Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I wrote a Sci Fi book and it turned out to be very good. (IMHO and my beta readers ;)) I am also a Poser lover and I have been making poser images for crucial points in the book. As this is not a middle grade book, I won't be including pictures, but I'd like to make a companion graphic novel/comic book. The problem is troops, lots of them. The opening scene is a graduation ceremony for the troops. Is there a way to generate a lot of models without killing my machine. I have a very beefy machine, but any machine will bog down with 100's of models in them. I suppose I can generate them separately and add them using layers in Photoshop, but this would take forever.

Any suggestions?

Several options...

Lots of renders stitched together.

Low poly figures.

Crowd generator (ISTR there's one in the Marketplace here).

You can also render several figures in a blank scene, save them out as PNG then paste them to a one sided square, after making a transmap for 'em in Photoshop. Then, place in your scene as required. Rinse and repeat.

You may also find royalty-free crowd scene images to purchase of for free sometimes on line ... and fine some that you can tweak in Photoshop to match your scene.

I've used the old low poly Poser 4 figures (low poly businessman etc) as crowd fillers quite successfully... just texture to suit the scene and add a few extras parented to each figure to get what you need... I used them for the maintenance crews in this scene for example...

There are generator scripts available in the market place, just search for crowd.
If you have Poser pro 11 the "combine figure" and "reduce poly" commands can be used to quickly produce a low poly figure.
An appropriately placed mirror can be used to create the illusion of more figures
This is an example why instancing would be useful in Poser, programs like Vue and Cararra do this kind of work very efficiently. Its possible to write a script to do it in Poser but the problem is once the figures are generated the program becomes unusable with everything visible. I tried to get around this by using low poly place holders which a script then replaces with a figure but it was still very clunky.

Another thing you can do combined with what the others have already suggested, is "clever" camera work and prop placement, so you can create the illusion that there is a lot of people.

I ran into the same problem when making this image a long time ago by now.

I think there is 8-9 characters in total, which is not a lot when trying to illustrate an army, but as you can see, the main focus is the girl on the horse, so she is blocking the rest of the army, so what you see behind her, the spears, flags as well as those spears coming in from the side, is just spears placed so it looks like there is a person holding it. Gave them some huge shields that is held so they also block the view. I think it works quite well as an illusion.

So you could do something similar by making the shot slightly narrower, place some signs or whatever feels natural to your image and just show maybe a hand or feet like someone is just about to walk pass it. It can save you a lot of work, you have to remember it just need to look correct for that single shot :D

I've got a mediocre machine and have done 40 people along with clothing. And they weren't all low poly figures. I had V4s and M4s with lots of morphs. A few suggestions. 1. (may be a pro option only) If you are working with any figure with morph injections (daz/hivewire) load the figure and the morphs. Create your character (spin your dials). Spawn full body morph. Load a second version of your model and copy the spawned morph to that figure and save as your character's name. This will cut down on memory use. It also speeds up copying the morphs to clothing. 2. use separate files pose small clusters of people and parent them to a group. delete all lights in the scene just before saving it. create an environment scene with lighting, etc and import all the character scenes and then use the groups to place the figures where you want them. You might want to turn the tracking to bounding boxes only (look under the display menu) 3. use billboards. you can see what others have or make your own. Render a few people with a transparent background and use those to texture one-sided squares resized to fit the image. 4. render in stages. hide all but a few render those, switch which ones show and render those etc until it's done. composit in your 2d editor. just watch for missing reflections and shadows. 5. If you have 2014 game dev or pp11 combine figures with clothes and reduce poligons.

Other things are set the tracking to bounding boxes when possible. Hide all figures and props you aren't working with. Set preview settings to bare minimum. If you are rendering in superfly, I've had the computer become unresponsive for a couple of hours when doing highly populated scenes as it sets everything up. It still rendered ok without exploding.

Thanks everyone! Looks like I'm in for a ton of work, but at least now I have some ideas how to get it done.

Since this is for a comic book, you'll be doing a lot of postwork anyway. Why not render the crowd piece by piece, then put it all together in Photoshop? Even low poly figures will choke your machine if you have "hundreds" of them.

Since this is for a still image, and not an animation, I would render the crowd in many different pieces, then layer them in Photoshop. That would have the advantage of allowing you to adjust the position, scale, etc. without having to re-render all week.

Here is an example I made some years ago, 23 fully dressed V4 rendered on a slow Laptop within 27 seconds. OK, I rendered one and putted that on a pane and added that pane 23 times into the szene.

I bought a crowd at cgtrader.com worked fine but I had to rotate them 90* and they aren't troops. just normal people.

Jules53757 - i really like that V4 character. Did you make her?

I like your render chris!

As far as I remember it was the standard V4 with a texture, I don't remember and the dress was a freebie by Pretty3D, Lassie of The Seas, unfortunately nolonger availble.

she looks nice there

randym77 posted at 11:34AM Fri, 31 August 2018 - #4335521

Since this is for a comic book, you'll be doing a lot of postwork anyway. Why not render the crowd piece by piece, then put it all together in Photoshop? Even low poly figures will choke your machine if you have "hundreds" of them.

