Creating Big City Scenes in DAZ Studio

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  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,806
    edited July 2019
    RGcincy said:

    With the success of my dForce webinars, Digital Arts Live invited me to do one on creating big cities. So later this month I'll be covering how to craft a road network and add buildings, populate the city with people and vehicles, and add street detail (props and textures). Click on the image for a link to the registration site.

    For anyone interested, this will be presented this coming weekend. Here are a few other views from within this city.

     

     

    City Webinar - S street.png
    1000 x 1300 - 2M
    City Webinar - night block party.png
    1000 x 1300 - 1M
    City Webinar - dirty street.png
    1000 x 1300 - 2M
    City Webinar - divided highway.png
    1000 x 1300 - 2M
    Post edited by RGcincy on
  • duckbombduckbomb Posts: 585

    Oh man!  I’m traveling this weekend!  I was just on a plane from SFO to Chicago, however, and I watched your DForce webinar the ENTIRE time!  It was so well done, very clear, and inspiring!

     

    I loved it, and I wish I could toon in the weekend as I’d love to support you that way.  Is there a chance this will eventually be offered as a purchase-able product, like the DForce Discovery one?

  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,806

    Hi @duckbomb  thanks! Glad you liked the dForce webinar video. Yes, the plan is to publish the videos here on Daz sometime in the near future. I don't know the exact timing as it depends upon the time for editing and then getting on the release schedule. but in the past it hasn't been too long.

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859

    So impressed with all the new things you try! However do you find the time?!!!! The city looks really good, nice attention to small details.

  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,806

    Thanks Novica! I don't watch TV so I spend my time making things - real and imagined.

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191

    It was a great webinar. I learned a few new tricks I hadn't thought of which was great. I really enjoyed it.

  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,806

    Thanks @Knittingmommy 

    Fee free to post any questions or city scenes you create

  • I would have been interested in the Webinar last weekend, but unfortunately, money has been tight as of lately, but if there is a PDF or PowerPoint Presentation about the Webinar, would you be so kind to upload it, please?

  • EightiesIsEnoughEightiesIsEnough Posts: 1,069
    edited August 2019

    I saw in the DAZ Shop, a tutorial that is supposedly based on what was taught at a Webinar a couple of weekends ago.  Needless to say, I added it to my wishlist.  Right now, as of this post, it is marked down by 30%.  I am currently considering purchasing the tutorial as early as Tuesday, when I get paid (normally payday would be Wednesday, but it's likely a bank-closing holiday for my region that day).  If it is still on sale on Tuesday, it would be great.  But I may likely be buying it no matter what.

    That may end up being the official last expensive item I will ever buy on the DAZ Shop or anywhere, as I got virtually everything I need (buildings, houses, signs, streets, etc.) for my big city scene.

    Post edited by EightiesIsEnough on
  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,806

    The video is based on the webinar. And it will be at 30% off for two weeks so you should be good to go.

  • The video turorial for Big City Scenes went straight into my wishlist.

    I hope i will enjoy it someday like your dForce tutoirial.

  • So, I'd like to ask a question regarding the dock in the River Front scene.  The road along the dock appears to have no sidewalk.  Are there any sidewalk props I could purchase or download for free on any website?

  • chris-2599934chris-2599934 Posts: 1,775
    edited August 2019
    JonSea31 said:

    So, I'd like to ask a question regarding the dock in the River Front scene.  The road along the dock appears to have no sidewalk.  Are there any sidewalk props I could purchase or download for free on any website?

    So long as you don't have any curved roads to deal with, I'd try just using a cube primitive, or primitives, stretched to fit and with a suitable shader applied. Remember to keep the surface tiling settings in step with whatever stretching you do.

    Post edited by chris-2599934 on
  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,806

    As chris indicated, use a cube primitive and River Front's sidewalk texture. Create a 5.5 foot cube then set X-scale to 5200%. Copy the sidewalk texture from River Front's sidewalks and apply to the cube. Set Vertical Tiles to 0.21 and Horizontal Tiles to 19 (adjust the corresponding offsets as needed). You'll have a sidewalk that matches the length of one RF block with a texture of similar size. Duplicate as often as needed to make a longer sidewalk. You can take a similar approach to make a road that matches.

  • EightiesIsEnoughEightiesIsEnough Posts: 1,069
    edited August 2019

    Now, regarding thedock's surface, it looks like a solid dark grey allthroughout.  Is this supposed to resemble pavement or something?

    Regarding the cube primitive, I couldn't find any in my inventory after keying in the search engine, the word "cube".  In what folder should I find the cube primitive?

    Post edited by EightiesIsEnough on
  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,806

    You create the cube primitive. From the main menu, Create/New Primitive. Select cube as type. Any number of divisions is fine (1 works).

    The dock area is solid gray. You can select and add a shader of your choice to change it. Or add a bump map (borrowed from a shader) to just give it texture. You may need to adjust the horizontal and vertical tiling to make it look good.

  • EightiesIsEnoughEightiesIsEnough Posts: 1,069
    edited August 2019

    I'd like to ask another question, regarding another product and whether or not it is compatible with the River front base.

    I did purchase four of the Dreamland Single Home sets on Renderosity early in July.  It can allow the option to load in a long row of houses on one side of a street.  What I'd like to ask is, is there any way I could put these rows on the River Front base without interfering with anything on the River Front base?

    I am thinking the Single Home sets are more designed to be separate props outside of what would be the River Front scene.

    Post edited by EightiesIsEnough on
  • I've made some suggestions to Dreamland Models about waterfront and hillside city blocks as future products. In the meantime, I'm still experimenting with armchair urban planning.

  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,806

    I've made some suggestions to Dreamland Models about waterfront and hillside city blocks as future products. In the meantime, I'm still experimenting with armchair urban planning.

