Diversity in people for renderings

[Scott Schroeder]

This topic comes up from time to time, though lately I've had a string of projects hit the same issue. How do you deal with telling a client or project architect that we're limited by the reality of what is available for us to purchase? Many of our upcoming rec centers are located in towns that have real life racial tension, so I understand where the client's request are coming from. I just don't know how to word a response.

 

We don't do your average commercial or residential architecture, we're doing sports architecture. So already we have a hard time sourcing people, let alone enough to fill a 10,000 seat arena for an animation. Then to have to find racially diverse people who look like they are attending a Velvetelvis University game in our school colors (mauve/chartreuse) becomes almost an invisible needle in a stack of invisible needles request.

 

You have the limitations from 3d scanned people and what is currently available on the market. AXYZ has probably the most diverse collection, but I can't put a guy with a bicycle in an arena or have a girl with shopping bags in the upper club level.

 

How do we discuss this topic with people who are not familiar with the lengths we go to just put people in the image, let alone have to meet specific diversity requirements? We had a request to have 10 children, aged 8-10, with a good racial mix of white, african american, latio children playing basketball, but the teams could not be racially off balanced. If one team had 2 white kids, the other team needed 2 white kids and so on. My only counter offer to that was to just remove all people from the rendering and be done with it because short of shooting custom green screen kids ourselves, we can't meet that request.

 

Oddly enough, I've never faced this issue from the public side. This only is constantly brought up by the client or another architect. The public ends up just being wowed by the new space they are getting and they almost never think about things like this.

[Devin Johnston]

I've had a few projects come up lately where my typical library of people wasn't adequate, thankfully I've been able to find what I needed but I understand how difficult it can be. If I were in your situation and there wasn't any content available I'd just tell the client the reality of the situation. You could check around and see what it would cost to have custom people models created that meet their needs and give them that information. Alternatively you could use substitutes like silhouettes which are race neutral but may not help in the realism department.

[nikanikitina]

If I were in your situation and there wasn't any content available I'd just tell the client the reality of the situation. You could check around and see what it would cost to have custom people models created that meet their needs and give them that information.

 

 

This certainly does the deed. Let a client know there isn't currently a product on the market that you can purchase to fulfill this task. Produce a quote for a custom shoot. Seeing the additional quote is usually enough for needs to quickly change. If they go with it, all the better. Charge yourself the extra time to then shoot for your own library for use in the future.

[innerdream]

My only counter offer to that was to just remove all people from the rendering and be done with it because short of shooting custom green screen kids ourselves, we can't meet that request.

 

This. Too bad Mr. Client, pay us to meet your unreasonable demand or forget it.

[Ernest Burden III]

...My only counter offer to that was to just remove all people from the rendering and be done with it...

 

That's my usual route. The fact is, people focus in on people in renderings like nobody's business. It's natural, and you have to manage it. No one can tell if you showed that 7'9" door as 8'0", but the eyes of the cashier are looking at the customers shoulder instead of her face, and 'something's wrong with the people'. That doesn't happen in an empty space.

 

Perhaps we should see what we do as illustrating people using architecture instead of the other way around. How we show people is critical. Saying to a client that we cannot figure it out with available tools is not a very good approach. If there is a need for 2D people beyond what's available, MAKE it. It's a cost of doing business.

 

Here is the list of issues:

Clothing

Activity

Age/gender

Ethnicity

Handicaps

 

Except for very close-up people, race is a matter of coloring--skin and hair color. that is not hard to address in Photoshop. More important is how figures are dressed and what they are doing, when it comes to telling a story within renderings.

 

I am working on creating some new 2D figures from 3D models by putting them on a turntable and rendering out rotations as layered Multipass Photoshop files, with flat overall lighting and a few stronger lights from left/right/back as separate layers with selection masks for skin and clothing. The files render with an alpha mask. This is my poor-man's greenscreen hired model shoot.

 

What I usually do is draw figures in by hand, either on a printout of my layout or using a tablet. That results in a nice drawing with all figures positioned where I want them and perfectly posed. Great! Now, just find 2D photo-ish people to match. Oh, shoot, not so easy. I can lose an entire day finding ones that are sorta right.

 

There are never enough 2D or 3D figures, it seems.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Well many clients have this idea of, since you are working in computers you can do anything. no matter how crazy.

