Filling Big Interiors with People ?
Fauvist
Posts: 2,091
How do you fill a big interior model of a restaurant, or nightclub or theatre or any other model of a large indoor space - with enough human figures for it to look like a real scene? I know about the "billboard" humans and the "low rez" figures - they are often not in the right clothes or in the right pose for certain scenes.
A resraurant may require 50 or more patrons sitting at tables, on bar stools, wandering around - and a number of restaurant employees in their various uniforms doing various jobs.
There are some vary nice models of interiors, but I don't know how to fill them.
Thanks
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You could make your own billboards by rendering a smal group (say a table-full) in isolation, saving as PNG or tiff (to get a mask), and then applying that with its mask as an opacity map to a plane. You can also try removing textues in favour of solid colours, or at least removing some of the maps and effects that won't show ata distance/blurred, and lowering the mesh resolution if necessary (though usually it's the maps thata re the memory hog). Depending on what you need you might also be able to use a figure plus some instances in some areas.
One can load one figure, clothe it etc., then make instances of said figure. Then use https://www.daz3d.com/instances-to-objects to turn those instances into objects.
The new .obj files can be make different colours AND reposed :-)
Why do you think movie credits have five columns of special effects artists these days?
I used to roll my eyes at Now-Crowds, until the day I had to do an actual crowd scene.
Unless you have a studio with dozens of people, you have to cheat. Just remember, DOF is your friend.
You can also give this a shot, but I'm not sure how well it'll transfer over from Blender:
I use low polygon crowds for the back and regular Daz characters for the foreground.
Crowd 3D Models | CGTrader
You can also just make your own in Daz by using the Decimator tool. This is a much better solution then billboarding, you really only want to billboard if the characters are really far background or you got your cameras and lights set just right.
Here's how I fit multiple figures into a render using my lowly RTX 2070 Super.
I use Gigapixel AI to reduce texture sizes by half, with no other changes in the gigapixel ai program, on characters, clothing, props, and scenes. Because, honestly, when reducing a 4096x4096 to 2048x2048 and sometimes lower, I don't see a difference in a 1080p render.
I use render SubD on figures as low as I can without changing the rendered look. This usually means 2-3 unless using an HD morph.
I Use Decimator to bring down mesh complexity until JUST above where it's noticeable.
For background characters I decimate a little more as well as removing all normal maps and bump maps. I also use the same body texture on all of them just with different surface settings to alter skin tones.
For main characters, I remove normal maps and bump maps IF it's not noticeable, like not doing a close up.
I hide all body parts under clothes.
I hide the mouth interiors and depending on whether the character is facing toward or away from the camera I may hide the eyes.
I remove lashes on background characters and use a texture eyebrow on them instead of a mesh one.
I use "section plane cameras" I have set up to cut out all geometry outside the camera's field of view while turning clip lights on or off and adjusting the environment intensity depending on what I need for a scene.
EDIT: I may add more as I remember LOL
The "cheap" way to do this, while retaining the most detail, with full models, is like this...
1: Starting with the background characters... Setup a group of 3-5 models with reduced quality. (Adjust the level of detail to something like 1, the default may be 2 or 3 for each model and accessory. Render this whole scene.
2: Remove those models and create your next group of models. Same as above. Render the whole scene.
3: Repeat this, moving from background to foreground. Optionally, depending on the scene, doing the fore-most characters so they can possibly be rendered without the scene needed. So, you can just overlay them on the final, post-edited creation.
4: With all your individual segments of people rendered... Layer them in a paint program. Just as you rendered them, individually. Starting with the second to last layer, from the bottom... With the rest hidden... Carefully erase anything that does not include the rendering of the people. So, you are left with only the first rendering as a whole, and the layer above only retaining the area where the new people are located. (Take caution not to erase shadows... You can apply a "Difference" filter to easily see what needs to stay. Anything that is different, will be "not black".)
5: Repeat this with each layer, until you get to your fore-most rendering which, if done right, it can just be slapped over the edited layers. Since that should have just an alpha of the isolated models. (Not possible if you have reflections or shadows that would need to be cast within the scenery.)
Your only worries, besides reflections and crossing shadows, would be overlapping bodies within the same areas, on the same "background level".
This is a trick done in a LOT of renderings, to make them seem more full. Similar to doing poster-boards, but this can encapsulate the cast shadows within the scene, and all true scene-lighting. You may have to alter some lighting, in some instances, to hide overlapping shadows. Or to hide shadows that would normally cast across groups of the layered background segments. (Like a shadow of a foreground object that isn't in a rendering, which might cast a shadow across something in the background. Planning can resolve those tiny issues, or more post-editing, with some minor skill.)
