Backgraound people

drafter69_696b99e42b

Is there a better way to have a small crowd of people in the background of a scene?  I want to have 2 main characters with a small crowd in the background watching.     Thank you

Richard Haseltine

In which application, using which render engine (if you have a choice)?

sriesch

Better in what way?

If you mean "using few resources", there are some low-resolution figures available, although I haven't used them and don't know what to recommend, plus you might have a harder time finding clothing for them.  There are also some 2D figures, which of course you can make yourself by just rendering them and then applying the figure to a 2D plane.

If you mean "an easier way to set up a bunch of people at once than manually loading and posing each one at a time", you can use instancing in DAZ studio to create a bunch of copies of one figure.  You will still have to manually position them, but that's it.  This might not work well unless everybody in your crowd is supposed to look identical (a row of soldiers or uniformed figures, etc. or the lighting is very low), but you could still have a bunch of figures and maybe mix the instances up so it's less obvious and still less work than manually creating every figure.

Ostadan

If they are far enough in the background, you could do the equivalent of using cardboard standups, i.e., create renders of individual people and apply those renders as textures to suitably sized plane primitives placed in the proper location. 

Novica

Ostadan said:

If they are far enough in the background, you could do the equivalent of using cardboard standups, i.e., create renders of individual people and apply those renders as textures to suitably sized plane primitives placed in the proper location. 

There's actually a term for that, but I can't recall it off the top of my head. With proper DOF (depth of field) using those primitives is very effective. It's the equivalent of having "flats" in theatre, where the backgrounds are painted on them. 

Fishtales

Novica said:

Ostadan said:

If they are far enough in the background, you could do the equivalent of using cardboard standups, i.e., create renders of individual people and apply those renders as textures to suitably sized plane primitives placed in the proper location. 

There's actually a term for that, but I can't recall it off the top of my head. With proper DOF (depth of field) using those primitives is very effective. It's the equivalent of having "flats" in theatre, where the backgrounds are painted on them. 

Are they called Billboards?

Novica

I think that's it! 

vwrangler

There are some products for this at Renderosity, Powerage's M.O.M. and Greenpots' Bleacher People. MOM is a billboard-type solution, as mentioned, and Bleacher People is a 3D-ish low resolution type solution, and both are suitible primarily for distant shots.

JimmyC_2009

drafter69_696b99e42b said:

Is there a better way to have a small crowd of people in the background of a scene?  I want to have 2 main characters with a small crowd in the background watching.     Thank you

There is Loretta and Lorenzo LoRes in the store here which would do that job niccely : http://www.daz3d.com/lorenzo-and-loretta-bundle

On sale at the moment too.

 

bytescapes

JimmyC_2009 said:

drafter69_696b99e42b said:

Is there a better way to have a small crowd of people in the background of a scene?  I want to have 2 main characters with a small crowd in the background watching.     Thank you

There is Loretta and Lorenzo LoRes in the store here which would do that job niccely : http://www.daz3d.com/lorenzo-and-loretta-bundle

Depending on your requirements, there's also First Bastion's A Distant Army Approaches. In addition to Lorenzo and Loretta, Predatron sells a number of other lo-rez figures that might be useful to you.

If you have any older figures such as Victoria 3 (or, better yet, Victoria 1), they have low polygon counts, and would do to fill a background.

Billboards, as described in earlier posts, can work well, but you need to set them up under the same lights as your main figures. You'll probably want to do something like:

1. Place your main figures.
2. Get the lighting set up to light them the way you want.
3. Save your main scene.
4. Add one background figure
5. Make sure the lights also work for that background figure in various positions. If you made any changes, resave the scene.
6. Delete the foreground figures.
7. Render the background figure to an image (make sure that your software is set to generate the alpha channel so you can 'cut out' the figure)
8. Add in additional background figures one by one, or as a group, and render.
9. Re-load the scene with the main figures, load in your billboards in the appropriate positions, and render.

Some software supports 'replication' or 'instancing'. For example, Carrara's surface and multi-replicators are good for producing a crowd (here's one example, and here's another).

Remember that if your figures or billboards aren't quite perfect, you can use depth-of-field to ensure that your main figures are in sharp focus, while the background crowd are slightly blurred. In addition to hiding some defects, it also adds a nice sense of depth to the image.

Joe Webb

I just picked up Kaliedoscope just for this purpose. I'm trying to recreate the orc/imperial stormtrooper/nazi army assembly, with thousands of troops marshalled. No way a non-dedicated machine could handle such a load, so I'm experimenting with reflections. So far I'm fumbling around pretty bad, but I only got it yesterday. It has some great potential.

SteveM17

If the figures are quite far away you could use Miniman and Miniwoman by Porsimo, very low poly. Plus they're free!

kaotkbliss

oh wow, that miniman/miniwoman set is awesome!

Definately will help fill up a street or any other distant crowd :)