Questions and Comments - Mainly About People

[DaftPunk]

Hey Guys it's me again. (though I doubt anyone realy remembers me anyway)

I have some questions and some ideas for Vray.

Q's-
1. (most important at the moment) Does any one know of some good HIGH DEF 3d people modles that are animatable and come with non-hooker (prostitute both male and feemale) clothing? I went across turbo squid and the 2 best modles there are either sub-quality, or just... hooker babe in tight clothes. Also how woudl you rank those 2 low poly 3d companies? which one seems to have the better modles when it comes to animation and 3dsmax integration?

2. Landscapes - I'm looking for methods of creating grassy landscapes around concrete roads and such. Do you build the landscape then boolean it where the roads are? what method do you use to create the landscape? The brush displacement? Connecting layered splines?

3. Sky resources and background resources. Not exactly asking for HDRI though that would be nice, but, where do you feel you get the best Sky and background maps?

4.Texture resources. Since we dont have a lot of time for photography around here, I was wondering which companies you go to for textures, very specificly, woods, concretes, painting scans, books and magazines, etc.

Idea -
Trees, some love em, some hate em, but most of us need em. Now, ASSIDE from the fact there are several tree packages out there, I was wondering if maybe Vray could have its own custom Tree scatter script, or if any users here were working on a batchscatter.

EX: using a FOLDER of trees and scattering them randomly with different scale and rotation values with limits and such. That way its not just 1 tree being scattered and rotated, its a random set of trees all being rotated and scaled around eachother and possibly setting up some kind of random texture application system to them too. So not all the trees(or other various proxys *people for example* get the same multi-sub map.

Anyway, anything past the -people- question is just curiosity, but I'm deasperately searching for good animatable 3d people.

Thanks!

[DaForce]

http://www.axyz-design.com
Decent 3d people.
There was another place, but cant remember the name of it...sorry

<EDIT>
Found it
http://www.lowpolygon3d.com/

[DaftPunk]

http://www.axyz-design.com
Decent 3d people.
There was another place, but cant remember the name of it...sorry

<EDIT>
Found it
http://www.lowpolygon3d.com/

Yeah I ran across those in another thread durring a search.
So you think those are well worth the cost? Have they been a very valuable part of your ArchVis library?

[DaForce]

I havnt used either of them actually.

Im pretty sure with the first one there are some free people you can download to try out.
I suggest you do that to get a feel of them.

[DaftPunk]

Ok, I got the demo guy from AXYZ, took out all the extra edges to turn him back into the original quad based modle they probably started him out as. Did a bit of adjusting to the UVW maps * boy are they messy* and attempted to Biped the sucker to no avail. Also set up a nifty material so I dont have to calculate any GI for the modle. But, I have a main problem that keeps me from using it :
I was wondering if anyone here has had any experience with rigging and animating these T'pose modles?*character modeling, rigging, and animation wasnt my strong suit in college even though thats what I went there for, I ended up being better at architectural and technical modeling*

And yes I know, I know, this section is for Vray-Free, but since I dont want my personal log-in associated with my place of works v-ray account, I gotta ask in here

[panthon]

Hi!

We have some experience using 3daxyz people, specially the T-pose ones. We have bought some of their collections and we are happy with them.
Nevertheless, I´ve found the max version of them to be quite useless, because it seems to be imported via .3ds and so u get lots of nasty triangles everywhere. If u choose to import them from the .OBJ format (also avaliable in the package) u will get faaaar better models, all quads (or almost). They are the right scale too.

Next stage is creating a skeleton for them. There are some characters already rigged avaliable for purchase on their website, and they are using biped for that purpose. I use biped too, so that´s allright. If u use CAT u´d better not to buy the prerigged ones Anyway, they are expensive compared to the T-pose ones.

With our current experience, we are able to skin a character in less than an hour, and u achieve a result good enough to make them walk, stand up, talk to each others, etc.. but u will have to adjust the skinning if u plan to make them strike extreme poses, or maybe sit on a chair...
Anyway, don´t forget they are intended to be viewed from a far point of view.

For those picky poses u can use a handy max modifier: Skin morph. With that u can correct the mesh deformation on a vertex per vertex basis, which tends to be far more intuitive for most of the people. But this is by no means a replacement for a good skinning!

Once u get that done, u can pick some mocap files which came with max and test the rig out! Scenes come to life with 5 or 6 characters wandering !

Then pick the textures, change the colors and u´ll get many variations of the same character, which is already skinned, ready to cheer it up!

[DaftPunk]

Thank you VERY much panthon. I wish I had thought of importing it through the Obj file they gave with the demo, instead of opening the .max file. Deffinately would have saved me some time removing ALLLL of those triangles

Now I just need to find some good tutorials on rigging a character and adding edges to the right areas where it bends.

Thanks again!

