3D vs. Billboard Trees and People

focpt

Someone I believe is very tasteful in his use of entourage is Free Agent. http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=254467#p254467
If I am not mistaken he uses photoshop post pro for his work.
He seems to have uncanny taste in the numbers and placement of the people he uses.(IMHO)
There are examples in the above links of closeup, overhead, and distant use.

Look closely at the first images (African Market). The raw rendering has shadows from a tree, but the tree doesn't render. How is this done??!! That could be helpful. Is this an option in VRay or was that from Max?

dale

@thomthom said:

Yes - he's got a very nice style. Too bad he's not been very active lately.

I sent him a PM asking him if he would mind explaining his workflow. I'm hoping he will jump in.

free agent

Hey presto!!

my thoughts on entourage is: photoshop photoshop photoshop. i only ever use 3d people for distant aerials otherwise i use dosch top people (and there are a couple others) which is photos of poeple taken from a higher angle.

3d plants is fun but not very flexible so i would suggest a mix of 3d and photoshop vegetation, the 3d plants should offer a good example of how u would treat the photoshop plants light-wise. and personally i find it far more satisfying to have a good render with photoshoped vegetation rather than 3d. also 3d plants really cant fit into the high pace of a professional work flow.

i draw personal inspiration from MIR (http://mir.no/) when it comes to enterage, i think they have it spot on, u can even see eddie murphy in a couple of renders.

at the end of the day however it really is: "practice makes perfect" however tedious that might sound. ive had quite a bit and still feel im far from the MIR quality, because once you think you mastered one aspect of the rendering process (entourage) then u feel u need to work on another (lighting and environment)but then notice ur initial process could use more work. so progress is slow...

Thom: im still active, i'll do another big gallery post soon, if i posted all the time it would become "Old Hat" nothing special.

Focpt: in max u have object properties where u can specify invisible to camera, im not sure how vray for SU has advanced but the way i used to do it in SU was to place the tree billboard then on the face facing the camera apply a 100% transparent material so that its "invisible"

thomthom

Sean!
Good to see you again!

thomthom

Sean, do you create your own resources for people and vegetation? What's your main source?

free agent

we have quite a few bought people and plant libraries (and some won libraries from competetions) however my favourite libary is my general folders which consist of free and manually cutout people, from site like vyonyx and archiforge and kropped.com, theres even quite a few on the warehouse that u can rip from the models posted on there. for trees however they are often to low res to use as a feature element.

dale

Yes Sean, thanks for doing this.
Are you using lighting resources in photoshop, i.e. Filter/Render/Lighting Effects to manipulate lighting direction?
Also I think you've raised real good point about vegetation, and I think we should add it to this discussion.
Nothing slows me down more than adding 3D plants, so I'm using photoshop more and more. The only problem with this is trying to make sure all scenes have co-ordinated plantings.

By the way Sean, do you have any new work we can have a peek at?

ledisnomad

This is really helpful. Thanks Free Agent for your process. To summarize so far...

Possible entourage workflows:
I. Eye-level
a. Post-production. Web resources include:
i. vyonyx.com
ii. archiforge.com
iii. kropped.com
b. 2D silhouettes as reference (and shadows), then post-production
c. 2D photo face-me components (potentially with long-exposure style blur)
d. NOT low-poly 3D
II. Overhead
a. Post-production
b. Low-poly 3d people if distant (NOT 2D people)

Possible vegetation workflows:
I. Post-production
II. A few 3D for lighting reference, then post-production
III. 2D face-me components as reference and shadows, then post-production

Free Agent, could you explain the shadow trick in a little more detail? If you apply a 100% transparent material in SU, doesn't that affect Vray's (or other renderer's) material?

focpt

Wow, really great infomation. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I feel like I have some direction now. Thanks for your input Free Agent

Good summary Ledisnomad. Thanks.

@unknownuser said:

....really cant fit into the high pace of a professional work flow. ...

you are speaking my language!

@unknownuser said:

Focpt: in max u have object properties where u can specify invisible to camera, im not sure how vray for SU has advanced but the way i used to do it in SU was to place the tree billboard then on the face facing the camera apply a 100% transparent material so that its "invisible"

I will have to give that a try, thanks.

focpt

@unknownuser said:

Focpt: in max u have object properties where u can specify invisible to camera, im not sure how vray for SU has advanced but the way i used to do it in SU was to place the tree billboard then on the face facing the camera apply a 100% transparent material so that its "invisible"

Ok, I figured out how to make 'invisible' materials in VRay:

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=322&t=35491

yee-ha.

ledisnomad

focpt, thanks for the link! Invisible materials, here I come.

andybot

@unknownuser said:

i draw personal inspiration from MIR (http://mir.no/) when it comes to enterage, i think they have it spot on, u can even see eddie murphy in a couple of renders.

Sean - thanks for this link! very inspirational!