This new Billboard plugin looks interesting...
Scavenger
Posts: 2,674
in The Commons
So can someone explain what this new billboard stuff is? sounds very interesting from the discription I read... a self turning plane?
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I'm interested in this and the Crowd generator!
Do a render of an object with no background and save it as a .png. Use it by creating a plane in your scene, add the .png to the surface in the surface tab, set it to point at camera and render.
I did these in 3Delight and used LAMH to make the hair as it is a long process in Iray.
Okay, thanks Fishtales. That's what I thought the plug-in was, but wasn't absolutely certain it was for making your own billboards. I thought it might be necessary for making the pre-made billboards in the store today automatically face the camera.
I like to get things absolutely clear before I buy. :)
I believe the point at setting will work with any billboards just by setting it to point at camera although I have never tried it :)
I tried it earlier with a billboard I'd made myself and it just made it face edge-on to the camera (not a lot of good!), but that could well have something to do with the way the plane was orientated when I created it. I didn't check when I did it and don't have time to muck about with it now. These products hitting the store reminded me though of how very useful billboards can be in many circumstances and had me wondering why I don't use them more often, so I'll probably buy the script sooner or later for the convenience it offers in managing a lot of them. Still thinking about that one.
I think the 'Crowd Generator' is badly named as it's just a series of billboards featuring groups or single people in various poses, viewed from multiple angles. No doubt a lot of work went into them and it's worth the money if that's the crowd you're looking for, but the only crowd you're going to generate with it will feature the same bunch of people as in everybody else's crowd and will soon get old. It's no more a 'crowd generator' really than the collection of Nature Billboards is a forest or jungle generator.
I am curious if this plugin can work with node instances created via UltraScatter.
a lot of people like things ready made, we have all suggested this in the past for crowds in stadiums etc but the user always wants a readymade product.
So give the buyer what they want and get paid and the rest of us make our own and everyone is happy.
People buy renders for the same reason, I can knit but buy jumpers
Oh, I agree, that's why I said I thought it was worth the money if it was the crowd you wanted. I was thinking when I saw the script that it would be good for use with small themed collections of billboards featuring Viking characters, Egyptians, doctors and nurses, zombies or whatever. Very useful for those of us who like to 'roll our own', and a great opportunity for PAs looking for new product ideas.
now decent billboards of real stuff I would buy too, like Xfrog do their plants, things we do not happen to have 3D models of to render.
I believe Poserdom call them tubes.
I tend to think that everyone catches little errors the same way I do, like the obvious lighting mismatches, or the carnival render where the billboard characters had shadows going in the wrong direction.
That's what I was noticing too and it's the only thing that gives me pause.
"in the surface tab"
What is this option labelled in the surface tab? The only point at camera I can find is in the parameters tab and does work on primatives.
there is another one where the crowd on the sidewalk is seen from slightly above, their angle to the floor gets wierd
Does it work in 4.8 or only 4.9?
I have bought the plugin, but could not find the way, using only .png image, so I have created a cutout mask for the render (white - to show the figure, black - to mask anything else).
Below is a test iray render of Toon Duckie. On the left is a Billboard node (from the plugin), on the right, the plane primitive from Daz Studio.
There is a comma after surface tab as I assumed most people knew where to find it. But you are correct, for those who don't know, it is under the parameters tab.
so i want to understand and be clear.
do i need to buy the NODE product to use the other node products?
this makes a plane, sets up the point at for the active camera (nice touch).
it comes with pre made planes and images
(I would think that Jepe's work woudl do really well in this sort of system ( https://www.daz3d.com/jepe )
This product for crowds has a lot of potential and is a cool idea. I hope it sells well since I can see there could be some useful expansions with certain themes. One thing I would love is some corporate business types. The type you see wandering around with briefcases and business suits in architectural drawings
I own the jepes products but looks like the pa solved one of the big issues which is these billboards face the camera. So there is no weird shadows or odd looking dimensions.
great product nice and creative!
As far as I can tell, the other products would just be standard billboard materials without the main plugin. I thought of Jepe's products too. I've got one or two of them but don't get much use from them. That might change with the plugin.
I just noticed rather belatedly that the author of the plugin is DiscoBob, Zevo's partner on Skin Builder 3 after Draagonstorm sadly passed. The plugin was through the checkout and on my hard drive about two minutes later - I've got a lot of confidence in DiscBob after seeing how he managed to help bring an unfinished script to market while being unable to ask the original author any questions about it. I haven't had time to experiment with the billboard plugin much yet, but preliminary investigations suggest that it doesn't work with instances, at least not those generated by Ultra Scatter anyway. I didn't try any others. I don't remember seeing claims that it worked with instances, so although it would have been a bonus if it did, it's not a dealbreaker here that it doesn't. It does do everything that it does make claims for. If it's possible to make it work with instances, I wouldn't put it past DiscoBob to try, but we'll see. Further investigations later...
I guess I'm totally missing the point. What is it? What does it do that can't be done with a simple image in the background. What is it's advantage? Why would I want it?
The billboards works with Ultra Scatter. Below is an iray render of 72 instances of all 5 character billboards, included with the plugin.
Render time under 2 minutes.
Oooh! I must've missed something in my experimentations - great stuff! LeatherGryphon, I would attempt to explain what it is and what it does, but I'm not the best teacher at the best of times and could sleep standing up on a clothesline right now. Hopefully things will become clearer as the thread unfolds, otherwise I will have a stab at explaining later if none of the many good explainers on here have passed by in the meantime :)
OK, I went and looked up "Ultra Scatter" and now I'm even more confused. What do background scenes have to do with this? And where'd this new term "Billboard" come from???
I appreciate the descriptions of the forest but what's a tree?
its a plane with a texture diffuse and matching opacity maps you sit in your scene to create the illusion of an object there
a splat is one that always faces the camera
I have been using them in Carrara and iClone for years
Powerage did something along these lines a couple of years back for Poser, I found it quite useful. This looks like an updated system for use in DAZ. Having something that will automatically point groups of billboards at the camera is a nice touch.
I think you might be confusing background scenes (backdrops) with background characters - characters who aren't necessarily the main focus of the image but are the supporting cast, or characters as in the image above who are pretty much the main focus but are sharing it between them so that none of them require much in the way of detail. The script helps you create flat, single polygon 2D background characters which take up hardly any resources and easily manage them by getting them to face the camera all at once. My computer sits and laughs at me if I suggest doing more than one or two characters in a render, but by using billboards I can have as many as I like really.
Ah, OK, now I get it. It makes and uses self aligning placards instead of objects to populate a scene. Thank you.
Urban Sprawl 3 block 2 with 75 instances of 5 billboards from the plugin.
There is also a good explanation of billboard on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard