you are enjoying it. I have been diverted from working on "City Central" for a week or two, but I should make more progress soon.
I just picked up this set with the recent sales and I have a couple of questions:
1) Is it possible to create a smaller neighborhood of buildings? I've learned how to load the day or night scene presets, but I'm not sure how to make a smaller grouping of buildings and streets (and cars!).
2) Is it possible to replace buildings in the city with other buildings? I picked up some of the Dystopia blocks during the sales and would like to use some of the buildings alongside the Night and Day City buildings. At first I thought maybe I could set up smaller neighborhoods around those giant Dystopia buildings, but maybe I could just replace a couple of blocks in a neighborhood.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Thanks for buying the set. You can make any size and arrangement that you like. There are a couple of ways:
- the large city scenes use a grid replicator, click on the Blocks Replicator and go to the Model Room and you will see the page which gives the parameters for that which shows the grid as 20 x 16 (x 1 vertically!). You can set this to be as large or small as you need, from 1 x 1 upwards. You can also change the Extras Replicator to match, alkthough leaving it will give a number of blank blocks around where it is populated.
- if you want more control, you can use the included individual building and block objects which are included to create you own layouts.
If for example you want a group of Dystopia buildings surrounded on all sides by Night and Day blocks, you would need to have four replicated areas, one at the front, two at the sides and one at the back, surrounding your group of Dystopia buildings. Alternatively, you could add Dystopia blocks as a extra object in the Blocks Replicator and this would scatter a few of those around, although I don't know how well the size of blocks would match.
For info I have a group of tall buildings in the works which match the Night & Day set, it was put on hold while I did the "Animation In Carrara" training set which hopefully will come out fairly soon, but I may well ressurect that project and make them available so you will be able to mix and match the tall structures to create even more interesting cities.
Thank you! I'd just kind of leapt in to playing with the Night and Day set, and wasn't sure how to use the city in smaller, more manageable groupings. I will give this a go.
Thanks again!
I did a quick render, and was happy enough with it to post it in my gallery. Here's a look: http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/257891/
Looks really cool - good work!
that's great.. doesn't look out of place and really makes the image
Thanks! I've lived in cities most of my life so I'm used to big buildings surrounded by smaller buildings. I made the Night and Day City array about 5 blocks deep, and saved that as a separate file so I can merge it into my scenes a bit easier. It's a great product and I really recommend it.
Me too!
Isn't it cool how he has all of those preset chunks to make custom building fun and easy? I just love it!
I don't recall ever seeing another product that comes complete with people, vehicles, streets, buildings and all of the extras needed to bring it to life... Very fun and well equipped kit!
I had so much fun building a city scene around a lake - made using the Carrara Ocean primitive.
I messed with some of the included pieces - like making the road preset deeper - using it as bridges over water filled with a bunch of cars! LOL
Yeah... I agree 100% Highly recommended!
Exploring his immense English Village is also a real trip!
Wait...it comes with PEOPLE? And CARS?
--MW
Okay, apparently it DOES include people and vehicles! I'm putting this on my wishlist, as one of the least thrilling parts of constructing cityscapes is sticking in all the people and vehicles.
--MW
WOW! Your esthetics here hit my sweet spot.
Yes! They're very low-res - just what's needed for large cityscapes. They really help to bring the whole thing to life :)
As Dart says, they are very lo-res and intended for distant/background renders. They are also static (but you could try adding some movement yourself...) but they also use the Instance Replicator (available for free from Sparrowhawke3D's website) so each time you duplicate them you get different colours (and a few switchable items on the figures too such as jackets, belts, skirts, hats). This image contains just two actual figures, the rest of the variations are generated from duplicates and the Instance Replicator shaders so it all happens automatically. I know they look like Lego people here, but quite effective from a distance! Great for sports crowds etc. too.
Wow! Thanks for the closeups. The item switcher, as well as instance replicator, really makes these items convincing in variety and number. And they're part of a whole package that's only $19.95? Super deal!
--MW
Hey! That one guy looks just like me!
Apologies for the necro thread. I've had this product for ages, but finally have time to play. I can't find read me type notes anywhere. I've been through all my readme files in my Carrara installation, and I went back and downloaded the manual version and unzipped it. Still no luck. I'm probably overlooking something painfully obvious, so apologies in advance.
I am not sure there was a specific ReadMe file. I give below the store page and other notes which were done when I submitted the product.
"You know the problem - you can use duplication and replication to build a city from individual buildings, but unless you have a huge number of building designs and shaders, you can clearly see copies of buildings throughout your scene.
Enter the InstaBuilding concept! This product uses Sparrowhawke's free Instance Randomizer plugin (available here http://www.sparrowhawke3d.com/InstanceRandomizerPage.html) to generate a huge number of buildings from a handful of actual models. These building models have been specially designed to have a number of parts which can be turned on and off by the Instance Randomizer, and a large number of shading domains which are also randomized. Each model can therefore generate many different looking buildings every time you duplicate them.
