People as PROPS!

Griffin Avid

Another thread below gave me this idea. What about people that are props? They are not figures or genesis anything. They are immobile props in specific poses or welded to objects and are sold as scene filling items. You'd be able to buy static statues of ready to go "extras".

Shoppers.....couples in the background, holding hands.....random people on the beach frollicking....etc...

Office workers....

Probably, for the most mileage, start with generic crowd stuff. If the people are cheap enough and easy enough, you can do mirrors and such. Mid walk poses etc....

Then, if you do sets, you can expand to sports crowds...spectators....

people fighting.....

for zombies, you could zombie hordes...

OR maybe someone could do a software piece that renders and exports as .OBJ with a setting for reduced rez or textures or whatever that's called.

So WE can make characters and then export them as props. Might have to take in to account property rights and licensing if you export someone else's material as a standalone thing.

WendyLuvsCatz

its easy enough to make your own from DAZ figures.

hide any covered bits and export obj

or can under rigging convert to prop

make the clothes props under rigging first though and do not have them parented or they zero out then vanish.

you can clean the mesh up further with the geometry editor deleting any hidden stuff on clothes etc before saving as a support asset prop.

 

Griffin Avid

I'll be copying this note as it's related to adding MANY characters to a scene and saving resources.

I'm talking about a fully dressed character that I do not own...for instance...

1) static guards standing at attention in the back of your palace render. >> That would require me to have all those figures and props.

OR someone sells Statues of humans, And okay, they COULD make that statue using your method, but I'm talking about the recipient getting a new prop and having contributed nothing from their own Daz library.

2) Dead bodies...body parts as scene props.....not limbs and bits you move around...

3) people jogging at the beach or park. Crowded subway figures in all the poses.

I'm trying to suggest a resource that goes along with all these sprawling sets- and gets them populated.

If a character is not going to move, why settle for a man in red shirt and blue pants, when you could add

 'The little girl and her puppy"

"The bum on the bench"

"The alley wino or classic drunk"

"The cop walking the beat"

"Lady hailing a cab"

"Crosswalk traffic bundle"

"On line bundle"

"concert sitting"

"Concert standing"

"Sports cheering"

"Crowd of bicyclists"

"Bird feeding group"

The things is, it's probably illegal to buy Aeon Soul's characters, OBJ export them and have them as a..anything.....freebie etc.....

But a vendor who does make characters could do that with their OWN ORIGINAL CONTENT and I could buy "Aeon's Guards" and get several static characters, in possible new textures or such and use them as low resource extras in any scene.

Now, end user goes to make a sprawling scene and I just grab my crowds of figures props.

Nothing to be done, but double-click that product prop/figure and have a small group of characters appear in my scene.

-------------------------

It feels like this is difficult to explain.

Look at this product: http://www.daz3d.com/skull-piles

It's a pile of skulls. If you imagine a skull as a single Daz figure (with clothes and posed)- you can see the advantage of getting several figures grouped together.

Two people jogging.

Two people dancing.

Two people sitting on a bench.

Now take that approach and multiply the figues.

A pile of skulls would be a pile of figures or extras for your scene.

WendyLuvsCatz

well no they cannot if it s a morph of a DAZ figure

the original figures could be by their PA's

Adam Thwaittes at Mostdigitalcreations does a lot of animal props for instance  but you cannot redistribute DAZ mesh in your scene as props which is why making your own for your render from the figures the obvious way.

The best they could do is make a few figures from scratch or use Makehuman.

WendyLuvsCatz

https://app.box.com/s/iayvopwpiysvpxycjiflq560pzk1tnz9

I whipped a quick one up in Makehuman and exported as an obj

 

Griffin Avid

 

Going to do some research into MakeHuman now.

 

Griffin Avid

I don't know what to say. How is that on resources compared to a Daz figure -dressed the same.  lol......

Can I fit 800 in a stadium? lol

You are too much. THANK YOU.

Daywalker Designs

There are also several Lo-Res figures in the store, as I recall. Plus, using instancing you can take a small group of figures and increase the apparent number with a minimal increase in resources, since instanced versions share textures.

Griffin Avid

I saw the instance product, it said no figures.

Are youn talking about an included Daz 4.9 feature?

The Lo-rez guy and girl were relatively expensive when I checked. They are bookmarked and that product was sorta the basis for my comment on the guy in red shirt and blue pants.

Richard Haseltine

avxp said:

I saw the instance product, it said no figures.

Are youn talking about an included Daz 4.9 feature?

The Lo-rez guy and girl were relatively expensive when I checked. They are bookmarked and that product was sorta the basis for my comment on the guy in red shirt and blue pants.

The commands form creating instances are in the Create menu. Figures can be isntanced, though they cease to be posable (or rather, they have the original's pose and materials and update when it does).

hphoenix

Another common option for background/distant figures is to render them from the correct angle (just them) then take that render and create a 2D billboard with the render of them on it to 'stand in' for the actual figures.  This is done a LOT for distant crowd scenes.