Partially complete content items - especially props
rampart_1576840087
Posts: 504
I look through content items and consistently see the same thing.
Content for props is mostly either outside or inside.
This means your scenes have no consistency of interior and exterior shots.
If your scene is inside a building and you need the characters outside in later scenes...you have to do workarounds.
Basically, I ignore such content now and that leaves out a large number of competent developer items. Items I would otherwise purchase.
I bougtht several of the Kiabetto internal space ship props. They aren't cheap, they look good...but there is not exterior. I regret those purchases. I have learned to think more about the application of content items at the time I make a purchase.
An example:
Watch StarTrek, StarWars... viewers constantly see external and interior shots. StarTrek could never communicate their message with interiors only, that is why you have exterior shots.
An example:
I viewed a really excellent warehouse interior prop, and it was not cheap. There is no exterior content. I would think it would be a no brainer to realize that the person using that content would restrict characters to the interior when the content provider included doors and windows that open. I mean what would you have doors for? Conversely, there is a lot of content that is exteriors only with opening doors. Why opening doors when there are no interiors in the buildings?
IMO, it just seems content developers should think more about how their content is being used go a bit further.
It must be that most are developers creating some stuff to sell and aren't actually using the items themselves in production.
At first when I made these "half" purchases I thought I could come up with something. Yes, in most cases I did...but that takes time.
Now I don't waste any time thinking about purchasing any half complete content items.
Since I produce video and animated productions I appreciate the ability to remove walls or have the ability to create transparent walls and such to facilitate cameras as I am working with scenes. It is just a nuisance having to move your camera around pillars and beams as well, especially when there is absolutely no use for the pillar or beam otherwise. One thing I appreciate is some developers will create a complete scene project file for those who can use it as is, and provide it along with separate component items to work with cameras and lighting more efficiently.
Some developers may read and think more seriously about their content items, or keep on keeping on.
I understand when I make a purchase that is my choice. If I buy what I consider incomplete content that is my problem.
This posting is not purposed to rag on content developers...I think sometimes people get lost in the details and ignore simpler things.
I should emphasize I do video production, which is 30 to 60 fps. There are no stills, single frame or static scenes. My work is constantly flowing along the timeline and scenes are constantly being changed. Multiple cameras and variations in lighting are a constant thing. Doors that open and close are used frequently. Characters are moving, walking, talking, etc. in scenes.
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Comments
I agree with you on your points, buildings that have both an interior or exterior are definitely more flexible. I would however raise a couple of points.
1) This could significantly raise the time needed to create something, and thus its cost. If someone only wants the exterior or interior, they are this being forced to pay for both.
2) Sci-fi internal scenes in particular are difficult to place in an external context. They could be the central corridor of a small ship, or part of the interior of some huge death star.
Where I dislike missing interiors the most are in normal buildings like houses. These models generally frost out the windows and/or add fake reflections so that you can not see inside. These don't therefore look great in external renders which is what they are designed for. The interior does not have to be much, just a blank room with no furniture, since unless they are well lit you can not see too much inside anyway. This issue is particularly important for buildings with a lot of glass, eg office blocks, as you can thus "see through them" particularly at corners.
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Item 1 - This is already handled in Daz3d content. There are add-on packs for all manner of adidtional items.
Item 2 - You are correct, but when you don't have what you need you end up improvising. The original developer has what he wants to present in his/her mind neither you or I are competent to really do a best workaround for what is missing. If I could read minds I could do a better job, I am sure.
I think you answered your own point here, improvising is how you extend and gain additional life out of these products. It's is up to the user to define how they use the products, and with similar themed 'kit bashing' you can create and expand on scenes to great effect.
Yeah... right. Kiabetto, Stonemason, etc. How many people are talented enough to parrot that work and make it viable?
Secondly, who has the time to do it...even if you do have the tools?
Third, why buy content, if you have to "kit bash" it?
I buy content to save me time and provide what I need for quality production.
basically, when you need an establishing shot before going inside, often challenging :)
or when hiding a wall for a camera angle takes out half the ceiling or leaves a whole in the floor :shut:
And those interior and exterior sets are generally NOT part of the same set. They may not even be in the same country. Some of the exteriors don't even exist in the real world. The filmmakers had to improvise. Many of those exterior shots are computer generated, whereas the interiors are on a studio set stage somewhere.
I get what you are saying, in a perfect world the sets we buy would have everything in one package. But the creators can't foresee everything we might come up with out of our imaginations, so they do the best they can under the circumstances and the time they have to work with. And then we have to improvise the rest, just like the movie and TV industry does.