All our clients 'demand' people diversity, we do schools and hospitals and public buildings so many times we also require some ages or gender majority, and then other we need more diversity. it is always a pain.

Here in this mere forum each time a new 3D seller showed up theirs models look cool, but they are all European looking. so it is hard to fit them with our population. All what I do is if I am using 2D people I try to put the diversity in the foreground, and in the background I put whatever I have. For instance, by default most libraries are white Caucasians. so I place my African Americans, Latino and Asians up front. then your mind believe the other people in the back varied.

 

During animations we stipulate that if they want crowds they will be silhouettes or plain color shaded. because of 'technical issues' zombie looking 3d people and lack of diversity. Straight forward. we also put the cost of green screening if they want that route. Most of the clients understand this.

 

As you mentioned, when they see the building and surrounding, people take a second or third place in focal point.

 

I did tried to setup my 3D scanning business time ago, but I could not found it really. I believe if anybody do it here in USA, could reach more market. I live in California, we have every race of the planet here. but I do understand why this production are more feasible to develop in Europe, it is 'cheaper'

 

One of the thing it been helping me is that our company also do Photo shoots of build projects. I use the same models that we hire for the Photo shoot, I just crop them out and use in our renderings. Or sometimes I take extra photos of them. Other than that in very specific case we hire for green screen.

 

But again it is a constant struggle for sure.

[John Dollus]

Get a quote from an agency for a day shoot given the demographics and pass that on to the client with the usual 20% consultant markup along with a revised schedule to accommodate the request.

 

To claim inability to perform the task because you can't buy it off the shelf only further cements the impression that this career requires no specialized training or knowledge.

 

Incidentally, I find it ironic that architects consistently demand such specific entourage in their renderings while nearly all of the coffee table books they publish are completely devoid of people. Why don't architectural photographers have to deal with this?

[Francisco Penaloza]

Incidentally, I find it ironic that architects consistently demand such specific entourage in their renderings while nearly all of the coffee table books they publish are completely devoid of people. Why don't architectural photographers have to deal with this?

Because when the design is great, you don't need to cover it with people or landscaping

Architectural photographer also have to deal with similar problems, but most of the published images are not the one with crows of people, maybe a single model that all, those are the sexy images. While the bread and butter project get jacked up with millions on peoples, popping graphics, energy, excitement and everything else that designers use to express what the building can't

[innerdream]

Because when the design is great, you don't need to cover it with people or landscaping

Architectural photographer also have to deal with similar problems, but most of the published images are not the one with crows of people, maybe a single model that all, those are the sexy images. While the bread and butter project get jacked up with millions on peoples, popping graphics, energy, excitement and everything else that designers use to express what the building can't

 

This.

[Scott Schroeder]

Get a quote from an agency for a day shoot given the demographics and pass that on to the client with the usual 20% consultant markup along with a revised schedule to accommodate the request.

 

To claim inability to perform the task because you can't buy it off the shelf only further cements the impression that this career requires no specialized training or knowledge.

 

Incidentally, I find it ironic that architects consistently demand such specific entourage in their renderings while nearly all of the coffee table books they publish are completely devoid of people. Why don't architectural photographers have to deal with this?

 

Yea for some office lobby, sure this holds true. Talk to me once you've filled an arena full of custom green screen shot, animated people for an animation fly though.

 

I'll get back to banging away on my keyboard with my mouse and wondering how to get whiteout off my screen now.

[Nic H]

Get a quote from an agency for a day shoot given the demographics and pass that on to the client with the usual 20% consultant markup along with a revised schedule to accommodate the request.

 

To claim inability to perform the task because you can't buy it off the shelf only further cements the impression that this career requires no specialized training or knowledge.

 

Incidentally, I find it ironic that architects consistently demand such specific entourage in their renderings while nearly all of the coffee table books they publish are completely devoid of people. Why don't architectural photographers have to deal with this?

 

Agree. You need to provide some kind of solution

[Justin Hunt]

Architectural photographers get away with it because the architecture is the hero and nothing should distract away from that. Once you get into marketing, then the architecture almost become irrelevant other than a context for activity. As such the atmosphere and activity become the hero and should be treated as such.

