Got fed up and tired of the small scenes, Cyclorama and struggling with Hither control on huge scenes for my animation project. Getting know where, that today I went all out and started building my very own outdoor scene. How would anyone do a animation scene of a car moving in a small area, even in Poser? Unless the car is stationary and all the props moving, which will be more hectic, and different cam views wouldn't help. This is what I made today. Before I go any further in Texturing. I had to stop and get feedback. Pic #1

Now, add a few things. Not my props added. But will be worked on. Or you will be able to dress it up yourself.

Then more dressing up. Will do changes. Wanted to see how it will look. (Darn...quality is lost in PSP 8)..

Message edited on: 11/25/2004 00:31

And..now, my question. Is the Sidewalk slab. Which one looks more realistic. 2, 3 are from a camera. Today was cloudy, so I couldn't get good photos. Textures imported onto each slab in Material Room, made bump maps. Then #1 is playing around with textures in the material Room.

I love 2 and 3. And for texture photos, cloudy is often best because you avoid any stark shadows that may collide with the shadows in the render. I really like your scene. I just ndon't know why you'd make the CAR stationary? If it's the only thing moving (apart from possible pedestrians) it would be logican to move IT. Or am I missing something? (Most likely as I don't do much animation)

If you want to keep the resolution of the grassy area, create a grid of small material zones on the plane and apply a seamless texture to each zone. That will remove the fuzziness from the scene and keep the quality consistent between your sidewalk and the adjacent grass.

I understand what you're saying Robo - when you animate a car you run out of BG after just a few frames... Yes, that's a problem. This is looking good. And I agree with trekkie, cloudy days are best. Note also: You need to have more than 1 slab. Otherwise, after just a few, one clearly sees the repetition. You need several in a row, or several groups. :} Fish

Right now, only concerned about sidewalk and Road for texture. I have a total of 156 sidewalk slabs in prop. Then will make my own street lamps. The grass terrain is temporary (Stretched that out for temporay look). When I get there, that will be another day of questions. :-)

When completed will make into one complete prop, so we can add another. I have notice most use one texture for the whole sidewalk and not indivually (Sidewalk slab). Time consuming I guess, but patients is worth it. So, going to conquer this. Need 4 lane roads.

Message edited on: 11/25/2004 07:50

One thing: CONSIDER the polycount VERY much. Something like the sidewalk slab shouldn't be more than 6 polygons each or you'll choke your computer. (unless you have a renderfarm and render outside Poser)

If you're not doing a lot of camera motion for the scene, you could use an animated backdrop. I can loan you a side-scrolling backdrop that'll work in Poser 4 with any horizontally-repeating texture.

You're using Poser 5, right? I don't know how it effects the rendering times, but instead of modelling with polygons, you can make a strip of sidewalk as a single box, and make the joints between the slabs with a displacement map. Check for Geep's Magic Box. And you can use the Grouping tool to copy that without the ground-facing polygon. Why use 6 surfaces when you can't see one of them? I've not noticed a rendering slow-down from tiling a texture. And something I haven't tried, but maybe you can feed two seamless texturemaps into the two different tile-types on the Tile shader, with zero mortar thickness...

Cool backdrop. Reminds me of old Hanna-Barbarra cartoons. :D

Oh, the old hollywood trick. :-) Yes, I am using poser 5.