To be honest, I rarely have had a need for a building to have an exterior and interior also, then again, I don't do videos, so different needs i guess. I would also gather, based on how few posts there are about buildings not having both exterior and interior that many don't have a need for it also, which might explain why there are so few sets with both, little to no demand. Personally, I would rather if vendors are going to go this route, to offer 2 sets, one interior and one exterior so users can choose what their needs are and not have to pay higher to extra work they may never use.
I make a bunch of my own props/rooms if I can't find what I need, but I have a modeling background, so it's easy for me to change models for my own needs. I am amazed every time I open DS or poser and load content at how all the mesh works together with the various parts and poses considering it's all just a bunch of virtual play doh made up of polys and vertices.
I like kitbashing for a few reasons, the main one being uniqueness. It's a great feeling to have an outfit or prop that no one has ever used in a render before.
The Brady bunch house had two different houses one for exterior another for interior which is a classic case in point for how film is shot!! :lol:
an Australian soap called Home and Away had the main family's house burn down in a bushfire in real life so they reused old footage along with the interior set for years.
I LOVE kit bashing.When I look thru the store and see products that come with several pieces and I say to myself,,," Ohhh,, I know just where I can use that chair". I've bought whole outfits for G2F just for the boots :) .
The Dream House had several connected rooms, a front driveway and swimming pool area all with furniture add-ons. Was kind of nice but if you have everything in the scene it will been even a powerhouse PC to a standstill :-).
Still if I need furniture or other household props I know where to look for them. Here is one render on the Great Room and as you can see it's loaded with props both inside and out.
--- scratch that, wwes already said what needed to be said :D ---
The cinematographic reasons were already covered pretty well. I'll tack on two more "movie making" things.
First, there's no such thing as "incomplete", because there's no such thing as "complete". Take Stonemason's "Contemporary Living", for example. What does the "complete" exterior for CL even look like? Modern beach house? 20 story restored Gothic in New York? Brand new six story luxury condo in Oakland County, Michigan? Should it look like 2015 Tokyo? A vision of a building in 2040 Beijing?
I'm using CL right now in a project. If it had had an exterior, one of two things would have happened. Either they'd have more than doubled the price to provide their normal quality level for the matching exterior, which I would have discarded (My setting is an "arcology" style building. Think Larry Niven "Oath of Fealty". There's not a suitable model on the market, so two of our team built it. But it needs about 40 interiors, and I've got Stonemason, IM13, and a few others).
The other thing that could have happened is, in an attempt to deliver a "complete" package at the price they usually charge for just an exterior or interior, they could have cut the quality in half. Spent half as much time on the realistic furniture, half as much time detailing the buildings.
Now, the other reason there's no "incomplete" is that you work with interiors dramatically differently than exteriors. Not just the Hollywood reasons (your interior is over on Universal sound stages 8 and 11, while the second unit shot the exterior in Madrid) but you render interiors with different lighting and settings than exteriors. You turn walls on and off so the camera can see them. You make sure whatever is outside a window looks good, but still renders quickly. Render settings tend to be different.
But none of that really matters, because the big reason, the one people ignored, that these models are "incomplete" is that you need insanely large teams, or Davincian geniuses, to "complete" them.
From the modeller's POV, making an interior is entirely different from making an exterior. There's a ton of jobs getting a building together in the real world. A team of architects, some great with overall form, some focused on details, shapes the exterior. Designers shape the trim and landscape. Frankly, the fact that one 3D modeller (StoneMason, AntFarm, etc) manage to pull off so many facets of their exteriors is pretty freaking amazing.
Interiors are an entirely different game. Building one takes designers, decorators, finish carpenters, and all the craftspeople that make all that furniture.
A room isn't "incomplete" because no one shipped a bunch of realistic figures with it, either. Rigging a figure is entirely a different skill set from architecting a building, or designing a liveable interior.
All the developer has to do is create an add-on pack. We see texture add-ons, weapon add-ons, etc. If the developer is satisfied with his exterior or interior only release...OK.
If the developer wants to reach a larger number of possible users more complete content should be more acceptable.
Today Viewers are more sophisticated. They are not interested to view the type video presentations of 40 years ago, when StarTrek started. Viewers connect better with viewing environments, especially when the video flows with those environments.
When using live actors, we see they walk through doors and advance through large adjoining environments constantly.