 

In the past switching from design viz to marketing viz was simply re-issuing the same images to the marketing department. These days they are becoming two very different and distinct beasts and are diverging more and more.

 

Sadly as you know most "off the shelf" solutions for people become cliche very quickly as we all use them to death. They are great for design viz but most just dont cut it for marketing viz, especially when you get very picky clients who specify exactly the who, what and where for people. Hence the likes of DBox do their own casting and shoots. For a price of course

[Ernest Burden III]

Talk to me once you've filled an arena full of custom green screen shot, animated people for an animation fly though...

 

My studio is too small to get commissions like that, but I can easily come up with some ideas about how to handle what you describe, at least within C4D, and knowing that MAX can do all the same things, just different names. Lucas did crowds for the Pod Race scenes in Prequil 1 with a bunch of Qtips dipped in paint and wiggled from below.

 

Assuming you have seats set as blocks/instances then you have a base position/rotation to use procedural figures that have script-driven motions and color variations, complexity driven by camera proximity... I would think you are doing that sort of thing, as you have obviously been delivering work.

[Scott Schroeder]

We use RailClone/Forest Pro to drive our crowds and seating. Which is why I would pay a good chunk of change for 3D people who have pre-masked skin/shirts so we can use Forest Materials to drive the crowd variations. We have animated 3d people we can use that look semi-decent in large outdoor stadiums, but fall apart quickly in the smaller indoor venues.

 

We used to do people by finding a good shot of the existing crowds or similar team colors, cut out a few sections of people from that photo, and hand place all of those people in the render in Photoshop. That was fine for a while, but we're getting too busy at this point to spend that kind of time anymore and we don't want to be restricted in camera locations as we were when doing people in Photoshop. Thus, we've gone the 3d people route.

 

We have too small of a team and too busy of a schedule to afford any one of us to spend weeks masking out all of our pre-existing 3d people's texture sheets. It may be something we have to look into outsourcing. We've even started to look at Maya/Golaem Crowd as a measure to get people into our scenes quickly.

 

Most of the time, we have incredibly tight deadlines to meet that are far outside of our control. When you have the founder of a major sportswear empire coming up to you and stating that in a few weeks at the homecoming football game they want to see complete concepts for renovations or a new stadium for their college of choice. With tens of millions of dollars in donations on the line, you, the university getting the money, the architects, and everyone else involved jump when Mr. Moneybags tell you to jump.

 

If you don't show 90% of the crowd in team colors, you'll get called out on that every time. If you show the rival teams colors by accident in your rendering, you create a shitstorm like you have never experienced. So it better be specific and accurate team colors. Even if we clear this with the client as far as we can only do so such in the week we have to produce renderings, the money backers who are rabid fans themselves, will immediately react to the rendering. Then have fun the next day as the client and architects tell you that the one guy donating $25 million for the project's naming rights isn't happy with the rendering and is thinking of cutting his donation.

 

You could show big floppy penises hanging from the rafters and no one will notice if your crowd isn't matching the team's colors.

[innerdream]

Note to self: Do not work on stadium renderings.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Well we all suffer the same for sure, the answer is always there, it is simple, but is not what the clients want to heard or we don't want to pull the trigger sometimes. The real solution is filming, camera matching and fill the rest with CG people, that's what any respected VFX studio will do, but there is a price tag for that.

 

Arrogant clients come to us all the time too, but a friendly talk with them and showing the simple reality. "do you want to play with like the big guys? well do you have the big guys resources too? if they do, well then there is no problem, but we know those are the few. That's why some people drive an old Civic and only a few drive a Tesla. We do what it possible with the mediums we have.

 

Regarding your point Scoot, running like a chicken without head is OK one time, maybe two, but if this problem is a constant you need to spend time and resources to build the library you need. There is no way around. We don't build large stadiums, but for our High School stadiums I had to spend serious time building library, not other way.

 

Maybe for you should be a mix solution between Autodesk Character creator, allhuman, AXYZ or even DAZ and what not. Create around 100 characters whit respective maps and shaders so they can be re used in different situations. Then for close up, well use some video people or high resolution scaned people. There is RPC too, they look like crap, but hey that's 3D video people.

 

Crowd simulation like Goalem are great but they are more focused on Dynamics than realistic look. They have libraries, but again in close upt they fall apart.

