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I am looking to make a crowd

super_joelsuper_joel Posts: 118
edited December 1969 in New Users

I am looking to make a crowd for a few renders of a sporting event. What is the most economical way to do this RAM-wise?
Can I just slide the mesh resolution lever down all the way on Genesis and create a ton of actors that are lo-rez?

Comments

  • IsazformsIsazforms Posts: 210
    edited December 1969

    Very dificult. With only 12 figures you spent a lot o memory...

  • kaotkblisskaotkbliss Posts: 2,914
    edited December 1969

    One suggestion that was made to me was you could create an empty scene, add a few people and pose them as you would want. Then render that. then go into your main scene and create a plane, then use the image of the posed people as the texture for the plane.

    You would also have to create an opacity map for the plane, which is simply make all the people, clothes and items all white and put it on a black background. Then in the opacity for the plane, add that black and white image.

  • super_joelsuper_joel Posts: 118
    edited December 1969

    I tried making the crowd in a separate scene and then merging that after I got the 'action' just right but was still limited to how many could be in the crowd.

  • VhardamisVhardamis Posts: 576
    edited December 1969

    you could try using Kaleidoscope to make reflections of a smaller crowd and then layer them into your scene:

    http://www.daz3d.com/kaleidoscope

    Since its a pattern and not actually reproducing every single character its a lot less resource heavy. I've been having a ball experimenting with this.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,590
    edited December 1969

    obj exports with covered body parts hidden (use Bryce convert maps option to get back in textured) use a lot less memory
    or can render billboards of figures on planes
    for animated scenes compositing with layers in a video editor your best option.
    you can pad it out with instances too

  • super_joelsuper_joel Posts: 118
    edited December 1969

    I had a little luck with rendering a crowd section and texturing a plane with that image (along with the B&W in opacity). But unfortunately they are rather ghostly. They appeared solid at first but when positioned with something behind them (a building, actor, or instance of themselves) whatever object was behind them showed through.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,768
    edited December 1969

    Try Instancing the characters and their clothes - if you arrange them right you may be able to get away with that for the more ordinary poses and clothes, leaving you a bit more flexibility for other more individual figures. Still, you aren't going to be able to get a plausible-looking crowd of thousands, or even hundreds, that way - layers and billboards (renders pasted onto a plane) are going to be unavoidable.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,768
    edited December 1969

    super_joel said:
    I had a little luck with rendering a crowd section and texturing a plane with that image (along with the B&W in opacity). But unfortunately they are rather ghostly. They appeared solid at first but when positioned with something behind them (a building, actor, or instance of themselves) whatever object was behind them showed through.

    That suggests that the opacity map wasn't solid white for the figures.

  • super_joelsuper_joel Posts: 118
    edited December 1969

    It wasn't solid white. I grabbed each item/object/actor and diffused them white. (and threw out the textures.)
    The 'ghost' billboard is still a render hog in that the render time is massively long now with just a billboard of five figures. Is that due to the 'ghosting'?

  • super_joelsuper_joel Posts: 118
    edited March 2015

    Also, instancing seems to be very tricky. I can either instance an actor, or his clothes. But never both. Even when I have the whole set highlighted.

    Post edited by super_joel on
  • scorpioscorpio Posts: 8,481
    edited December 1969

    Parent the clothing to the figure or parent everything to a null and instance that.

  • super_joelsuper_joel Posts: 118
    edited December 1969

    scorpio64dragon said:
    Parent the clothing to the figure or parent everything to a null and instance that.

    That worked.

    Thanks guys ! :)

  • mark128mark128 Posts: 1,029
    edited December 1969

    I have used the Lorenzo and Loretta Bundle combined with instancing to create crowd scenes.

    I have 16GB RAM machine and I can usually get around 12 character maximum in scene (if they are not HD). Using the Lorez characters I could easily get ~65 in a scene. Using the 65 characters and making instances of them in groups of 3-4, I was able to create a crowd with a couple hundred people. I did render this crowd separately from the main characters in the scene and then merge the images.

    The Lorez characters do not look good if you render closeups of them, but they are great for a crowd scene from a distance. You can pose them individually. The Lorez characters come with a limited clothing, and I don't think you can use other clothing on them. A lot of the clothing is just alternate skin textures. There are few clothing items for the Lorez characters on ShareCG. The Lorez characters come with a small set of poses. You can of course manually pose them and I found that v4/m4 pose presets work on them, although you need to make some adjustments.

  • super_joelsuper_joel Posts: 118
    edited December 1969

    I was looking at those but this is the World Series 3150 AD so I wanted a crowd of not-moderns. I was able to get around 50 or so using instances and then billboarded them onto planes to make it look like a deep crowd in the ballpark.

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