For making my own billboards, I followed this video and I now have a couple of dozen singles and groups and I am adding to them often. I can understand why someone would buy the crowds avaiable in the store, however - it is a quick procedure to make a single billboard (maybe 5 minutes) but to end up with a crowd might just be worth spending the cash if you have it to spend.
I've used JD_Mortal's method a few times, but to add to the illusion, have some figures in two different renders. For example:
This involved a bunch of renders, none of which had more than three people in them. You can see some of the places where I broke groups of people apart to make it easier to do, but on the old computer even four figures was just too much. So the group at the right side, for example, is one render with the blonde, the redhead-with-ponytail, and the blue-flat top. Then it's a second render with the blonde, blue flat top, and blue's girlfriend. And then layer them together with the seam running through the blonde. One does have to be careful about shadows, though.
I've also managed to get up to 15 different G8 figures in a scene by using the reduced texture resolution technique Vertex Doctor mentions, although I resized the textures the hard way. I expanded on it by deleting every image file I didn't need - don't need teeth maps when mouths are closed! - and by duplicating as many textures as possible, so that (for example) every G8F figure was using the same transmaps for eyelashes. There's a lot of little places that are almost impossible to see from any distance but have unique 4096x4096 texture maps; getting rid of as many of those as you can frees up a huge amount of RAM.
If you're using Iray, shaders like these can help reduce the resources used: https://www.daz3d.com/resource-saver-shaders-collection-for-iray
Is it possible to created billboards with a bit of head and arm movement? I want to add an audience to a scene maybe applauding or arm waving! Cheers
Theoretically, yes, using dFormers, morphs, or editing the surface properties to swap textures.
Via animated textures. This script should be able to do it: https://www.daz3d.com/animated-textures-script-for-daz-studio
Where do you buy the Decimator tool?
You can export as an OBJ, import it into Blender, and use the Decimate Modifier to lower the poly count however much you want. Then re-import it into Daz as an OBJ and re-apply the Iray materials.
It's free.
Obviously, this'll strip your figure's skeleton, so you have to pose them first. But if you want a low-poly figure to populate the background, it works fine.
A lot of good ideas. Thank you. I'll give each of them a try.
I posted a quick tutorial in my Art Studio thread.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/514441/the-mar-graveyard#latest
It's been on sale and is atm right here in the store: https://www.daz3d.com/decimator-for-daz-studio
Thanks Leana.
Just a side note, the info on the product promos was from Daz Studio 4.10. In newer versions of Daz Studio, Iray handles textures a bit better, one way is that it no longer loads the same image multiple times for every surface its used on.
And there is also the second set that is designed for people - https://www.daz3d.com/mmx-resource-saver-shaders-collection-2-for-iray ; and the third set that is designed for interiors and exteriors - https://www.daz3d.com/mmx-resource-saver-shaders-collection-3-for-iray_Mattymanx
For clothing maybe, but a Genesis figure, any generation, should only use about 1MB of VRAM at the base resolution
Yes well unfortunately with G8 plus that's not the case. Figure alone with the default Parameter settings, Iray render, nears to 4GB and causing almost instant D/S crash. [gaming laptop, NVidia card]
All good tips. One simple way is also to use V4 G1 figures for crowds, that tend to use low resources. Eventually posed then converted to props and using texture atlas to "decimate" the textures.
Bear in mind that a Victoria 4 will send more polygons to the renderer than a Genesis of any generation at base resolution.
This is why I use the same skin with different surface settings to get different skin tones for background characters. So happy this happened.
Thats why I said "base resolution" G8.1 defaults is Hi-Res with render SubD set to 3
Hmmm....It seems I already own this. Where in DAZ Studio do you access it?
How do the really old figures like Victoria 2 (not Genesis 2 Victoria) compare to the Genesis figures?
Too many things happening at once 'round here, you're right. And yes at base res and the SubD nickered down the render can happen ;-)
Window > Panes (Tabs) ... on that big long list ;-)
Have you tried the location its quickstart guide tells you to look at?
You could always re UV map a stick figure rigged shape to take A or T posed renders and pose it a bit for animated figures
are a few around if you cannot make one
https://www.daz3d.com/puppet-merchant-resource-base-mesh not rigged but could be
https://www.daz3d.com/blank-boi rigged