 

I feel your pain man, we got a lot of scanned 3d people, still we run short, and now we have an other side problem... RAM

sigh ... never ending

[Ernest Burden III]

You could show big floppy penises hanging from the rafters and no one will notice if your crowd isn't matching the team's colors.

 

Do you have some samples to show, of stadium animations? I would love to see what has worked and what you think needs improving.

[M V]

Sometimes I think I need to take a class on casting just to understand the psychology of choosing the right 'characters' for your image. It's the first thing people focus on and joke about in a meeting. They are either too hippy, too white, too boring, not the right type, too old... the list goes on and on. I truly hate putting people in my images sometimes.

[heni30]

Even green screening is not a perfect solution. I saw this rendering of a small eatery - a shot looking down the length of the interior with 4 or 5 butted picnic tables running down the middle and they were bragging how they had green screened the people (about 20 people sitting on the table benches) to create the perfect demographic and ambiance.

 

And the people all looked so fake. Their placement and and demographic was perfect but they all looked so stiff with unnatural facial expressions - I think it really detracted from the rendering rather than enhanced it.

Edited September 23, 2016 by heni30

[innerdream]

All people in renderings look fake, even the ones that are real in a photo used as a montage. I don't know why that is unless we are fake! :O Cue the Twilight Zone music.

[heni30]

Case in point - http://www.cgarchitect.com/2016/09/wkcd-freespace-2017

 

Nice try but I think this is a trainwreck. Especially because they all have bright light accents.

 

You eye is just bouncing all over the place trying to decide to what to look at.

Edited September 23, 2016 by heni30

[Scott Schroeder]

Do you have some samples to show, of stadium animations? I would love to see what has worked and what you think needs improving.

 

Currently the animations are all in donor viewing only phase.

 

Here are some stills from other projects that didn't have the animation component, so we didn't overly have to worry about flying around people. But each one had it's own set of perils.

 

 

 

 

The bigger the arena/stadium the easier it starts to get. You can really open up the lens to go wide angle, and all of the people tend to go Techmo Style and get blobby.

[Ernest Burden III]

We were talking about animating the people in the seats--what just hit me was how we would animate the play on the field. Yikes! Rotoscope game footage? Well, I have an idea, but not a breeze. Forget I mentioned that...

 

The stills are good, but have some composition challenges, especially the middle one--track 'n' field (the arm blocking the runners and the escape hatch at upper left corner). The top one really works well.

 

The thing about arena crowds is the balance between trees and forest. Is the narrative "the crowd went wild!" or Mrs. Jones in Sec. D seat 15 was waving her arms while her race-questionable companion in seat 16 looked on in horror as the team dropped the ball"? The more the audience seems like a unit the better. The jersey colors really help, having most/all doing the same thing seems better than showing 12,000 individuals who detract from the action with their personal stories and individualistic self-determination on display. Every tree is different, but as a group they become something new, a forest.

 

This is why I was wondering earlier about scripted simplified area-wide movement and 'token' randomized variations for clothing and skin/hair tone.

[Justin Hunt]

You need The Mill's budget

https://cylibral.wordpress.com/2016/03/10/mills-stadium-tool-kit-video/

 

or hire this guy

https://vimeo.com/101090105

[Scott Schroeder]

Ultimately it comes down to client control and setting expectations. And Depth of field. Lots of depth of field. If you can get the people to go a bit blobby like Techmo SuperBowl style, then you have less and less to worry about. It's when you have to keep everything in absolute focus that you allow things to start to get picked apart. The nice thing about what The Mill does is they always have your focus to the action on the playing surface. The crowd becomes just a part of the background and not the focus. The less you focus, the less you want to pick it apart.

 

What I really need is sit down and pick the brains over at EA or 2K and how they set up their crowds for Madden or the NBA series games.

 

In the end, if we are going to allow a certain level of customization in our crowds then we need to realize that we have to invest a substantial amount of time and money having someone create a few base humans that can be easily customized using Forest Pro's materials and scattering. We can only take it so far with off the shelf 3d people and it has become time restrictive to do it by hand anymore.

 

Oh and the very first comment we received from someone on the project team on the first image I posted, "That's not our head coach." The original render was done at 4k, so you can see more detail than what was posted online.