3D vs. Billboard Trees and People

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!