Doors! Give us doors!

You see it all the time, for instance today: an otherwise interesting, potentially useful-looking new set...except the room doesn't have a door. Lots of windows but not one door, never mind two.

What if you want to show a character entering or leaving? You're out of luck.

Someone on these forums (I think it was FirstBastion) once said "Entrances and exits are storytelling." .Indeed.

So please, please give us doors that open and close. How hard could it be?

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Comments

  • jestmartjestmart Posts: 4,449

    If you talking about the Industrial Loft it has door, those big charcoal gray wood panels attached to a rail are sliding doors.

  • Blind OwlBlind Owl Posts: 501
    jestmart said:

    If you talking about the Industrial Loft it has door, those big charcoal gray wood panels attached to a rail are sliding doors.

    Good news (I should have read the description more closely blush), Maybe I'll buy it after all.

    But it's still true that far too many rooms DON"T have doors. Seems to me it should be automatic: if a room doesn't have them, QA should ask the creator how people are supposed to get in & out.

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,714
    Blind Owl said:
    jestmart said:

    If you talking about the Industrial Loft it has door, those big charcoal gray wood panels attached to a rail are sliding doors.

    Good news (I should have read the description more closely blush), Maybe I'll buy it after all.

    But it's still true that far too many rooms DON"T have doors. Seems to me it should be automatic: if a room doesn't have them, QA should ask the creator how people are supposed to get in & out.

    Probably the same way scantily clad women's armour is so effective: magic. :D

  • FirstBastionFirstBastion Posts: 7,218
    Blind Owl said:
    Someone on these forums (I think it was FirstBastion) once said "Entrances and exits are storytelling." .Indeed.

    That does sound like something I'd say. 

     

     

     

    I concur  give us doors. And structurally accurate buildings too.

     

  • Same can be said with vehicles.  Car doors should open and close, if it's a pickup truck, the tailgate should open and close.

    Hoods and Trunks (boots) should also open/close - this would be a nice to have (just make sure if you open the hood, there is an engine in it :)

  • DDCreateDDCreate Posts: 1,382

    I'm Pro-Working Doors too

  • nomad-ads_8ecd56922enomad-ads_8ecd56922e Posts: 1,867
    edited May 2019

    I was actually playing around with the Gothic Bedroom set that I'd bought (as part of a larger bundle) few weeks back, and which I might use later in a comicbook narrative involving this and other similar rooms... but one of the things I noticed is that the door going into the room is a static prop.  It doesn't open.  I figured... okay, fine, I'll just hide the door, or if that's not possible, I'll go into the Surfaces pane and set it to 100% transparent.  Well, it turns out the door is a seperate object, but only SORT of:  It's a seperate piece from the wall, but the door frame is not a seperate piece from the door... so if I DID need to show that door opened in a comicbook narrative, I'd have to actually remove the whole door and frame and replace it with another, similar looking door and frame.  Probably not THAT big a roadblock, but I also don't happen to have a similar, distinctive-styled door in my Runtime, either.  Another oddity is that the door doesn't have a doorknob or such.  I suppose it could be the maker pictured it as being a sliding door, but... well, the point I'm making is, he or she didn't take the few extra steps of crafting the door so it could be opened. Even if it wasn't rigged as such, simply making the door a distinct object seperate from the frame would have been welcome.  Barring that, making the frame and the door be two seperate surfaces in the object would have been welcome, since with that I could at least hide the door and keep the frame.

    I mention this particular product mainly because it just happens to be the one I most recently encountered that had this issue, but there've been others I've run into with this issue, and I guess its just another one of my pet peeves.

    That said, I can live with the minor flaws in this particular room, such as the door not opening,  I just hope that future products from that merchant, or other similar merchants, that they maybe think about if there's an easy way to make things like doors and stuff open, that when they're planning it out, look at the parts of it and ask themselves, "Gee, is there a trivially easy way I can make that door and that cabinet open, without it taking me another week to complete this?"  If its something that takes only a tiny bit of extra effort, i.e. split this one into TWO pieces instead of it being one piece when they're crafting that part in Blender, such that it takes them only another 30 seconds or something... (instead of it taking them an hour or two when they later decide to go back and retrofit it or something) it would be worth doing. Its mostly a matter of placing themselves into the heads of various end-customers and wondering "Gee, what if someone wants to use this product THIS way...." and quickly adding that bit in if it's trivially easy to do at the moment they initially create the thing.

    Post edited by nomad-ads_8ecd56922e on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 96,191

    You might be able to make an openable door by removing the door from the frame with the Geometry Editor, exporting/importing OBJ, and then repeating to get the door - however, the clay render promo shows that there is no depth to the walls, you can see the indenetations of the panelling as extrusions on the outside, so you'd most likely also need to add some walls with a primitive for the area shown by the open door.

