Need help/suggestions for a cityscape background image...
sincartier
Posts: 16
I bought the terrific http://www.daz3d.com/i13-modern-office about a month ago and I played around with it a little but moved on to other things because I couldn't find a proper background image to go in my windows, but I want to get back to it because the office is an essential piece to move my story forward.
Basically, what I did was look for 'city skyline' or 'cityscape' on Google Images, hoping I would find a proper city skyline with skyscrapers I could see through my windows. The problem I have with that though is that all I seem to find are panoramic views of city skylines taken from across a river or a point far away and I was kind of looking for a view you would see from outside a window... like a building across the street. I could blow up some of those pictures but I would likely end up with a poor quality image and the lighting would be a bit off (I could probably fix that last part in Photoshop first).
So does anyone have a good ressource or go-to place for great skyline backgrounds or skies in general? (Not looking for HDRs or skyboxes I can wrap around a scene... just a planar background I can slap on a 2D plane a couple meters from my windows)
Thanks a lot!
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Comments
What keywords did you use? I used:
building across street
overview of city
If you can't find what you want perhaps cobble a few building models together with a background sky and create your own. I would suggest Stonemason's Urban Sprawl 2, but that is expensive at the moment(?).
I would be carefull about some words, "penthouse" is one that could be 'family unfriendly'.
Thanks for the suggestion. As mentionned, I was using 'cityscape' and 'city skyline' as my key search words.
That said, I knew Stonemason had something like that but being tired yesterday night, all I could see was Greeble City blocks and other future/dystopian stuff and I wanted proper skylines.
True, the Stonemason sprawl bundle is pretty pricey right now, but if I've learned anything, it's gonna turn out on sale the week after I buy it... and since it's the holiday sale, I'm gonna hold off and definitely make a purchase then because I can definitely see myself using that bundle for multiple pieces of work. It looks very versatile.
Free 3Ds cityscape model: http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/city-skyscrapers-buildings-3ds-free/415316 Maybe convert it and render a section to make your background image?
Found these while looking for something else: Maybe import and render it to use as a background:
https://www.cgtrader.com/free-3d-models/architectural-exterior/cityscape/nyc-block-set-8
https://www.cgtrader.com/free-3d-models/architectural-exterior/cityscape/very-big-city-complete
Wow... that NYC block looks terrific. Thanks for the link, I just might use that (though I'll still have to fork out for Stonemason's sprawl since I'll be reusing it for sure)
There are quite a few skyline images on morguefile.com. Their license permits commercial usage, as long as it's not as a standalone image. You could also check Wikipedia for specific cities. There's usually a skyline photo there. Hong Kong and Sydney are nice. On Wikipedia, you have their Creative Commons license to deal with, which usually requires attribution.
Some of the big panoramic views on Wikipedia are so large, you could crop them to look like what you need and it would look like it was across the street. Singapore has some great views. I even have a few photos taken out the windows of buildings in Singapore that I've used exactly as you described.
Did you check the poly count on that NYC set? It has 1.6M polys! The OBJ alone is 68MB! Yowch!
BTW, the old Modern Apartment Bundle is on sale for 70% off, and it comes with a background plane with buildings.
I think Winnston1984 has/had an apartment bedroom set over on Rendo which had a background image for out the window. Don't know whether the product is still in the store. It would be several years old now, but the vendor has some nice panos with some of his other sets.
If you are a PC+ member don't buy the Modern Apartment bundle. Each item is a PC+ item at !.99, so you can get it cheaper by buying seperates.
I have some large, spherical renders of the Dystopia City Blocks that I did. Two night views (clouds and no clouds) and one daylight view. I used Carrara as the software, but they are actually just high quality .jpg images and should be program agnostic.
Since the renders are spherical, they are seamless. They were also rendered from the perspective of being in the heart of the city about mid-way up a skyscraper.
If I was using one in Carrara, I would load it into the scene's Background, but I don't know how it works in Studio. I suppose you could apply it to scene encompassing sphere. If the buildings looked like they were to close, the sphere could be enlarged.
The two night renders:
http://www.sharecg.com/v/64485/view/6/Texture/Spherical-Dystopia-night-with-clouds
http://www.sharecg.com/v/51352/view/6/Texture/Dystopia-Spherical-background-night-image-map
The daylight version:
http://www.sharecg.com/v/51297/view/6/Texture/Dystopia-Spherical-background-image-map
The background image in Daz Studio is set behind whatever is in the scene so that the edges of the background image always touch the edges of the field of view. The aspect ratio of the background image needs to match the render, or distortion of the background will result. In some cases, this is not an issue. With buildings, it probably is. Applying a 4:3 image to a 4:3 plane primitive and putting it outside the windows in the scene allows you to render at 16:9 without distorting the background. The spherical images would not work as background images in Daz Studio. Applying them to a sphere and scaling should work. That's the same as applying a 4:3 stock photo to a 4:3 plane and scaling it.
Have you considered the jpgs included on the skydomes in the free Dystopia City Blocks bundles? http://www.daz3d.com/dystopia-city-blocks-011-020-poser There are night and day versions, as well as more/less cloudy.
--MW