Creating scenes with LARGE numbers of people in them
K T Ong
Posts: 486
I'm thinking of doing an 'epic' sort of scene where there'll be dozens of people, possibly a couple hundred. (Most of them won't be seen up close, of course.) Now I believe most of you would already know it's out of the question to load that many G1 (or G2 or G3) figures into a single scene; the sheer amount of memory required would be murderously large. So how could a scene like what I described be done?
I've been to Turbosquid and found some low-poly human models which can be loaded into a scene in large numbers; the only trouble is that I'm looking for figures with a medieval feel about them, besides which most of the figures are very expensive and don't seem to be poseable. Does anyone know of any (poseable, please) medieval-style low-poly human models anywhere which cost less than say $80? (With ideally at least a small range of skin textures to choose from for applying on them, as opposed to one skin only?)
Alternatively, can I reduce the number of polys a G1 figure has, thereby reducing the amount of memory it requires and hence making it possible to load more such figures into a scene? I seem to remember some sort of 'app' found in DAZ Studio which does this or something similar. Can anyone enlighten me on what it is, where in DAZ Studio to find it and how to use it? Thanks!
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There is this in the store here : http://www.daz3d.com/lorenzo-lorez I don;t know if you can get any medieval clothing for it or not, perhaps on ShareCG?
You may be thinking of Decimator, but it does not come free with DAZ Studio : http://www.daz3d.com/decimator-for-daz-studio
V4 and M4 came with lores OBJs in 17k, 8k, 4k and 1k versions as well I believe, do you own them?
Well, first, obviously stick to Base resolution. Second, consider getting rid of skin textures on any figure you can't see very close up -- a flat skin tone isn't going to be obvious.
I don't know how much difference it makes, but when space is an issue, I also hide any body part covered in clothing.
Good luck!
Well you can use instancing too
You could use instances and/or geoshells to duplicate some of the figures. Reduce the size of the textures on figures far away, or even use flat colors.
Parts of this product might also be useful if you need soldiers: http://www.daz3d.com/a-distant-army-approaches
Another option to create a pic with lots of items/people is to render the pic in parts and composite them: first render the background empty, then load a group of people and render with those (IIRC you can use spot render to render only the area with those peole at the right size), remove them and load another group, and so on.
There were a few great examples of pictures created that way in the old forum, but alas those are gone...
Is there a good explanation and walkthrough of how instancing works?
I'd check the help documentation, but hahahahahahaha.
Thanks for all the help, fellas!
Didn't know I'd have to cough up $100 for the Decimator. Will decimate my wallet for sure... :(
If I could change those foot soldiers into peasants, this would be just the right item for me!
There is a conversation here that may be of some interest to you.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/
Here's an example of how the Distant Army can get used, one can easily put a couple hundred extras in the background without much tax on resources by using instancing. Predtron also has low rez figures that are light on resources.
While you're on the scene FirstBastion, short of unparenting one of each model and saving them as a subset, how do you access them without loading the presets?
I would recommend a combination of low resolution figures, instancing, and converting any figures to props. Below is an image I did a while back, and there are around 30 figures inside it. Mostly M4 skeletons, and some of those have been instanced. By placing the instance copies at different angles, putting helmets on some, but not others, and giving them different weapons, you have to look hard to spot the copies. I did all this before I upgraded my PC to one with much more memory, so I needed to ensure the scene could load into a memory limited machine. This scene loaded in about 1.5GB if I remember correctly. There are three genesis figures, the werewolf at the back, the Skeleton King, and the large stone figure from whose mouth the army has left. All were posed in separate projects, then converted to props before merging into the main scene. With a combination of instancing and low resolution figures (they can either be stripped of their textures, or share a few textures), I think you could create a scene with 200-300 figures that should not be much more than 5-8 GB.
Have a look at Lorenzo and use the medieval outfit for him over on sharecg and he would make a very good, low resolution peasant.
Nealzonline (hope I spelled that right) had some marvelously intricate scenes, and if you use Daz Studio, are fairly easy to do with Spot Rendering. First set up the scene itself, minus people and render it. Then select an area you want to work on and just populate that area. Then render only that section as a spot render and save it. Next, in whatever program you use for postwork, add that area to the scene you rendered as the background. Do not move the camera or change render size. Always use the same camera, lighting and size. You might also start with the crowd in the back and work your way forward. Or render individuals or groups of people with no background, just alpha channel and paste them in.
