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Thanks Andy for the examples. They definitely show what should be avoided ... From our point of view people are (as mentioned) to bring scale as well as bring some life into the scenes. Specially when it comes to outdoor scenes people will make the look much less computer generated. Obviously the images used to populate the scene should be of a decent quality. That is technical and content wise. The combination of those two is the reason why it is not the easiest task to generate good cutout people. Though having good people to place is only part of the picture, it takes a some amount of training or skill to place them well in images. The most basic fact to take into consideration probably is to not place people with hard direct lighting into shadow areas or inside of buildings (and vice versa with soft global illuminated people). We actually tagged all of our images accordingly to make the selection process much faster (having to judge only from the cutout image weather it is indoor or outdoor actually is sometimes not the easiest task). Of course we would love to get any feedback how to improve our images further - please be welcome to contact me about anything.. Last 2 parts: Legally: every country has it own rules, but basically you may not use anyone for a non personal project (who might be recognized) without his agreement . this however does not apply to people of public interest (like actors, politicians..), as long as you do not use them in a denouncing way. Tutorials: do you guys feel like some tutorials on how to place people in scenes would be helpful? We're thinking of producing some, though haven't seen a big demand yet. Cheers, Felix

i'd love to see those examples - perhaps you could post some urls? from my point of view people are used to demonstrate the scale and give the scene some sort of charm or 'flair'. in any case, placing people is an art by itself .) cheers, felix

we know about the problem with 3d people and keep iterating different methods to produces 3d people who fit our quality standard. though at the moment we can't offer any of those at a reasonable price as the production is simply to extensive. however it might change .. but i'd be interested in your needs, what should we try to focus on when working on this subject? thanks a lot, and with best regards felix

motion blur makes the cutout process much harder - and to be honest, it is just as easy to add it as a post effect (actually for shooting purposes, it is harder to get all images without any motion or depth of field blur). we probably would never match the desired effect in our shoot. though adding the effect in Photoshop takes only few clicks and gives you complete control of the outcome. in addition you wouldn't be able to have all this freedom an already blurred images. the same actually applies to field of depth. in any case, it all comes down to your personal favor of clothes, poses, faces and co. glad you got some different material to choose from cheers, felix

indeed the outdoor / indoor situation is not an easy one, though we can offer at least some help here. all our images are tagged and searchable for various stuff including the lighting situation. unfortunately the lighting tag is not explaining itself very well (we will change this at some point). if you are looking for images suitable for indoor setups try filtering by the tag shadow->full the results should be usable for indoor situations without much of a hassle. of course the tags/keywords are searchable on our webpage as well. as for the chef's we can not supply those at the moment, but we got a very nice collection of business people including ones for indoor use. --- how to use 2d entourage? well it comes down to your personal preferences. personally i favor a graphical approach, trying to distort the images a little bit, making them a optical appealing addition to the image. after all the goal of entourage people normally is a) implement a sense of scale and more important b) giving the scene some life we're doing all this in post, but you can easily throw in the images into your host application and use them as simple plates/sprites. (if using in a 3d app, a very fast way to get better shadows is to extrude the persons contour for a shadow throwing object) well enough for now cheers felix p.s.: we will release a tutorial on how to use the image tags to maximize your workflow as well, explaining this feature even more.

hi david, could you elaborate your needs bit more? perhaps we are able to enhance upcoming bundles to better suite your needs. thanks alot and best regards felix

hi bvi, thanks for letting us know. we will try to produce more specific race bundles for the next release. in any case we got about 29 'African' classified images online at the moment. not much but maybe they'r able to help out until more are available. thanks again and with best regards felix

