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Stories, visual or written need to be believeable. There needs to be consistency and respect for the audience. So while the superheroes may be able to do certain things, there needs to be some mechanism that stops random characters doing the same. Superheroes are superheroes due to a reason. They also live in an alternate universe; it has different rules and laws - but consistency still matters.
But think about stuff that happens for real, and you have trouble accepting it; something on the news, the press, or a report or documentary.
Looking at an image, it needs to be believeable: poses, (hair and clothes in keeping with the poses), expressions, lighting, the scale and all sorts of othe composition factors. If all this is done properly, then the audience are happy to believe in what you're presenting. Nothing breaks their enjoyment, pleasure, interest (or whatever). The problem is when something doesn't seem correct, and they start questioning what they're looking at.
I recently watched a Jason Stathom film, the second mechanic iirc; in it he sees a bomb attatched to the bottom of his car:
1 it was via a reflection in a puddle of water - I was dubious but ok with it. But it did break my concentration and made me less susceptable to what followed.
2 he drove away calmly then through his skilled driving managed to make the car perform a mid-air roll - this wasn't believeable. (He wasn't a superhero, and in some way have the car perform crazy stunts).
3 he then managed to use some part of a machine (crane?) to dislodge/knock off the bomb before it exploded - seriously unbelievable - and I was being treated like an idiot by the film makers.
It looked real, it was a very well done stunt, but it totally broke it for me. It broke believeability.
Edit
In real life, something can not look or seem real, but it has the ultimate advantage of being real.
There is no such luxury in 3D art.
And this promo image for me demonstrates my point. http://www.daz3d.com/ultimate-dirt-n-blood-for-genesis-2-female It's a shame, as it is a really great image.
The bra looks 2-dimensional. The cloth has no depth. Some won't notice, maybe they are so used to it. Others might not realise what is spoiling it for them.
Two dimension clothes irritate the hell out of me, so I do notice it. What's really weird, is that the clothes do have depth, it's just the positioning, camera angle and light on the bra; plus they don't rest on the figure like a real peice of clothing would.
Okay, just for fun I went an pulled Total Poly's from V1-4, Aiko, and G1-3F. The Lowest Total Faces is G3F when you Set SubDivision to 0. I was supprised to find V3 and Aiko 3 were actually the Highest.
For your crowd scene, use 10 Genesis 3 Male or Female and Instnce them. Total count for a Scene with one G3F and 50 instanced G3F's 77,910 Total Faces another advantage, if you change the pose on the master, they all change their pose, works great for the Advancing hord of Orcs! Or 500 Stella Mudd's. (Personally I'll face the Orcs)
Name
Label
Active
Base
blMilWom_27433
vicki
29,206
29,206
blVickiP4_27433
vicki 2 p4
29,206
29,206
blAiko3_72712
!aiko 3 default Map
74,510
74,510
blMilWom_v3_72712
Victoria 3 SAE Iray
74,510
74,510
blMilWom_v4b_68498
Victoria 4.2
66,830
66,830
Genesis
Genesis Base
75,488
18,872
Genesis2Female
Genesis 2 Female
84,358
21,098
Genesis3Female
Genesis 3 Female
68,000
17,000
Genesis3Female
Genesis 3 Female
17,000
17,000
I was going to mention that using Generation 3 or 4 figures for background figures would be counterintuitive since they are actually much higher poly than subsequent versions ;). Ya beat me to it. LOL
Laurie
Actually Gen 3 (ie V3, M3 etc) make very good background figures, since even though they have a lot of polys, they have lower resolution texture maps, and normally a lot less maps (just two main maps, plus maybe bump maps as well). Given that textures, rather than polys, eat up the bulk of the memory for both CPU and GPU renders, that is why Generation 3 figures make good background figures.
Edit: This is one of the reasons I would like Caymen Studios to support Generation 3 texture maps for Genesis 3, then you can have the lowest resolution maps on the lowest poly "full functionality" figures.
If i was suggesting you use only one Base Character I would agree with you, you have the Roman's marching into Gaul.
But if you were to use twenty different base characters and pose them is various ways, you can then move them in all three direction and rotate them. to the eyes it would look like a crowd of people shopping walking down the street.
Maybe I will try for Zombies, with say twenty real Genesis 3's and a hundred Instances of each. That would be the Zombie Attack!
To tye this back to the topic, it took less than 4 minutes to render one Genesis 3 Female and fifty of her Instances in 3Delight and after 30 minutes I am only at 80% with the Iray render. (GeForce GTX 960 Amp. See earlier post)
I am off to create the Zombie Apocalypse. Now where did I put that Designer Virus... Ah yes, Raccoon City.
I would use the V3/M3 or V4/M4 LOD figures before I'd use the full resolution figures tho. I know with some of the scenes I've made, it's a toss up which is bogging it down more - the textures or the meshes ;). Too many textures and it just flips over to CPU rendering. Too many meshes sometimes (at least for me) and I have to turn on Box tracking mode or I can't even move a camera. Hehe. Granted, I can get a LOT more mesh in DS before it bogs down than I ever could Poser, but even I go overboard and try and jam more things in than my computer can really handle...heh. But I digress...
Laurie
You do realize you can do the same thing with Genesis 3 and get both Low Poly count and good looks.
You can just reduce the size of the images. but you must maintain the same ratio if it is a 4000 x 4000 image you can Reduce it to 800 x 800 and it will work.
That is why you can work with a Low Res texture set, to get the Scene blocked and then replace the images with High Res for the render. As long as the image is the same ratio you are fine
Added.