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 14,878

    They aren't flaws or mistakes or quick fixes, they are design decisions.

    Maybe design decisions that don't suit you, sure, but... let's not ascribe to malice or laziness something that's fundamentally an esthetic direction.

     

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    Oso3D said:

    They aren't flaws or mistakes or quick fixes, they are design decisions.

    Maybe design decisions that don't suit you, sure, but... let's not ascribe to malice or laziness something that's fundamentally an esthetic direction.

     

    Well those design decisions won't sell the product to me;)

  • Blind OwlBlind Owl Posts: 501
    edited May 2019
    Oso3D said:

    They aren't flaws or mistakes or quick fixes, they are design decisions.

    Maybe design decisions that don't suit you, sure, but... let's not ascribe to malice or laziness something that's fundamentally an esthetic direction.

     

    No one said anything about malice. Inadvertence, maybe, or lack of imagination ("What if someone wanted to...").

    ..and yes, I'm familiar with the old quote about ascribing to malice what can adequately be explained by etc.

    Post edited by Blind Owl on
  • namffuaknamffuak Posts: 4,040

    I will admit I've looked carefully at promo images for a number of rooms, lofts, and other dwellings and have come to the conclusion that they were designed as sound-stage sets to be used with a wall hidden. If you look carefully you can find a number of such sets where the ONLY way into or out of the set is through the window. There are others labeled 'apartments' that seem to be based on shared toilet/bath down the hall and/or the occupants eat out as there is no provision for cooking. I tend to avoid all of these . . .

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    namffuak said:

    I will admit I've looked carefully at promo images for a number of rooms, lofts, and other dwellings and have come to the conclusion that they were designed as sound-stage sets to be used with a wall hidden. If you look carefully you can find a number of such sets where the ONLY way into or out of the set is through the window. There are others labeled 'apartments' that seem to be based on shared toilet/bath down the hall and/or the occupants eat out as there is no provision for cooking. I tend to avoid all of these . . .

    Exactlycool

  • Yup, there was a doctors waiting-room area I bought that had a similar issue:  in the main room and along the one hallway there were doors going to various doctor's offices (and the doors actually did open, but there was nothing behind them, which I have no issues with :D ) but there was no obvious entrance to this room from the outside, just doors marked with signs as belonging to other rooms.  It did have a stub of a hall going off from that one main hallway, but that one just simply ended with a (non-removable) wall as soon as you turned the corner.  I wound up kit-bashing this set into a passable other-room, and figure I can cheat a little by having the person turn the corner into that stub of a hallway, as seen from the direction of the main room, and then simply "cut to" him or her being in another related room (that built-from-kitbashing room, say), but it would have been neat to have had that wall at the end of the little side hall removable, so making it easier to just slap more hallway or a room down there, but I can live with the set as is.

  • mmitchell_houstonmmitchell_houston Posts: 2,472
    edited May 2019
    Oso3D said:

    They aren't flaws or mistakes or quick fixes, they are design decisions. Maybe design decisions that don't suit you, sure, but... let's not ascribe to malice or laziness something that's fundamentally an esthetic direction.

    I don't mean to dump on you, but... No, I can't agree with that. A "decision" made based on inexperience or lack of foresight is still a mistake. 

    I've had this discussion with other creative professionals in other fields over this years and any professional (anyone taking money for their services is, by definition, a "professional") making a decision by failing to anticipate standard and reasonable user requirements is a "mistake" because it is based on faulty judgement. 

    Simply put: In movies and plays, the director is not always right; in books, magazines and comics the editor is not always right; and in any sort of graphic or architectural design the designer is not always right.

    Even if the end product came out 100% as the creator intended, it is still very reasonable to call the end result a "mistake" when it is built upon underlying assumptions and decisions that are not sound.

    Anyway, sorry to dump on this because it is kind of off-topic, but this needs to be said. 

    Post edited by mmitchell_houston on
  • namffuak said:

    I will admit I've looked carefully at promo images for a number of rooms, lofts, and other dwellings and have come to the conclusion that they were designed as sound-stage sets to be used with a wall hidden. If you look carefully you can find a number of such sets where the ONLY way into or out of the set is through the window. There are others labeled 'apartments' that seem to be based on shared toilet/bath down the hall and/or the occupants eat out as there is no provision for cooking. I tend to avoid all of these . . .

    I agree, as well. And truthfully, I cannot imagine a set designer for a movie or play ever designing a set without one or two entrances so you can move the characters in and out of the set. This is particularly true for plays! About the only play I can think of without a way in or out could be Sarte's No Exit.

