Daz Background folks & blank dolls. Question.

[Syploore]

Hey, everybody. The question is in two parts.

1: Is there an asset\ group of assets for daz3d that allow to create random people for background, with random clothes and minimal textures and subd level? For example, to arrange people on the street so they don't look empty, but without spending 30 minutes to create each individual backdrop character?

2: Or, would it be suitable and immersion friendly to add empty puppets to the background, with no textures at all, with subd0 that would just stand in the back? (I've attached an example to the post) with posing, of course.

I have scenes where logically a lot of people should be positioned, but I don't want to waste a lot of GPU memory\time creating such a scene. Very much asking for advice.

Spoiler: example doll

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

 

[MissFortune]

It very much depends on what your hardware is capable of. If you're on a 4090, you'll probably be able to squeeze several (if not more) G3 figures into the background along with your focal figures. Probably quite a lot if you use G2 or older with some DoF to hide the older textures.

 

[crabsinthekitchen]

You must be registered to see the links

(and other now-crowd billboards)
or if you realize that you've seen them way too often and want to make one yourself

You must be registered to see the links

 

[shabadu]

You must be registered to see the links

(and other now-crowd billboards)
or if you realize that you've seen them way too often and want to make one yourself

You must be registered to see the links

I'll echo crabsinthekitchen's sentiment and say that using billboards if probably your best bet. Just in case you're unfamiliar, a billboard is essentially just a transparent PNG of a pre-rendered character. They benefit from having the same kind of detail as your main characters, but since it's just an image on a flat plane then the rendering and processing costs are practically nothing. There's a ton of different ones available already made, and creating your own is pretty simple.

On top of that, you can apply this principle to pretty much any background detail. A bunch of cars on a busy street? Pre-render them. Walking through a dense forrest with a ton of trees and foliage? Pre-render any plant that's more than 15m from the camera. A big ominous space ship hovering over the city? Pre-render it.

Not everything will benefit from this approach, obviously, but in the long run it will most likely save you a bunch of render time. As well, doing this can sort of build up your own personal library of assets.

 

[TessaXYZ]

Billboards are a last resort for me, personally. The shadows are obviously wrong, both within the image and those they cast on the scene. Only really usable when they are really far away from the camera. I used them in a beach scene I did, and I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to post-process the shadow issues out of my renders. I was on a 3070 at the time, so I thought I had to do it that way, but I should've just taken the time to spot render actual background characters in.

It very much depends on what your hardware is capable of. If you're on a 4090, you'll probably be able to squeeze several (if not more) G3 figures into the background along with your focal figures. Probably quite a lot if you use G2 or older with some DoF to hide the older textures.

I'm currently working on a club scene with ~250 people. Test rendered 42 G2 characters with complicated lighting without issue on my 3090. Could probably do more, I just haven't tried more than that. Since they're background characters, I made sure to have them share a handful of skin textures and recolored simple outfits, and then DOF them into submission.

 

[MissFortune]

I'm currently working on a club scene with ~250 people. Test rendered 42 G2 characters with complicated lighting without issue on my 3090. Could probably do more, I just haven't tried more than that. Since they're background characters, I made sure to have them share a handful of skin textures and recolored simple outfits, and then DOF them into submission.

Well, that answers that, then. That's gotta take forever to load, though, no?

 

[Syploore]

Thank you all for your help and your responses. I didn't know billboards existed, now I do. I should have done my research more thoroughly. I will most likely be using them.

 

[osanaiko]

These older official daz products from the Poser era kind of fit the bill:

You must be registered to see the links

You must be registered to see the links

You must be registered to see the links

I grabbed loretta and lorenzo from some pirate site ages ago. haven't used either of them.

You can still use Poser assets in modern Daz. Clothing etc options are limited, but in the distant fuzzy background, does it matter?

 

[TessaXYZ]

Well, that answers that, then. That's gotta take forever to load, though, no?

It's certainly not quick.