Predatron's low rez figures

AllenArt

I realize this is probably a stupid question because most of those figures are gettng old now, but I've been thinking of picking them up because I want to put more people and animals in my scenes, but not necessarily up close, and yet I don't want to clog up the scene with heavy geometry. I have two procs and 64 gigs of ram and yet, even still I can slow my scenes to a crawl if I'm not careful.

What my question is - do you still use them and find them handy for populating scenes? Would it be worth still buying them? Oh, and if any was thinking of suggesting.....I don't use billboards and don't really intend to ;).

Thanks ahead of time :).

Laurie

 

The Blurst of Times

I tried using quite a few of them once, and they still felt a little heavy for the renderer in bulk. Plus, you need to convert them to Iray and all that. It's still your time being invested.

I think they have uses, but not as huge filler for background in a single-pass render. Flat billboards and/or compositing are probably the best option for distant extras.

With post-render denoising being so easy, I'd opt for compositing if you want 3d-style background figures.

AllenArt

Well, as for converting to Iray, not really a problem ;) And I don't necessarily want to use gobs of figures, it's just that if I want to use 7 or 8 figures in a scene, using Genesis X.x for all of them is a bit much ;). Billboards are a no, but thanks :) I'll keep the compositing thing in mind - easy enough since I always do postwork of some kind anyway :).

Laurie

The Blurst of Times

The only other thing is posing because I don't think they are rigged exactly like M4 or V4, even, so you're a bit limited there except through the smaller number of Predatron's poses (which help) plus hand-posing.

I still use them, but I tend to like cut-down Genesis figures for human backgrounds (Decimated + reduced maps). The fantasy figures & sci fi workers, I use more. I could see the animals being REALLY useful, though.

Sven Dullah

AllenArt said:

I realize this is probably a stupid question because most of those figures are gettng old now, but I've been thinking of picking them up because I want to put more people and animals in my scenes, but not necessarily up close, and yet I don't want to clog up the scene with heavy geometry. I have two procs and 64 gigs of ram and yet, even still I can slow my scenes to a crawl if I'm not careful.

What my question is - do you still use them and find them handy for populating scenes? Would it be worth still buying them? Oh, and if any was thinking of suggesting.....I don't use billboards and don't really intend to ;).

Thanks ahead of time :).

Laurie

 

Well, I render with 3DL so don't know how they wuld look converted to IRay, probably real nice;) I actually use them quite a lot, only they need to be converted to SubD IMO, if not very far away from the camera. They have a LOT of body and head morphs, as well as skin materials, so it's pretty easy to create a number of different looking characters. Only problem is clothing, there's the suit and the tshirt jeans outfit, a hoodie dude, a skirt outfit for the females + some accessories, but that's basically it. And the hairs for the females are pretty scary:) Oh and there are a number of real nice poses too...I'd say give them a try, I've done some aweSurface convertions that turned out pretty nice.

daveso

not knowing much about anything ..is it possible to reduce res the genesis figures, even 3 or 8 to achieve the same low overhead figures? then there is much more diversity. 

Oso3D

I really like the lowrez skeletons. They look good converted to Iray unless you zoom really close, and I really like the range of armor and weapons.

 

The Blurst of Times

daveso said:

not knowing much about anything ..is it possible to reduce res the genesis figures, even 3 or 8 to achieve the same low overhead figures? then there is much more diversity. 

Decimator to reduce polys... https://www.daz3d.com/decimator-for-daz-studio

Scene Optimizer to simplify the maps... https://www.daz3d.com/scene-optimizer

It's not necessarily equivalent, but the biggest advantage is that you're essentially using the same base figures with the same options (clothing, hair, morphs, poses).

Skeletons, Trolls, other lo-rez figures from Predatron that don't always have 100% equivalents in the Genesis library? That's a different ballgame.

Melissa Conway

I use them all the time as background figures, but I do prefer to render them with dof, example attached.

AllenArt said:

What my question is - do you still use them and find them handy for populating scenes? Would it be worth still buying them? 

 

Silver Dolphin

That is how I use low rez figures as well. I also use in dim rooms as extras don't need faces or details just bodies.

AnotherUserName

The REM Morph files seem to have some sort of issue in the current version of DAZ. Three times out of five, when applying the REM Morph poses, they have threatened to hard lock my computer and ive had to task manager close.

Why do I find stupid crap like this in DAZ? Ive often felt that it finds me... (sigh)...

I was going to throw together a fun little render with a whole bunch of lorez people, but...

AllenArt

Melissa Conway said:

I use them all the time as background figures, but I do prefer to render them with dof, example attached.

AllenArt said:

What my question is - do you still use them and find them handy for populating scenes? Would it be worth still buying them? 

 

I was planning on this. There are very few times when I don't use DOF. LOL I don't even necessarily intend to use texture maps for the clothes, skin or hair if they're far away enough. But I figured for scenes in Moonshine's diner or a bar they'd be perfect :)

 

Laurie

Stezza

I use Pred's Lo-Rez figures all the time in my wacky renders .. probably more than G or G2 ( can't use G3 or higher as Daz don't support them in Carrara )

 

RGcincy

This has 362 of the Lorenzo and Loretta lorez figures in it:

This one uses them as well:

Stezza

awesome @RGcincy 

I can't remember how many I used in this one.. was a few..

 

daveso

do you have to place each one individually or is there a group morph or something?

AllenArt

RGcincy said:

This has 362 of the Lorenzo and Loretta lorez figures in it:

This one uses them as well:

Now that is the kind of thing I had in mind....city streets, full restaurants and coffee shops, etc :). A little DOF and who's gonna notice? LOL

Thanks a bunch. I think you made up my mind ;).

Laurie

wolf359

I personally reccomend investing in the Decimator plugin and creating your own low res scene 
fillers.

All of the Blue suited animated background figure in this shot from my film are genesis1
figures crunched down to about 6500 faces IIRC
I use the subD modifier in C4D to smoot them out
and the instancing feature of C4D to generate the crowd.

 

RGcincy

daveso said:

do you have to place each one individually or is there a group morph or something?

If not too many I place individually but for more than that, I use Ultrascatter as described here