    When shopping, I always look for sets that are versatile and any text mentioning "rigged doors and windows" (or words to that effect) are much more likely to get purchased!

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 14,878

    And sometimes users lack the experience and information to realize what requests are actually reasonable.

     

  • namffuaknamffuak Posts: 4,040
    Oso3D said:

    And sometimes users lack the experience and information to realize what requests are actually reasonable.

     

    True, and I wouldn't necessarily expect a beginning modeler to rig an opening door. But if the model includes free-standing props the door can also be a free-standing prop and a hole left in the wall. A blank hall on the other side is nice, but a few minutes with any of several prop sets in the store here or just a couple of plane primitives can do just as well. But if there's no door at all, or the door is just a part of the wall texture I'll be returning the set.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    LOL

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,709

    nice place to die

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584

    The round thing with cushions is actually an elevator . . . or possibly a matter transporter. Or maybe you enter through the wardrobe (via Narnia)...

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    The round thing with cushions is actually an elevator . . . or possibly a matter transporter. Or maybe you enter through the wardrobe (via Narnia)...

    I knew thatwink

  • KitsumoKitsumo Posts: 1,210

    nice place to die

    Lol, it reminds me of the old ST TNG episode where part of the crew is trapped in an old hotel/casino and they can't leave until they re-enact the events from a cheesy suspense novel.

    Either that or the room from the end of 2001: A Space Odyessy. 

  • PetercatPetercat Posts: 2,315

    LOL

    Frederick would have wanted this room in his house. So Miranda couldn't escape.
    The Collector.

  • MisselthwaiteMisselthwaite Posts: 958

    Clearly, there is a hidden trap door in the ceiling or floor... is this a timed exercise? ;-)

  • Well, looking at the product page for the FG Comfort Room, it doesn't show any sign that the walls are seperate objects, otherwise I'd have suggested simply swapping out that wall at the bottom of the image with one that has a door in it, say, grabbed from one of the different build-a-room sorts of kit packs.  In another kit-bashed-set project, I actually borrowed a DOOR from one of the posable-room packs, and placed it such that the door itself was just slightly out enough from the wall that it looked good, and I was lucky that the door FRAME then didn't stick TOO far out from the wall that it looked fake.  I then cheated by showing the character going through the door as seen from a DIFFERENT set that came originally WITH that door, then cutting to the scene in that other set after he'd closed the door behind him.

  • rrwardrrward Posts: 555
    Oso3D said:

    And sometimes users lack the experience and information to realize what requests are actually reasonable.

    Doors aren't reasonable?

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,709
    rrward said:
    Oso3D said:

    And sometimes users lack the experience and information to realize what requests are actually reasonable.

    Doors aren't reasonable?

    Well even if they don’t actually open on the model, most rooms have them, it is the definition of a room as opposed to a tomb, it’s a bit disturbing when a room model actually has none neither fake or opening and some in the DAZ store fall into that category, don’t these people know how rooms work?

  • SloshSlosh Posts: 2,391
    edited May 2019

    Yup, there was a doctors waiting-room area I bought that had a similar issue:  in the main room and along the one hallway there were doors going to various doctor's offices (and the doors actually did open, but there was nothing behind them, which I have no issues with :D ) but there was no obvious entrance to this room from the outside, just doors marked with signs as belonging to other rooms.  It did have a stub of a hall going off from that one main hallway, but that one just simply ended with a (non-removable) wall as soon as you turned the corner.  I wound up kit-bashing this set into a passable other-room, and figure I can cheat a little by having the person turn the corner into that stub of a hallway, as seen from the direction of the main room, and then simply "cut to" him or her being in another related room (that built-from-kitbashing room, say), but it would have been neat to have had that wall at the end of the little side hall removable, so making it easier to just slap more hallway or a room down there, but I can live with the set as is.

    Try this one:  https://www.daz3d.com/medical-center-waiting-room ; All doors open (even the elevators) and all doors have rooms behind them, and there is even a stairwell.  Shameless plug (sorry wink )

    Post edited by Slosh on
  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 14,878
    rrward said:
    Oso3D said:

    And sometimes users lack the experience and information to realize what requests are actually reasonable.

    Doors aren't reasonable?

    Sometimes, no, they aren't.

    For example, I think people complained that Streets of Morocco didn't have usable doors. There's... dozens of doors, all over a very expansive environment. Making every one of them (or even a substantial number of them) open would then require additional rooms inside to be modeled, vastly expanding the scope of work.

    The product already is priced at $42.95... putting in all that extra work, how much higher could that price go?

     

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