    Those would be great additions, let's hope he works on them

  • I read that the person who created the big city scene used 65 different products from DAZ Shop and other sites.  RGcincy, I'd like to ask, what other sites did you get the props from?

    I read on the video I purchased last August that the Streets props from MacLean were used, and I know about the Dreamland and UrbanSprawl buildings and props.  Did the video list the many products used, or did it list the various sites that sell the products that were used?

  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,806

    Most were Daz, others from Rendo, some were purchased at Daz but they've moved over. There may be some free ones from ShareCG. I always meant to post a list of what I used. I'll dig it out and post it soon.

  • EightiesIsEnoughEightiesIsEnough Posts: 1,069
    edited November 2019

    I realized why it would take so long to load thousands of images before rendering a big ciry scene.  It is probably because of the city blocks retrieving the the same textures from multiple folders designated to each city block.  One way to work around it is to create a seperate consolidated folder and copying all of the images from those seperate city block folders, and pasting them into the new single folder.  After that, I could find the texture on the prop, and replace it with a comparable one in the new consolidated folder.  It seems as if the way the folders were originally set up, no wonder it was originally designed for Poser.

    I have gotten started on revamping my big city scene, this time a November 2019 update.  I have a feeling this latest update is going to be a lot better than the version I developed last summer.  I truly am glad I purchased the video tutorial last August while I did.

     

    Post edited by EightiesIsEnough on
  • I realized why it would take so long to load thousands of images before rendering a big ciry scene.  It is probably because of the city blocks retrieving the the same textures from multiple folders designated to each city block.  One way to work around it is to create a seperate consolidated folder and copying all of the images from those seperate city block folders, and pasting them into the new single folder.  After that, I could find the texture on the prop, and replace it with a comparable one in the new consolidated folder.  It seems as if the way the folders were originally set up, no wonder it was originally designed for Poser.  gotten started on revamping my big city scene, this time a November 2019 update.  I have a feeling this latest update is going to be a lot better than the version I developed last summer.  I truly am glad I purchased the video tutorial last August while I did.

    As a Poser user, I can really appreciate the problem with scattered files. One of the ways we address this is to create project-specific Runtimes, or create them based on content type. In your case, having a Runtime for all your architecture is probably a good idea. I personally have separated mine by genre, so that all of my Wild West props and costumes are  in a single Runtime, with another one for Superheroes and another for Fantasy. This helps me minimize problems and speed up my workflow.

  • EightiesIsEnoughEightiesIsEnough Posts: 1,069
    edited November 2019

    Actually, what I was trying to say was, there are comparable textures in multiple folders by certain city block.  It would be nice to cut the number of images to be loaded from roughly 6,000 down to a much lower number (hopefully in the high hundreds, to say the least).

    If you have a consolidated folder that would cover all of the blocks' textures, all you would need to do is recycle the same textures from other city blocks, retrieving them from just one consolidated folder.instead of the same texture from multiple folders.

    Let's say you have:

    Block 4\textureA.jpg

    Block 5\textureA.jpg

    Block 6\textureA.jpg

    Block 7\textureA.jpg

    You end up retrieving the images four times.

    If the props load these textureA.jpg images in the following fashion:

    Merged\textureA.jpg

    That means you would load only one image from one folder for such props as opposed to four (via the same texture from four different folders) in this scenario.  Some textures that definitely get used in multiple folders are road signs, housing exterior materials, etc.

    I plan on purchasing more city blocks in the foreseeable future, but that will be when I have an excess of money in my account, and assuming they go on sale significantly.  Right now they are on sale for 30% off until the end of November, but considering my money is not excessive at the moment, I am going to have to pass on it for the time being, but I do plan on buying them, no questions asked.

    In the coming days, I am going to load a city block, and go through every surface, and take note of the file used on that particular surface.  Whatever I come across, I will copy those textures and paste them into a folder that will be named "All the blocks".

    I'd be quite interested to find out how many images would load just after loading a city block.  My guess is, probably a few hundred at least.

    At this point, before the work gets underway, if I had to load the scene with all 20 city blocks (assuming I would have them all), the total number of images to load would be a whopping 11,000 or greater.  Why load 11,000 images when you could cut it down to a much lower number?

    Post edited by EightiesIsEnough on
  • Then again, the City Blocks props tend to be overloaded with polygons, some items such as road signs, trees, and utility poles are duplicated on multiple city blocks.  I personally think using select homes and garages, and creating multiple instances of them will do just fine.  And also, creating instances of the ground and road (not including the utility poles and other unnecessary stuff) from the Single Home props will make my city better and more efficient to load.

  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,806

    Hope it all works out for you, let us know if it succeeds.. As I did in the video, I just load and render subsets of the city and composite them after the fact to accommodate the memory issues but that does take time and energy.

  • EightiesIsEnoughEightiesIsEnough Posts: 1,069
    edited January 2020

    But my question is, if there are 1.3 million polygons involved, wouldn't that possibly cause DAZ Studio to crash?

    Post edited by EightiesIsEnough on
  • But my question is, if there are 1.3 million polygons involved, wouldn't that possibly cause DAZ Studio to crash?

    I've purchased the product, and the whole set seems to render OK, at least with no other characters in it. The city blocks can be loaded separately to reduce the polygon count.

  • Sisyphus1977Sisyphus1977 Posts: 305
    edited January 2020

    My first go at creating a big city scene.  This used these products for the city, Urban Sprawl 2 The Big City, Contemporary Buildings Hyper Kit and the DAZ Studio Iray HDR Outdoor Environments with the Maui background.

    Cityscape v2.jpg
    2538 x 1080 - 3M
    Post edited by Sisyphus1977 on
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