Scale and Distant Objects
Tirick
Posts: 230
So I am in the process of setting up a backdrop for a scene, and I'm trying to determine what works better when working with distant objects. Should I scale everything 'correctly' and move objects to their real-world location, or should I scale distant object down and keep them closer to the camera? Part of this is triggered by working with the one set I plan to use as a backdrop as it is scaled approximately 1:20 (https://www.daz3d.com/future-cityscape-density-blocks). Rescaling it up is no issue, and manually moving them into the distance is also not terribly difficult. The question is: should I? Working with large scale scenes in Daz has been a frustrating learning curve. The lack of scalable scrolling or movement that I know of (like say, Blender's) makes navigating a large scene irritating, if not downright impossible, especially when the focus tool stubbornly refuses to focus on the actual selected object (and instead scales way out).
This isn't a gripe, but rather a question of best practices. Does the camera and scene work better with properly scaled items (as in, less fiddling)? Or is there a relatively good way to manage smaller scale models in a middling distance?
I set up two shots, first scaling the building 'correctly', then moving it to a reasonable distance away (180,000 units, or around 1.8 km, unless I really misunderstand units in Daz). I did not use matte fog as at that distance even the 10,000 m setting almost completely obscures it. I then brought the original building in and moved it until its size was approximately the same as the distant building, then duplicated the scene parts (Terradom BZone and Water and the building) and scaled/moved them to match the distant building. Outside of horizon placement (which could be corrected or obscured with more distant terrain), they more or less render the same. But which is better, especially working with a larger backdrop scene?
Camera setting are the same in both scenes, Depth of Field is on, and centered around the figure in the foreground, with F/Stop not too tightly on her).
I suspect there is no 'right' answer, but I am interested in any thoughts on the matter.
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Comments
@Tirick "I suspect there is no 'right' answer, but I am interested in any thoughts on the matter."
While Studio has an internal scale, I am not sure that large environments and certainly HDRIs necesarily respect the scale.
I suggest that for items in the background, I wouldn't worry about "real world location", but would scale / move until you get the look you want.
This one looks better, even thought the horizon is still a little too high. However at this time of day a photograph including a person would have a much larger aperture and much less DOF. The scale of the tower looks fine to my eyes in both.
I use a rule on my renders regarding scale size and distance:
Why I do like that?, because moving extremely BIG assets in DS is very very troublesome, you can destroy your mouse sliding and sliding and sliding and sliding for ever and not moving a reasonable distance.
An scene that was needed to be resized in props, good when you do futuristic rendering is because all is fantasy and size is mere relative
This one is the "correct" scale one.
I personally prefer this one. The last 3 months I've learned more about camera work than in the last 40+ years... More advice is welcome!
@Zilvergrafix that is great advice. Keep the central subject close to origin and just move or scale everything else; thank you!
I'm glad to help!, I do that way because when you add more props they appears on the center of all, moving your MAIN character far from scene center and all your assets will be forced to move too, thus, sometimes buying Pose packs moves all your character to center.
...In this scene I created a number years ago (Rendered in 3DL), only the buildings and props in the immediate and middle foreground were 100% scale. All other structures in the background were progressivly reduced in scale. As I just used a skydome (with no ground plane or scenery) there wasn't an issue of with the horizon height..
I've used this technique in large scenes to avoid having to locate items tens of thousands of umits away and risk having them outside the dome or having to expand the dome so much that the size relationship of the clouds looks off.
That looks fantastic; do you just use eye to judge the scale for distant objects, or references of some kind?
So I've played about a bit and finished (mostly) a full scale test. I experimented with some of the fog settings and have found, effectively, something that works, at least for me. Without too much preamble, this is meant to replace the background in another render, so I've included it here for comparison. My initial render always felt, to me, like the buildings were almost toy-sized in the distance. This new one feels much more realistic. It has the advantage of properly showing distant object parallax (I think that is the right word for it) when the camera is shifted.
Buildings are almost 400000 units away (4km), so nearing the edges of the practical visible flat-plane horizon. With building objects and instances, there are about 60 buildings in the shot (several layered), and are arrayed in an approximate 'realistic' city grid (minus roadways). Textures are mostly stock, save for converstion to Iray and an added emissive map to properly emit the window lights.
...thank you.
Yeah pretty much eyeball it. I've been involved in traditional art for most of my life as well as photography for a good number of years before getting into this.
Indeed a bit of haze does adds a sense of distance and depth In my scene (rendered in 3DL) I used AoA's fFog Camera. Prior to that I often used Dreamlight's "Mood Master.
I think the best advice is to do what works for the image, and not get hung up about a 'right' way. The important thing is to get the best image you can for the time you can invest in it. If this means having dodgy scales, so be it. Railway/railroad modellers have done it for years. No one is going to wander through the model and criticize it whichever way it's done.
It is useful to know that iRay seems to run out of significant digits in its calculations when things of interest are clustered at a big distance from the origin - so you'll start to lose details like eye whites at a distance. Only have broad brush stuff a long way from the origin..
Regards,
Richard
I'm in as I'm curious here too.
I imagine in a perfect world, you'd have all items scaled 100% and placed where they would be. Of course as you mention the engine/app your in may pursuade you to make your life easier.
In this particular case it is a set meant to be used for several different shots, so getting it looking consistent from several angles was important. I am a bit obsessive with scale, even in my physical modelling so I'm probably not an impartial observer or judge. I trying very hard to set that aside for practical considerations (like time).
...in the scene I posted above, I could have simply plopped Stonemason's Urban Sprawl 2 its entirety at 100% scale (rather than using a few of the individual buildings along with those from other sets) for the city background and clicked "render" but it would have taken much longer to render given my system's resources and the fact it used Uber Environment for the GI. I also would have needed to expand the skydome (which I created) significantly so none of the buildings "collided" with or cast shadows on it, which would have distorted the resolution of the cloud map .