Decent people?

[deflix]

Hi,

Im doing an animation of a shopping mall and need to populate with some animated people - problem is the client wants loads. I have the Marlin set but even with cloning its looking pretty spartan. Can anyone recommend another product (must be animated in some way and NOT rpc).

Manythanks

felix

[gilicom]

i know that lowpolygon3d sale low poly models animated with cs.
they look good but could be heavy if want loads of them

[Clifton Santiago]

If you can just use a simple 2d walk cycle, its not too hard to put down a green cloth and get a few people in the office to walk in front of it... Then cut out the background in a compositing program

[tricky]

Clifton Santiago: if only this was as easy as you suggest! (we'd all be doing it!)

[Clifton Santiago]

Yeah tricky, I realized that as I was writing it...

I did it though in grad school about 7 years ago, but it was for fairly low-quality walkthrough animations

[unknown]

i use 3d people and motion capture, you can get people from lowpolygon3d and there is another but i cant remember the name. get some motion capture at your local uni on the cheap, then rig and away you go. I have managed around 150 people in one shot. around 20 different people, a few texture alterations, and various motion capture, and bobs your uncle.

have also just done arabs the same way for middle east project (we had to build these specially). once its setup point cache all the motions and start building a library.

[3ddesign]

Clifton Santiago: if only this was as easy as you suggest! (we'd all be doing it!)

It is actually very simple, I do it all the time. Digitally capture the people in front of a blue or green screen. Export them as sequential TGAs or Tiffs. In PhotoShop, take one of the images and with the actions palette open and recording, use the select by color range tool to select all the background (use the addition dropper to get it all). Create a mask of the background. Stop actions recording. Now using batch, apply this action to the entire sequence, saving to a new directory with 32 bit options. Now load this sequence as a diffuse and transparancy map in Max and apply it to an appropriately sized and scaled polygon in the scene. Done this way the moving people cast shadows and reflections. I actually first used this technique way back in 1994 using Renderize. Been using it ever since.

Craig

[deflix]

thanks very much

I will take a look at this tecnique for a future project but in the meantime will have to do some clever cloning instead. Alternatively if some of you have some pre-made people they rekon are good enough perhaps we could talk about a price?

cheers

[arobbert]

Ah.... Renderize.... memories. That was the program that I learned on. It was actually a pretty good program compared to many of the other programs out at the time. It was windows based back when 3D Studio was still DOS. Drag and drop and everything, originally UNIX. Glad to hear that someone else used it.

[tricky]

It is actually very simple, I do it all the time. Digitally capture the people in front of a blue or green screen. Export them as sequential TGAs or Tiffs. In PhotoShop, take one of the images and with the actions palette open and recording, use the select by color range tool to select all the background (use the addition dropper to get it all). Create a mask of the background. Stop actions recording. Now using batch, apply this action to the entire sequence, saving to a new directory with 32 bit options. Now load this sequence as a diffuse and transparancy map in Max and apply it to an appropriately sized and scaled polygon in the scene. Done this way the moving people cast shadows and reflections. I actually first used this technique way back in 1994 using Renderize. Been using it ever since.

OK, maybe we are mixing up terms. When I say 'simple' I mean 'quick': i.e. when I am 3/4 of the way though an animation project, and I need to throw in some people ('cause the client wants them), I don't really want to dig out my XL1, go down the local fabric shop and by some evenly covered blue or green cloth, clear one of my office rooms and rig up lighting/cloth/camera, thus creating a 'capture studio', run around town like a nutter asking if people want to come and prance around in my office while I point a camera at them, film, capture, edit, combine, mask, key, edit, manipulate, colour correct, match perspective blah blah blah. By the time I have done this, my client will have had the animation produced by one of my competitors who has used off-the-shelf 'people products', and I'll be left with 20-odd yards of yucky coloured material, of no use to any bugger, and three irate students asking for a tenner!

Yes, the process is 'straightforward', but I think you'll agree, 'costly' in terms of time.

Rant over.

[jujubee]

In PhotoShop, take one of the images and with the actions palette open and recording, use the select by color range tool to select all the background (use the addition dropper to get it all). Create a mask of the background. Stop actions recording.

Yes simple but a bunch of work. You could also just import it a video segmet into AfterEffects and let their masking tool take care of it. Probably does a better job too. Neat way to put PS Macros to use...

[3ddesign]

In PhotoShop, take one of the images and with the actions palette open and recording, use the select by color range tool to select all the background (use the addition dropper to get it all). Create a mask of the background. Stop actions recording.

Yes simple but a bunch of work. You could also just import it a video segmet into AfterEffects and let their masking tool take care of it. Probably does a better job too. Neat way to put PS Macros to use...

No doubt a bunch of work. But once you get a good library of blue screen people it is so much easier (for me anyway) than using 3D people or RCP or other stuff since I already know pov, lens data, etc. The only down side is that I have always used union actors and/or have had models sign standard contracts which limit my ability to share with others (that keeps the cost reasonable). As for using aftereffects: I prefer using PhotoShop as I seem to get a better key. My actions also includes great color balance, blue halo removal and other useful settings that I also apply to my still images. IMHO PS is the single most useful program ever written.

Arobbert: I started my business on MegaModel and Renderize. The renders blew my competition away. Too bad Cadalyst help put it under. I got pretty close to the development team. They really had a great thing going and had ideas that were years ahead of 3D Studio.