How to make outdoor sets outdoorsy

christopher-2607496

I've spent about the last week banging my head on this, I thought I'd ask for help here.

I'm trying to come up with a general way to make outdoor sets look properly outdoors and not like they're floating in space. Some sets are as easy as loading up a skydome and pushing the render button, like this fantastic set of forests. Others, such as Oremus, I've found success doing the background separately in Bryce and the composting the renders so long as I'm very careful that any part of the scene that should logically join the set to the background is never visible.

3 Raven Court looks great but its lot is just a square that extends about 3 meters beyond the fence and there's almost no useful angles where that fact isn't clearly visible. I tried putting some trees, rocks, and bushes around the edge - this concealed the sharp edge but it's still obvious there's nothing behind them. I tried embedding the set in a larger scene but the ground is uneven and none of the yard props match up properly, plus there's tons of poke-through in various places that will take ages to clean up.

I'm just not sure what I should be doing. Thanks for any tips!

Cayman Studios

You could try using some of Flipmode's "Easy Environment" landscapes, which are designed to solve such a dilemma. And FirstBastion has some good outdoor products.

Beyond that you need a firm idea in your mind what the extra outdoor bits are that you want in your picture, and then just work out a way of realising it. You could use walls with trees poking up behind to give a sense of an "unseen" outdoors, or you could even create your own very large plane primitive in DAZ itself and use a grass shader on it.

Deke

I also wondered about this. I bought a great arctic outpost set…can't recall the name…and the item has a great sort of arctic hills as a background in the marketing images. This isn't part of the item, however, and I'm still figuring out how to create that sort of backdrop. In general, the question is how to add distant elements in an economical mannter, whether it's a landscape or a city.

kaotkbliss

I usually just create a primitive plane and in the diffuse setting, add an image I want as the background. I then scale the size of the plane (keeping the image in perspective) so that it reaches just past camera view. Make sure to turn off "accept shadows" so that things like foreground bushes, people trees, etc. don't cast shadows onto your plane.

alexhcowley

Here's how I solve the problem with sets like 3 Raven Court. I use the sky dome and seascape from this set:

http://www.daz3d.com/sea-scapes

If I was using the Raven Court set, I would then surround it with a low wall, built from cube primitives and textured using a rock or stone shader such as this:

http://www.daz3d.com/rock-shader-for-daz-studio

It's not clever or subtle but it works. Incidentally, the Sea Scapes set is $1.99 if you are a Platinum Club member, a wee bit more (I assume) if you are with PC+.

Cheers,

Alex.

cecilia.robinson

All those doubts can be fixed with a simple background put as a layer under the render.

sriesch

Any chance you have an example of a scene you are trying to render with the problems showing? I know you are looking for a general solution, however specific examples of issues, with suggestions of how to resolve them, might provide ideas that you could then use in a more general way after that.

When I'm creating 2D renders, I always try to keep an eye out for flaws that might be easily hidden. This approach wouldn't work if you wanted to create a scene to sell, or if you did animation or rendered from multiple angles, but if there's only a single camera angle used, cheating is easy. Instead of trying to match the center ground to ground to the sides and extending to the horizon, build it in layers. create a terrain (you have Bryce available) or a plane or just use a rock and apply the same ground surface, if possible, to it. Put a low wall or fence or hill or row of bushes or a curb or something over the seam between each object. Don't try to run the foreground seamlessly into the background, that would be very hard. You could put a slight hill in the foreground that would obscure where it merges into the building's yard, then make the background lower yet, so it's physically impossible to see that none of them connect. If something puts a shadow where it's not supposed to be, stick a flower or a bush or a mailbox or a bird or something in the foreground to hide it.