Wow. Ok, I thought there'd be more to instancing. Heh.
So how does Instancing save memory, exactly?
This is a scene using Lorenzo Lorez and Loretta Lorez just so you can see it in use. Only has 17 figures but I could easily add many more as the polygon load is very light. Uses the clothing, morphs and poses that come with the set (plus its easy to modify the poses yoursef). The cothing though is all modern and I found fit issues trying to replace it with genesis clothing at least.
After instances are created, they are clones of the original object (materials, size, pose, etc.). You can't change the pose or the materials, which is why they save memory as the program only needs the original model in memory once. You can move instances around, change their scale, rotation and XYZ positioning but the data to keep track of this is very minimal.
Neelzonline's pics are some of the examples I was talking about. I remember following the thread about his "Low tide" pic, it was a great read and also really fun to see the pic develop. I still have a poster of that pic at home...
http://www.redbubble.com/people/neelzonline/works/3406019-low-tide
For anyone who may not know this, you can spot render to a new window. The resulting window will be the full size as specified in the render settings, and the spot render will be in the exact location you want it for the final image. Select the Spot Render tool, then open the Tool Settings Tab, (Windows>Panes (Tabs)>Tool Settings,) and change "Render to" from Viewport to New Window. (It took me a while to realize this. And it is very handy for testing changes, too, especially if you need to see details close up!)
Also, at base resolution...Genesis 3 is the 'lowest weight' of the various Genesis generations. And good chunk of it's polys are in the mouth! Less than 15,000 polys without the mouth parts (teeth and mouth interior) for G2F.
L'Adair - great tip there and thank you for that.
Yup, I remember that thread, and took all his tips to heart. Thank you so much for that link, I knew I was probably spelling the name wrong. His work is just amazing!
Got a link? I just did a search over there and nothing immediately obvious popped up.
This is because the clothing is actually labelled as a medieval boat! This was stated in the thread mentioned above, but I will provide the link here as well:
http://www.sharecg.com/v/64871/gallery/11/Poser/Lowres-medieval-river-ship
There's a number of ways to accomplish larger groups, but I often found multiple renders in group sections and then compositing gave me the results I was happiest with.
I got AoA's atmospheric camera set soon before Iray popped up. Which is annoying.
HOWEVER, the depth camera it comes with has been invaluable. (Yes, there's an Iray distance canvas, but it's in .exr and I've never managed to get it converted into anything usable)
I bring it up because it makes for some control over compositing -- if you composite sections of the scene and depth masks for each, you can use the masks to help place stuff in the right layers.
Thanks again for all the help, fellas! You guys are good!
The Lorenzo/Loretta package certainly looks good (found the outfits too)! Wonder if I'll cough up $40 and get it now or wait for a sale...
Maybe he meant this for the males. If you remove the conical hat, I believe he'll look quite medieval. :)
http://www.sharecg.com/v/53517/browse/11/Poser/LoRez-Cloth-01
As for the females, you can find this:
http://www.sharecg.com/v/67629/browse/11/Poser/Dress-for-Loretta-Lorez
Impressive scene!
No, I meant this for the peasant clothes. http://www.sharecg.com/v/64871/gallery/11/Poser/Lowres-medieval-river-ship
The other links you gave complete the only other loretta/lorenzo clothing I am aware of, but if you look in the thread mentioned above, ie:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/
I do describe a way of putting Genesis clothing onto the figures.
There are some interesting comments here many of which don't really apply in 64bit.
1. Instancing will help but does have its limitations. .
2. If rendering in 3Delight the render engine will mip-map textures for you (reduce texture size as it gets further into the background. ) so there is no need to reduce texture sizes.
3. With 64 bit, while it won't fit onto a video card it will use virtual memory on the hard drive.
Granted this is not quite as dense a scene as some may be interested in, but it is 4 million polys. (Note this was done before Iray.) The goal was 4 million Polys and designed to stress test both DS and a new computer. LOL