Since this is for a still image, and not an animation, I would render the crowd in many different pieces, then layer them in Photoshop. That would have the advantage of allowing you to adjust the position, scale, etc. without having to re-render all week.

Thanks again for all the help. The "pane" thing is interesting, and might work for the formation since they all look the same, basically, especially from behind. And yes, lots of postwork. I guess making a hundred individual renders and put them on layers, boggles the mind. As was mentioned earlier, it depends on the shot and I can play around with that. For some stupid reason I always like making the full scene and then using different cameras for it, taking different shots. Plus I always like the full view shot. Probably not great for comic book. I'm so new at graphic novel/comic book, I'm still learning about that before plunging in, but my very first image is troops in formation. Kill me. :)

Since you are just starting out and learning, maybe start with simpler scenes. Wait until you have a workflow that suits you and what you're doing. I don't do comics, but rather images for a novel. I don't always work in order, especially if a scene is daunting. Also, plan scenes and try to avoid large groups when possible. Too many of those can cause burn out.

thanks, i've done images for an MG novel before, but this sci fi novel i've finished, doesnt lend itself to those images. it's adult. I thought I would try my hand at a graphic novel. I've done a lot of the scenes already, but i'm trying to work from the front of the book to the end, and the first scene is Troops graduation. Kill me. :)

putrdude posted at 7:20AM Sat, 01 September 2018 - #4335562

randym77 posted at 11:34AM Fri, 31 August 2018 - #4335521

Since this is for a comic book, you'll be doing a lot of postwork anyway. Why not render the crowd piece by piece, then put it all together in Photoshop? Even low poly figures will choke your machine if you have "hundreds" of them.

Since this is for a still image, and not an animation, I would render the crowd in many different pieces, then layer them in Photoshop. That would have the advantage of allowing you to adjust the position, scale, etc. without having to re-render all week.

Thanks again for all the help. The "pane" thing is interesting, and might work for the formation since they all look the same, basically, especially from behind. And yes, lots of postwork. I guess making a hundred individual renders and put them on layers, boggles the mind. As was mentioned earlier, it depends on the shot and I can play around with that. For some stupid reason I always like making the full scene and then using different cameras for it, taking different shots. Plus I always like the full view shot. Probably not great for comic book. I'm so new at graphic novel/comic book, I'm still learning about that before plunging in, but my very first image is troops in formation. Kill me. :)

Sounds like the best option is to use a script to automatically place duplicates of your figure into a grid pattern, I'd be surprised if one didn't exist already, maybe someone here knows ? The row behind the lead figure below is an example of a script built formation, each figure is taken from a random frame of an animation to give some variation. Will have a look to see if the script can be changed to build as a grid but as I'm away this weekend its not going to be a quick response.

Just to be clear regarding above, I was already planning to write the script but the mention of manually placing hundreds of figures as the only workable solution seems avoidable and potentially harmful to hand joints. I'm not trying to oblige you into something you've not asked for. So in my head it would be a two stage process, a script to build a series of plane props in rows with a specified size and spacing where each vertex in a plane prop represents a figures location. The position of the plane props can then easily be moved and rotated as required. When ready a second script to duplicate the selected figure on the position of each vertex. Would something like this be of use to you, happy to consider another approach?

Thank you. Very kind of you. I have purchased the MOM crowd generator. I'll play around with that. I don't really need normal shopping mall type people for the troops, though it would be funny.

The book is not short. I am only getting it back from my editor today. To create a graphic novel from it, after all this work, seems overwhelming right now. I have to recharge my batteries while I learn more about it and play with all of the suggestions given.

Thank you all so much!

I bought this crowd which works well in poser https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/character/other/complete-colored-lowpoly-standing-people they imported 90* rotated but it was easy for me using a script i have to turn them all to be standing up normally.

they were on sale when I bought them and the guy accepted an offer.

Thank you, estherau! I'll check it out.

Might take a look at Fugazi - Poser Crowd Generator, and see if it fits your needs. Also, don't forget about the lo-rez people at Daz, Loretta, lorenzo, etc.

Thank you. that might come in very handy.

estherau posted at 2:42PM Tue, 11 September 2018 - #4335628

I bought this crowd which works well in poser https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/character/other/complete-colored-lowpoly-standing-people they imported 90* rotated but it was easy for me using a script i have to turn them all to be standing up normally.

Reminds me of Lorenzo and Loretta Lo Rez. They're still available somewhere in the Poserverse I think, and made for Poser. Also there's the not so well known fact that M4 and V4 come with lo rez versions, 17k down to 4k in polycount. They can wear the same clothing made for their hi rez cousins. You have to set them up for use though.

Thank you very much. The people I need are soldiers in uniform, so it has to be repetitions of the models I'm using which luckily is M4. (Thanks for the low res tip). looking at that script to duplicate from Fugazi.

Thank you all so much. Now I have to decide if I'm insane enough to try to create a graphic novel, with a gillion images.