There are five building designs and each is available in normal and tall versions, making ten core building models in all, each set up with shaders to use the Instance Randomizer to generate the variants. Don't worry too much about the underlying process - just press Control-D to duplicate the building, and marvel at the variations which are automatically generated for you!
Think of them as city greeble blocks, but taken to a whole new level!
There's more - in addition to the core buildings, I have included four pre-made city blocks which each use a different arrangement of the buildings together with a sidewalk base, street lights, illuminated building signs, trees and grass areas, lo-res people and cars, vans and trucks (many of which also use Instance Randomizer shaders!). I have also included a complete city scene which can be used to generate huge aerial cityscapes.
The buildings are fully textured and can be used individually or in small groups as simple backgrounds to your characters and vehicles, but really come into their own when you need large numbers of buildings and dramatic skylines! As they are relatively light on system resources and fast to render, they are great for creating impressive backgrounds, and by animating the camera you can create breath-taking fly-overs or fly-throughs.
Also included is a fully nighttime textured set of buildings, city blocks and a whole night city scene, ideal for police dramas, superheroes and other denziens of the night!
This set is the first in what could be a whole series of InstaBuilding sets from which to mix and match your scenes. Build your own city today!
10 Core City InstaBuildings
· Buildings 1-5
· Tall Buildings 1-5
4 Pre-Built City Blocks including buildings, signs, street lights, trees and grass areas (easily customized to your own requirements if needed)
10 Rooftop illuminated signs with randomized colors to customize your buildings
Lo-Res People
· 2 Individual Lo-Res People in different poses with a number of Insta-Variatations each time they are duplicated
· Ready set up Sidewalk People preset to add life to your city blocks
Lo-Res Vehicles
· Individual Lo-Res Car, Van and Truck with color variations
· Night variants with glowing headlights and taillights
· Ready set up Road Traffic around a block (day and night)
Sidewalk base for a city block together with Street Lights (on or off) and Road Markings
All of this available in Day and Night textures where appropriate. The night sidewalks and road surafces have wet reflections added to add to the drama of night scenes.
Complete scenes
· City Complete-Day
· City Complete-Night
Requires Carrara 8.5 and Sparrowhawke's Free Instance Randomizer plug-in
Note that if you use the buildings or other objects which use the Instance Randomizer in Replicators or Surface Replicators, you will need to manually generate the variations by selecting the building or object and pressing Control-D to duplicate a few times. Each duplicate refers back to the geometry of the Master Object and so is very efficient on system resources, and Carrara handles hundreds of duplicates with ease.
The vehicles and people included with this set are very low resolution and are intended to populate aerial views or for other long distance shots to add life to the city. Other resources should be used if closer views are required."
If you have any other questions when you come to use it, feel free to post here and I will do my best to answer them.
Thank you, Phil. Much appreciated. You mentioned notes in this thread, so I was afraid I'd overlooked something. By the way, your video on the Instance Randomizer is really helpful too!
Glad you found it useful.
double that!
I had this type of product in mind as I had seen things done in other software, which is what prompted me to ask Sparrowhawke to make the plugin and I am delighted that he was able to produce it. You can do some very cool things with it!
Hi everyone,
Quick question, do I need Carrara 8.5 to be able to use this product in Daz3d?
Thanks.
Funny you should ask that - the current product can only be used in Carrara and it needs the free Instance Randomizer plugin by Sparrowhawke to function properly.
However I am currently working on a version for Daz Studio, so watch this space!
Just to answer this:
I used to even have shortcuts in a menu to all of my various ReadMe folders within each of my runtimes. I've recently noticed that they're not included with products anymore - but kept online, and we access them via DIM.
This is a fine system for those who are young enough to not remember ArtZone and the losing of it over time. Howie Farkes and many others kept highly detailed product knowledge in those pages - when Daz3d took it down, that info was just gone!
Anyway, here's a link to the ReadMe for this amazing product
Thank you, Dart. With products disappearing from the store without warning, I've realized I haven't kept images and readmes that would be so useful to have.
I have nightmares that they will change up the forums again someday, and these threads will disappear too with so much info. I've been wondering if a ginormus google doc or some such thing we could all access would be a good place to dump copies, but I have no idea how to set up such a thing or what platform would be best. Hopefully Daz won't ever change things.
I have those same nightmares. Crap... I hope this doesn't mean it's a vision of the future!
Thanks for working on a Daz3d version :)
Wow! Sweet! I'm in!
Maybe I'll finally be able to use DS for more than just a figure optimizer/creator, aniBlock manipulator, and morph plugin!
Are you going to go in-depth like you did in your Carrara releases?