adding people to interiors-chairs, stairs

[Ernest Burden III]

Are we having fun yet?

 

I still see no easy solution to adding realistic figures to interiors, when they must sit properly in chairs, on bar stools, walk up stairs, lean over railings, etc. Photos work if you have the right pose, but you will spend just as much time in Photoshop cutting them out as these paintings have taken me. I cannot show the renderings yet, but I can show the figures...

 

 

These will work well with my soft, NPR renderings. But peopling ten renderings, what a nightmare of work and expense, especially when the pictures are better without them. But the client insisted and I had agreed, so I had to comply, even though adding these is costing me thousands of dollars of the fee for nothing. But I'm not mad, no, no, unh, uh. Nope. It's fun, really...

[Chad Warner]

So you hand painted all of those people? Yikes!!

[Gander0]

Wow.... I see what you mean, that looks like a nightmare amount of work! How about setting up a blue screen and getting your colleagues to pose? With good lighting etc. you should be able to get perfect results for any environment.

[Ernest Burden III]

How about setting up a blue screen and getting your colleagues to pose?

In dozens of poses, in specific height chairs plus bar stools plus walking plus stairs plus elevated on balconies? Then, even with bluescreen cuts, it would still require Photoshop cutting to the exact furniture and around columns, behind railings etc, which I still have to do with these.

 

I did not paint these myself, I paid another illustrator to do them. He does beautiful figures, mine aren't as good. But I did go over each one in Photoshop to make 'em just the way I wanted, and that took time.

 

But the point remains--is there any easier way to do this? I don't think there is. If you can get away with stylized figures then they can be done with models (I do that sometimes). If there only needs to be a few important figures photos are OK, with the cutting, matting. People standing around are simple, its this chairs bit that ruins my day (week).

 

I think this remains the largest un-resolved issue in digital architectural rendering. I don't think there is 'one' answer, either. Anyway, thanks, all for taking a look!

[Gander0]

Yeah I see what you mean, it should still be possible to create a image bank which everyone could add to. I remember black and white photo catalogues from an old college that had stacks of images of actors variously dressed and in every pose imaginable. These proved very valuable at the time for my product and furniture design hand renderings.

 

This of course still doesn't resolve the infinite amount of lighting possibilties.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

ernest...

i remeber your friends illustrations from a bar scene you did a several months ago. nice works, and they blended perfectly with your style. i assume your friend is working with traditional mediums and you are scanning the work in, then cutting them out in photoshop. does your friend work digitally? maybe he could 'paint' them in painter. that way you would already have the transparency channel. it would speed up your process, and possibly open up a market for your friend.

 

back to traaditional painting....

i am not sure if this technology exists or not, but what if your friend painted painted on a transparency. is there a scanning process where this could be scanned in, and recognize the transparent areas verse the solid areas. maybe there is a special scanner that can tell when it is reading the panel on the lid, rather than an image. ....or maybe your friend paints on a transparency, and you can just drop a color board behind the image before you scan it in. this would allow you to 'blue' screen (or green, or whatever color is not in the illustrated people). you still probably wouldn't get a clean mask, but with your rendering style, you may be able to get away with it.