Buyer's Guide - Rooms

Inkubo

When you consider purchasing rooms to use as sets for your scenes, pay attention to how much foreshortening or lens distortion you see in the promo images. If the perspective is much different from what you see when you look around in whatever room you're in now, that's an indication the person who produced the promo images has used camera settings to make the rooms appear bigger than they really are.

Because these items are digital, there's no cost I know of to make sets generously roomy, but some producers make rooms not much bigger than the major piece of furniture in the room, then use "camera tricks" to create spacious-looking promo images.

I bought a bedroom set that looked in the promos to be from a wealthy person's house, with room to add a desk or exercise equipment or a small sitting area and TV; but what I got was truly not much bigger than the bed. A huge disappointment, and I really can't imagine why creators would be stingy with floor space.

Anyway, now before buying any set, I look closely at the perspective in the photographs, and I don't buy anything that looks like the promos may misrepresent its actual size. Caveat emptor.

Richard Haseltine

You can also look at the size of any people or furniture in the room - which is the relevant point. You can easily use the same camera tricks (Iray Section Plane) in Iray, or of course the walls may be separate bones so that they can be hidden. Hiding the wall closest to the camera is how films and televison handle interiors.

tj_1ca9500b

I often increase the x and z scales of room models, and in a fair number of cases the y axis as well, because I like more roomy rooms.  I find that in a few cases I also have to scale up pieces of furniture, because it ends up being too small for my 'typically sized' Daz characters...

These days, I look for 'modularity' for the various setpieces, i.e. how easily I can attach them to another room product that I may have.  I'm also fa fan of construction kits.  At this point, the room product needs to have some unique features that make it more attractive.  I have lots of furniture at this point, so that's less of a selling point, but the quanitity and quality and uniqueness of the furniture pieces may still be selling points to me.