But I will agree with Laurie, you would also add to the number of textures, your system needs to deal with at render time. It can only handle so many at once.
Comics cartoons manga anime whatever, it doesn't matter as that render process is different.
OK, thanks for the explanation, I understand what you mean now.
I basically agree with what you say about movies, though it depends a lot on the type of film IMO. They sometimes intentionally make unbelieveable scenes to add some humour, so the film doesn't get too serious. If there is violence in a movie I think it's necessary to balance it with some kind of humour to take the edge of it and remind you that it's just a movie, otherwise it easily just becomes a pointless and cynical demonstration of raw real world violence which usually just makes you feel uncomfortable (I do, anyway). James Bond movies and movies with Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Steven Seagal, Bruce Willis et al are typical examples of movies where the unbelievability as an humorous effect is intended and expected by the audience, and where the movies wouldn't be what they are (or as popular) without it. But where it isn't intended or poorly done it's a spoiler indeed.
I wish I could get behind AoA but his stuff doesn't work in my DAZ Studio 4.9 at all. I get errors and black renders. Reinstalling DS does no good either. It's a shame but it is what it is.
...just ran a test using the 4.9 beta (progressive mode) of an older scene I did in 3DL which used the Advanced Lights and all the lights work fine. Also ran one in conventional (Bucket) mode with no issues.
Went surprisingly fast as well compared to when I originally rendered the scene back in 4.7
Did you try uninstalling and reinstalling the lights instead? I remember something about that back when 4.8 was released.
Yeah, 4.9 improved 3DL rendering, which is nice for those who don't care about the other stuff.
A few Corrections here:
What I should have said:
Okay, I know some people know this, but 3Delight is base on Renderman and is Renderman Compliant (RSL 2.0). Renderman has a rich history. Yes, the Pixar crew created it while at Lucas Films and Pixar and Disney uses it to make animated movies, but it has also been used in the latest Star Wars movies and others films, which I would call photo realistic. Besides Renderman's history, 3Delight's own history isn't to shabby; with films like the Harry Potter Series, X-Men Origins and others, which again I would call for Photo Realistic.
Cut From 3Delight's Product Page: 3Delight is a fast, high quality renderer designed to produce photo-realistic images in demanding production environments.
Iray is Physic's based Render Engine that makes use of the GPU; while 3Delight does not make use of GPU; while 3Delight is a fast scanline render, coupled with an on-demand Ray Trace Render Engine which does not make use of the GPU processing power. Even thought 3Delight is Ray Trace Render Engine, there is real Physics in it's programing, what it does not do is present the settings parameters in real world values like Watts and Lumens.
So a better questions is: "Why do people believe Iray equals 'Photo Realistic' while 3Delight does not?"
It's comes down to the standard, included shaders in Studio...and ease of access to the more advanced features.
What's this about using a group?
...however, the Iray shaders for Daz are no where near as accurate as they are for say 3DS Max. For example, you can actually get real grass, skin, and hair shaders for the pro grade software which are not readaly available for Daz.
With Iray, everyone is starting from scratch; so they are building Materials and Shaders following the Rules set by NVIDIA's Material Definition Language (MDL).
Yesterday, I was read through some of the Renderman Shading Language (RSL) documents at Renderman, 3Delight and a Maya Wiki. Very enlightening. I learned 3Delight uses much the same terminology as Iray does, for the types of surfaces. I also learned is some people follow the rules and others not so much, and I'll leave it there.
There are some curious things in Renderman 21 and some interesting Material types. To of the most interesting to me were PxrMarschnerHair and PxrDisney. Yeah, you watch all the extras in Zootopia and you find out Hair is a BIG thing. and the other is the Catch all Disney BRSF shader, (Bi-directional Reflectance Distribution Function). I also like the phase, Physically Plausible Material; which I figure is pretty much what all our shaders are. (Plausibly deniable Materials, even if you build it correctly; it is possible it will look like yellow snow and Doody.)
If you don't like Math and seeing lot's equations, best stay clear of the technical papers.
The one thing I can tell all those liking 3Delight, we want Pixar and others to push the envelope, cause you get things like Bi-directional Reflectance Distribution Function.
I guess it all comes down to the Materials; either they are based on real things and we call them "Photo Realistic" or they are not. And remember Everything has Fresnel
Ah, no. The current Iray release doesn't do "hair" etc. What you are seeing (outside of beta) for 3DS is geometry, shaded using the same MDLs that would work for Iray for DS.
Kendall
I'm not sure what "accurate" means here, but it looks like a malapropism. We have the ability in DS to load MDL shaders, no need to reply on the uber Shader if it doesn't meet your needs. We don't, however, have access to other features of an application like 3DS (at least without a plug-in), as Kendall notes.
Richard, I take this means; if you build your model in 3DS and use the materials in 3DS that meet the MDL standard, you can import your Model and shaders into Daz Studio as is, no mucking about with redesigning the shaders? That is a very cool feature. Could you do the same with 3Delight or RSL materials.
Kendall
What that is part of the battle at least, you don't have to rework the materials, so you do have some time savings.
Umm...no...
I've seen on many boards the recommendation to grab Studio just to get the Daz package of the Nvidia MDLs...because it seems that Studio has more of them than either Max or Maya (can't remember which one, now...). At the very least it has the same ones as the 'big boys'.
Sometimes I get all swept up in the '3DL is so much faster than Iray' and then remember 'sometimes.'
Rendering Terradome scene in 3DL, and I'm up to 75 minutes... chug chug chug.
(Not even UE2!)
Kendall