hi, as it is a direct question regarding our products i'll try to bring some light into the subject. as wacky pointed out, our images all are high resolution and cut out without any flaw. as you probably know, pushing the quality to the top makes the production a lot more expensive than settling with some 'halos', unclean borders or hard cut hair. the same applies to the resolution, increase the resolution and your cutout process will be more complex. in addition we believe that the content of our images is state of the art as well. all images being sold are hand picked on pose, clothes and lighting. it all comes down to your needs. our goal is to enable you to throw any of our images into any scene without having to worry about the cutout quality. last but not least all our images are completely tagged. to be honest this won't help you much with small libraries, but if you have a bigger library it will seriously speed up your production process. you simply can filter all your images by keywords, effectively giving you the power to say 'show me all images with 2 people who are moving away from me. being in the shadow'. if you are producing high quality arch viz, alone the quality of the content and cutout will save you hours. the keywords even have the ability to save you much more time. the question is, if you need this kind of quality and/or if you require the ability to rely on all the images you purchased being ready to use out of the box without any compromise. if we can be of any more help please don't hesitate. best regards felix

thanks for the images. though you don't have to worry about poses - we're ourselfs doing arch vis on a regular basis and know pretty well what kind of images work and which don't. im just wondering: the people shown on those image seem to classify as doctors or nurses, or basically beeing described as 'hostpital'. which is kind of different than people seen in a 'laboratoy'. anyhow, we won't be able to produce and release a bundle within a timeframe for your project - unfortunately :/ only thing we can offer right from the stand, is to 'cut out' sample images you're able to find on the internet / stock libraries. (actually we're thinking to offer this as a service - i think we got quite good with removing backgrounds ) cheers, felix

as mentioned earlier online backup has its big problems. it probably will be the way to go, but i doubt it's already there. i'd currently suggest 2 solutions, which won't blow a budget. 1. use a mirrored external harddrive (or a bigger nas / raid system). of course it is not failsafe, but you'll get a decent sized harddrive for a good price with at least some redundancy. 2. use some service like dropbox or microsoft mesh. you obviously can argue about the safety here - though its handy, as you work locally and got automated backups without having to worry about it anytime. i persoanlly have a mirrored iomega drive at home and am quite satisfied. it actually is the second, had one some years earlier before which apparently 'died'. i can't really tell, i just know that at some point a light indicated drive problems. at that point i simply got a new one and copied the data. having 2 mirrored hard drive's in there, it all went without any problems. before i fogert, mozy.com is an alternative - i think they're a division of emc or iomega. cheers felix

i've seen it several times now, finally getting the chance to say it: very good work! ok to be fair, we're used to see good work done by you .) anyhow, for the fog: i'm absolutely fine with it. and i do think that the fog really gives this subtle artistic feeling to these images. its a personal taste, but i prefer these realistic images with having at some point a notch that tells 'hey, i'm art'. just my 2 cents .. cheers, felix

i can only give some basic tips: - take 2d cutouts which have roughly the same lighting as your scene. most important if you have direkt lighting [hard shadows] or not on your people and in your scene (our images hold some tagged keywords to make this easier) the absolute exact lighting is not that important, the human eye won't notice if its a bit off. and of course, don't forget to flip the image if needed .) - render out some dummies. we always place 3d dummies in scenes at points of interest (meaning where later 2d cutouts are put in). it makes it much easier to get the scale right and the shadow direction - last but not least, adjust the cutouts in photoshop (or after effects). you need to put some adjustment layers on top of them, though which depends on every image. hope this helped a bit .. cheers, felix

hi, thanks for taking a look at our library, but i can only agree, we do not have any 'lab' people as for the moment. i personally quite like the idea, and added it as a bundle idea to our list. perhaps we are able to get some authentic shots somewhere. are you interested in a special kind of lab? with best regards felix

i do not know the system got3d is using, nor how you paid; but i can make some assumptions knowing our system. we do process all payments using paypal. in some rare occasions, paypal flags a payment as to be verified. this means, that someone at paypal needs to take a look at the order, and verify its legity. if this happens, the payment needs ~1 day to get completed. in any case, if i recall it right, got3d sponsored the vizdepot contest as well, meaning that some sort of 'activity' exists. just contact them and im sure you'll get an answer soon. we're normally trying to answer all requests within hours, though there always might be something that's delaying.. don't worry