Daycare

[glorybound]

Here is an interior of a daycare. The building is an old renovation, so the architect wanted it to look clean, warm, but historic. I'll be added children in post, which I am not very good at yet, and I have seen very few good examples of it being done well. I purchased the kids library from viz-people, which is good, but even their client examples look cut/pasted. Is anybody really good at this? Do you have any examples?



I have to work on burn, and the wood on the fish tank, and the fish tank.

[flino2004]

About Viz-people, they have a couple tutorials there...beside the shadows and reflections match the colormap you have in your renderings...another trick is having film noise at the end of the composition.(very subtle)

[dlparisi]

One quick trick I do if I need to get people in in a hurry is take the entire image (without people) and blur it out considerably, basically so it's just some shaded blobs, and then put it over just the people using a "color" blending mode in photoshop pushed down to 30-40%. It's not the best way to colormatch the people but it's quick and seems like a good starting point.

[glorybound]

About Viz-people, they have a couple tutorials there...beside the shadows and reflections match the colormap you have in your renderings...another trick is having film noise at the end of the composition.(very subtle)

I guess I have never seen anything very convincing, so I never tried it. My first attempt stunk, but I'll try more.

[glorybound]

One quick trick I do if I need to get people in in a hurry is take the entire image (without people) and blur it out considerably, basically so it's just some shaded blobs, and then put it over just the people using a "color" blending mode in photoshop pushed down to 30-40%. It's not the best way to colormatch the people but it's quick and seems like a good starting point.

I'll try, and try again!

[super gnu]

i have a workflow i use when dropping in people.. firstly it helps to pick people with as close to the correct lighting as possible ( obvious really, dont put sunlit people indoors etc..) then having made a selection of people, i use something like "advanced painter" to scatter nice 1.6m x 30cm cylinders around my scene, in places where i think people should go.. if your doing predominantly children, maybe a smaller cylinder, but its just to give an idea so it doesn't matter too much..

then set them to say, 100% self illum red, and override the rest of the scene black and do a scanline render - or vray of course whack this over your render in ps to get your scale correct.

now drop in the people and start positioning and scaling them, i always try to imagine a simplistic "story" for the characters.. i.e. these people are chatting, this one is rushing for lift etc.. helps to create a believable distribution if they are not just standing staring at a wall!

next i try to get all the people in each area to the same level of contrast/ brightness, since they are all likely lit slightly differently. i also desaturate / lighten them based on camera distance.

if necessary at this stage, you can go through adding a screen or dodge layer, and a multiply layer, and paint extra highlight/shadow elements over any people that need it.. this is the most tricky bit to get looking natural!

finally, my favourite bit, the shadows. in direct sunlighty scenes the main concern is getting the shadow direction / length and opacity / colour correct. again rendering cylinders (with shadows) can help, but you can also eyeball it quite easily from other elements in the scene.

for overcast or interior scenes with diffuse lighting, my method generally uses 3 shadow layers. - ill often add these to daylit shots too, but they are less critical. - usually a simple skewed and scaled copy of the person will suffice, but sometimes some editing is needed.

first, the contact shadow, with a very small brush, ideally an ellipse brush scaled to match perspective of floor, do a very tight shadow under the feet.. this should barely peek out from under shoes, but be near pure black. really locks the feet to the floor. i usually leave this layer on 100% opacity.

next a softer shadow, with a larger softer brush covering the area around and between feet, and under any briefcases etc.. i usually set this layer to maybe 30% opacity.

finally i usually use a really big soft brush to put a general darkening of the floor around the person.. this will darken the floor area between a group etc. this layer i keep on 5 - 10% opacity.

i generally go through all the people, turning them on one at a time, adding to those 3 shadow layers, then turning them off again. once the last one is done you can turn em all on and survey the result, adjusting the opacity of the 3 shadow layers to keep the result subtle.

once im happy with the shadows, i usually either merge all people to one layer, or put in a layer group, and do global colour corrections to all of them until they sit in the scene nicely..

since ive been doing animation almost exclusively i dont have many up to date examples, but i can see if i can find one to show where im still happy with result (i can never bear showing old work!)

[super gnu]

its a 4 year old image so not exactly cutting edge, but shows the shadow thing i was talking about...

[glorybound]

great tips! Your image looks great, too! I will work on these Saturday, and post something later next week. Thanks for the help

[pailhead]

super gnu, can you recommend any libraries? These look awesome!

[pailhead]

These viz-people are really high quality, but the business ladies cutouts are very very porn. It must be a european thing.

*edit*

Wow @ the nightlife series. I'd flag it as work unsafe

[super gnu]

ahh the people in those images were all got the old fashioned way.. sneaking around central london with a camera, then cutting them out in PS the place i used to work before they got eaten by the credit crunch (smoothe) had a whacking great library collected over 10 years. when the juniors and students in the office didnt have anything to do, it was cut-out duty :P theres a particular facial expression people get when you ask them to cut a tree out.

(no such thing as a cutout library back then, apart from.. bleuuug.. what were they called, the fake 2d/ 3d ones.. dana and greg etc...all biege and horrible.. rendering problems.. name escapes me.. we had all those libraries too, but avoided using them like the plague.)



of course there are issues with using peoples photos without permission, but when it was identifiably close, we'd normally photo people in the office. and besides, most arch vis doesnt end up with huge public exposure.

[pailhead]

did jeff mottle used to have something to do with smoothe? I know their production went to bulgaria a few years back?

[super gnu]

yeah jeff worked for us for a while. set up a calgary branch of the company... the bulgarian branch was set up a little later, and worked in parralel with the main london and manchester offices.. when the crap hit the ventilator they luckily managed to break away and are now called artray.. really nice bunch. smoothe are now called assembly studios.. i still do the odd job for them. not quite the heyday of 60 visualisers though

shame really it was a great place to work.

[pailhead]

lol sorry i'm starting to posion all the threads with doomsday talk,

[super gnu]

haha yeye.. well smoothe may have bitten the dust but all the good people there went on to bigger and better things! going freelance was the best move i ever made tbh.. and if they hadnt gone bust id never have done it im now working remotely for all my old colleagues/friends who work at a variety of other companies, and ive moved to sunny southern italy.. so i cant complain!

so anyway.. back to 2d cutout people.

to be honest i mostly do animation work now, so havent been keeping much of an eye on whats available. im still waiting for someone to bring out an affordable, beautifully rigged collection of ready to use 3d people, with dynamic clothing and hair, that i can just chuck loads of in the scene and forget about. oh and they have to look real... in closeup. pfff. think ill be waiting a while.