Have you used any other characters for Close-ups?

[panthon]

Hi!

If u get into the realms of rigging and character setup, u will find it isn´t as hard as u can imagine. I would say it´s a quite repetitive task. Ok, every character is different, but as long as it conforms to biped morphology you shouldn´t have a hard time. If you want to learn how to apply skinning once u have your biped in pose, i would recomment taking a look at a Great videotutorial from george maestri, which u can purchase at Lynda.com. It´s based on max 6 but i ve found it to be pretty close to what u find on max 7, except for some new features as skinwrap and skinmorph. I think it´s called character rigging in 3dsmax 6.

Posing the biped has no secrets at all, it´s a matter of putting the right bones on the right places, just inside the skin. Plus, if u have created and adjusted a biped, u can save it and reuse it (with minor modifications) to rig other characters. Character studio may not be the best program out there, but has an impressive set of features; i would recommend trying the motion mixer, works wonders when used with motion capture! :P

Mmmhh, closeups...the holy grail If u manage to create a convincing human closeup, please let me know. We have tried it too, we fools!
I guess we will be able to get it just acceptable in 3 or 4 years...
If u wander the forums of every single renderer out there, u will find that a badlly made human ruins your 3d scene, which was excellent before that...
sooooo if u try and u succeed, let us know! And oh, dont try to use 3daxyz models in closeups, they dont look good at all... Maybe if u touch them up with zbrush, improve the textures, create 3d hair, improve the eyes and refine your mocaps, u will be able to fool a 4 years old

[DaftPunk]

So if we do close ups it would have to be of RPC or video-merged people?

[panthon]

Hi

I personally hate rpc´s, so for me is not an option, because they tend to look extremely fake, specially because of illumination issues.

We tried the video way too, using a special chroma set with right illumination, but you have to take into consideration multiple things. If u plan to make your people walk around a room for example, u will have to recreate the 3d room in the real set in order for the characters to avoid the obstacles.

The videocamera you are using can become an issue too. Don´t even think to use a dv camera to shoot, you will need a HDV or any similar device capable of 4:2:2 recording (or even 4:4:4) if u want to pull a good and clean chroma key from the shots. That´s it, very expensive way to get it, and u will have to be very skillfull at filmmaking and compositing to avoid the total crapness. Conclusion: It wasnt very productive, it was expensive and u had to hire models, arrange set sessions...And we are NOT a hollywood studio

Sooo, we actually avoid closeups, just waiting for the tecnology to catch up, but you still can create crowds...and even fights...lots of customers punching each other to buy that house....so sweet

I know im not helping a lot, but i have been thinking about it for a long time and i think we are getting closer to that goal but we are not already there

[percydaman]

lol...well the good news is that the typical arch vis customer is pretty easily impressed, regardless how much it pains you to use em. I've never had a customer complained that the people looked like crap. Even when I was crying and cursing that we had to add them.

[panthon]

Hi!

Some of our customers tend to be picky about characters hairstyle and clothing and they are increasingly demanding....More characters, more moves, we want children here and there, pregnant women...we are even thinking to add some dogs or stuff, hair and cloth simulation, water simulation for those naughty boys jumping into the pool...The possibilities are endless and very exciting, but money and time aren´t... There´s an argue here about how many characters u can add before viewer starts to not see any house at all and only watches the actions the people perform... We like to make it look cooooool but, i guess too cooooooool is baaaaaad. And your concept of coolness rarely coincides with the client´s one... unless u agree to make a bigger and shiny company logo...now, that´s cool man!

[andrius]

panthon-

Hey, I checked out the lowpolygon3d.com site and downloaded a .bip file and the free animate model in the t-pose. Applied it to the model and whola! I got a stumbling stoner on my screen. From a distance it looks good. I think the motion detracts the eye from the model. Anyways, is there an easy way to scale the whole model and biped up to match the scene, or do you always scale the scene to the scale of the human model??? I spent a couple hours on line trying to figure this out with no success....

[panthon]

is there an easy way to scale the whole model and biped up to match the scene, or do you always scale the scene to the scale of the human model??? I spent a couple hours on line trying to figure this out with no success....

Well, scaling a biped and a skinned character can be tricky and buggy. I have had bad experiencies related to this several times, when the mesh literaly explodes... However you can put the bip on a skeleton, check if everything is ok and then apply a point cache modifier to the mesh. Calculate the animation on the modifier and then u can delete your biped because the animation information is stored in the point cache modifier. Once u´ve done all this, u can merge this pointcached character into any scene and scale it down or up as needed without a hassle...

[andrius]

Panthon-

No dude, it's so easy! All you have to do is select the biped node, go to the motion menu, go the the submenu called biped, click on that little character guy called figure mode, then go to the structure rollout and at the bottom you will see a "height" parameter. Increase the size and that's all!!!!