cutout people and distance perspective and more...

[SgWRX]

so i have a bunch of individual cutout billboard type people. i've been recently grabbing some nice ones where there are crowds of people standing.

 

in those crowds there's often perspective such that people further away in the crowds are "floating" compared to people standing near the camera.

 

just wondering what types of approaches others are taking when dealing with that?

 

for example:

 

in 3ds max:

1. cut the plane geometry where possible and move those people down to "ground" level

2. leave it as is since the billboard might be so far away and not noticable

 

in photoshop:

1. leave as is and add drop shadows, as it doesn't really matter

 

i tend to find the scale of people in the modeling program to be better overall than trying to scale people in photoshop.

 

also erasing parts of an image that are occluded by objects in the render (example someone standing behind a table and chairs) takes time.

 

thoughts?

 

thanks!

[thomascoote]

so i have a bunch of individual cutout billboard type people. i've been recently grabbing some nice ones where there are crowds of people standing.

 

in those crowds there's often perspective such that people further away in the crowds are "floating" compared to people standing near the camera.

 

just wondering what types of approaches others are taking when dealing with that?

 

for example:

 

in 3ds max:

1. cut the plane geometry where possible and move those people down to "ground" level

2. leave it as is since the billboard might be so far away and not noticable

 

in photoshop:

1. leave as is and add drop shadows, as it doesn't really matter

 

i tend to find the scale of people in the modeling program to be better overall than trying to scale people in photoshop.

 

also erasing parts of an image that are occluded by objects in the render (example someone standing behind a table and chairs) takes time.

 

thoughts?

 

thanks!

 

Maybe I'm not understanding correctly, but can't you use the perspective tool in Photoshop? Could you post an example?

[SgWRX]

 

i guess i'm just running into situations where i can't really do anything to reduce the time it takes to make the people "look right". like everything else, there's give-and-take.

 

the approaches i see are:

 

1. create billboards in 3ds max scene of individuals and place them about

2. if using multiple people on one billboard, you run into problems where people are "floating" because of the camera angle to get the billboard image, ie, one standing close to the camera and one a little further away

3. get 3d people, but that's often at the expense of having many many polys in your scene

4. add people in photoshop, but that comes with a time cost by having to erase people that are partially occluded- although i suppose i could render out a pass of objects that are going to be "in front of" people i add, then put those objects on a top layer

5. i've looked at the archvision 2d people photoshop plugin, it seems nice, but again i run into issues where it'll take time to paste them in properly...

 

often my bosses would like to see as many people as possible scattered throughout a scene, yet i don't have time to do it properly.

 

anyway, attached is a sample of what i mean by the perspective not matching up in the scene due to the bitmap that contains the group of people...

 

thanks,

[thomascoote]

Ahh I see now. In this case all I'd do is either cut them up into individuals the best I can and discard the rest, then arrange them as needed in the scene (Although this is time consuming and tedious) or use 3D people, as proxy objects. Doesn't impact scene navigation having them as proxies but can hit RAM hard at render time.

 

Sorry I can't be of more help, hopefully someone else will have a good solution!

[SgWRX]

here's another example. so i trimmed out the girls leg by the flower pot and the plant etc.. this is an old render, but something i had to do quickly for "preview" or "concept" because of deadline and so many changes, i used the white billboard people for scale from revit ugh!

[SgWRX]

thanks. yeah i think i have most approaches covered, but they have their good and bad in terms of time it takes to setup and look convincing. i do really like the photographic people. speaking of which i've been looking at 3d scanned people - scanned with photographs and a mesh created. those tend to be high poly but very realistic!

[Francisco Penaloza]

There are many ways to skin that cat but as mentioned everything will depend of how much time you have or what type of visualization you are doing.

My typical workflow is doing the people in Photoshop. I create materials and object mats of my scene and then place simple boxed as references for scale, then place the people as need it in Photoshop and use the materials and object mat to cut out as need it.

Sometimes we also use 3D people, this give us more flexibility but since our library is limited is not a overall solution.

 

Placing 2D people on a 3D environment is a good option too but you should not use a group of people on a 3D environment, you are faking depth so if it is already baked in your beauty pass there is no way to fix them later. If you want to use crowd of people, place them in photoshop, there you could fudge it until they look correct. but they are tricky to work any ways because camera perspective.

 

Placing people is a time consuming indeed but then you need to talk with your Boss/Client to set some basic expectations, I know Architect love crowds of people, but more people won't make the building look better

 

You noticed the last image that you use as example the lady with the kids are out of scale right?

[SgWRX]

yes they are out of scale! just to illustrate. but that's like my point too, damn, re-scale, then recreate the layer mask grrr... it's so funny you say that more people won't make the building look better! i have been thinking that (not just people either) over the last several months... many is the time that i don't do renders like what i see on this website because i don't have any "detail".

 

i have a photography background, and i've maybe done 2 renders that look like photographs of buildings. closeups, unique lighting, colors, contrast, reflectivity of glass, various circumstances prevent me from trying to do an artistic render. well, i try sometimes, but lots of time it just doesn't work out. usually when i have down-time in between projects i'll play with previous renders and try to make them better.

[SgWRX]

francisco, that's an excellent idea - place a small thin box in the scene where i want people, then use that to scale the 2d photoshop layer. it could also help with shadow directions...

[SgWRX]

here's a sample of 3d scanned (photographed) people. the one on the left is 30k polys or 60k poly versions. the one on the right is fully rigged and is 12k polys.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Well I also have a photography background, and where I work I also assist when we photograph finished project, so I try to keep a consistency between how many people we use when photogrpah.

Regarding placing people in Photoshop there are various techniques to use, I don't see much problem placing them and scale them, but fixing the lighting and matching colors. But once you have a workflow it usually go pretty fast.

 

For instance, I place the people as need it everything in a folder, then using mask and cut what's needs to be cut, then I apply a overall dessaturation to everything inside that folder, I paint light and darks to fit them in to the scene and then place the shadows.

 

Here is an sample of an old rendering a few years back and the final photograph of it. we actually used less people in the photograph compared to the rendering, and usually that's the case. I don't know why Architect get so closed mind when asking for crowds of people while rendering.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bhvb3jhwlgfxsm4/2308007000_N24_hmchigh.jpg?dl=0

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/knodl53oizz3ts7/2308007000_N37_hmchigh.jpg?dl=0

[SgWRX]

see, that's beautiful, just a few people here and there... the building looks fantastic!

 

oh well. all i can do is try to steer towards

[Francisco Penaloza]

Well that when I win the conversation, other time I have something like this, then I just close my eyes and place as many people I can but still not as many as they had on their sketchup model

 

My point is there is not a magical solution really, 3D Max also has populate that is very useful when shots are far away. but when close up we just need to bite the bullet i guess ;P