IMO, the developers can do as they will. I will buy their content if it suits the purpose intended. When I need continuity between scenes and environments I will look to purchase those types of content.
I am only one of the fish in this pond, but you better have the right bait for me to bite. LOL
This is why I use Maclean's stuff Room Creator with Exteriors, Home One, etc. They allow you to make matching interiors and exteriors. I also use room creator for the interiors of her buildings. You sometimes have to kludge the windows/doors, but that's often not really noticeable.
Example: Home One Kitchen looking out at a Deamland Movie Set
You mean like...
This?
http://www.daz3d.com/motel-bundle
... and this?
http://www.daz3d.com/martial-arts-dojo-bundle
I can say from experience that these sets take a -lot- of time to do and are generally well worth the effort put into them. The sales on those two were wonderful. So good, in fact, that it made me think about developing more sets with interior and exterior combinations. You are dead on here - its a good observation.
There are more than one or two environment creators in the store. Everyone just mentions the same names over and over again. The rest of us happily plod along, anyway.
I've been on behind the scene NDA type projects for the past three months but as soon as they are in the clear, I'll be putting a lot more out there for the remainder of the year. If you have any theme requests, I'm happy to hear them.
~Bluebird 3D
Sorry, Bluebird, I haven't used one of your models in forever.
At least a couple of weeks. ;)
To the OP: I generally use other props/sets for the interiors when the model has no interiors or there are barriers like inability to hide walls. The only problem is if windows and doors are involved, I would have to try to closely match the exterior with the interior.
Bluebird: I've had my eye on your Motel prop since it came out and was only put off because there were no Poser CF's. I purchased it a few days ago and was able to convert it myself via DAZ Studio. That's a nice set which I was going to use something else for the interiors, but may hold off until I get the interior set for it. I like buildings with that run-down appearance.
You can also stick a render of your chosen interior in the window for outside shots
in iClone which you are using (or for that matter Carrara) this could be a video which changes angle as you move.
Likewise exterior views through windows.
BlueBird 3D
I have never seen your content items previously.
Seriously, I have been working with Daz3d since the first of the year.
I have never seen any of your items at any time up to now.
When I OP I was thinking about interior and exterior content items for the most part.
You have gone really gone out to produce quality environments. I will look for them in the future.
The search for content on Daz shop is so limited it amazes me.
The average local florist has better search in their online shop.
A couple of years ago I asked a question similar to what the OP is complaining about, but from a model maker's point of view...
What do people prefer for architectural models?
Exterior set only, exterior with a separate detailed interior set, or a one piece prop with some interior minor details?
I probably asked the question on a bad day or week, because only two or three people responded, and it was more or less, "do what you like/want"...
Based on that, I figured nobody really cared either way....
The project was ultimately going to be a one square city block, with several businesses and smaller apartment buildings (similar to an average Brooklyn or Queens NY street)...
I had gotten as far a single five story apartment building with full interior and two apartments per floor, with all windows and doors able to open and close, detailed roof top, basement and fire escape (about 90% complete), A variant of the apartment building with a shop on the first floor, a fully detailed pool hall/arcade structure (I even made several older type video game cabinets), with offices and apartments on the second and third floors and a full basement too (that was about 80% complete)... And lastly a small machine shop type structure intended to be used as an auto repair shop... (That was about 75% complete... I could not decide the easiest way to portray a working roll-up door)...
Based on the lack of response, there did not seem to be much interest in the pictures I showed or the description of the project or the question I asked...
So I shelved the converting to DAZ/Poser part, as the models were good enough for what I was doing.
For me when I make models, I make things I can use for my own purposes then when I'm done with them, I convert them to DS/Poser... but I don't "need" to convert them to DAZ/Poser to use them...
That is many extra hours or days of work and since I don't charge money for my models, why bother bother if nobody is going to use them.
Most professional model makers/published artists don't seem to ask "what would you like see" and just seem to create what they fancy, or what they believe people will buy.
I suppose that if anyone who was a well known PA asked "what features would you like me to include", they would get buried in requests that would quickly become hard to keep track of... That would probably range from the logical to the ridiculous.
I personally think based on what I've seen on these forums over the years... less well know vendors tend to get ignored when they look for input and well known ones seem get overwhelmed with requests.
I suspect that leads to a reluctance to discuss what the customer wants and the vendor just tends to do what they feel is necessary to get a sellable item.
But having come across this thread, it is interesting to see people discussing what they want or use... It's good to keep in mind.