I can't claim to be a newbie anymore, exactly - I've putzed around with Poser 6 for over a year off and on and learned a little.  Recently upgrading to Poser 7 encouraged me to buckle down and really try to make it work, and I've really had some satisfying results of late.

My current project would include a scene (maybe a couple) of a fairly crowded room.  I'd like some hi-res characters (2 of them) in the foreground with a bunch of people in a dimly lit background for ambiance.

Didn't take long (duh) to exceed system resources by trying to build a crowd of James's and Jessie's, Michael's and Victoria's..

So what I need to find are some lo-res (lo-poly) people to fill a background.

Does anyone know how to make or where to find background people foor Poser?

http://www.baument.com/  has a set of low poly people

The vendor 'azl' has a lot of 'crowd' paks here in the marketplace - grat sets!

You could also just render your scene in layers. 

Render the background with a few people and save as a TIFF or JPEG. Then add that render as your background picture. Then render again (over background picture) with the next closer set of people and repeat the process as needed. I don't know about Poser 7, but in Poser 6 it wants to always refit your background image so you have to make the U and V one (1) and zero the offset numbers so it matches your render output.

"Render the background with a few people and save as a TIFF or JPEG. Then add that render as your background picture. Then render again (over background picture) with the next closer set of people and repeat the process as needed. I don't know about Poser 7, but in Poser 6 it wants to always refit your background image so you have to make the U and V one (1) and zero the offset numbers so it matches your render output."

That sounds like a great solution - one I'm sure I will try. 

For the scene I have in mind, I will take a look at those low polly folks you mention, though!  I fear the scene is a little to complex to try the layers -- at least at my skill level...

 Thanks!  I appreciate the response!

Also don't forget the P4 people!
They are quite light not ultra LowRes but light!

You can't try Nea and Domus, based on P4 people, links on my signature :biggrin:

Do not forget the previous poser people. Posette has almost one fourth as many polys as V3, so you could have four to one ratio of them as BG characters.

You could also try AZL's crowd kit in the MP here, very useful for adding lots of people as background elements with little strain on your system as they are essentially Flat planes that look 3D. 
Careful though, these are for background and filling in elements!

Another thing to remember, do you really need whole people. Have a look at party photos, The more you go back into the room the less you are going to see of the body, so you can make parts invisible from the chest down. Also not all of the people will be looking towards the camera, so all you will need for those is hair and an item of clothing and no body, in one of my images i have a girl on a hill looking away, its just hair and a dress, no body. but really the best way to do it is has been said layers. Gives you a bit more control

Low res people.
You do have a lot of them already.

The origional P1 figures.
I remapped them with the free uvmapper only to get a bigger front face to work on.
Remorphed them in the free anim8or to make them usable (for my purposes)
Easy to morph clothing into the origional mesh. Blouses, skirts; pants, boots etc.
Work with a medium texturing like 2000 x 1500, and paint the body and the clothes you want on them.
Details can go in a displacement map of the same size. (nipples, public hair, beard, brows etc)

Seocondly, if you want a bit more detail, use the P4 Lo Res figures.
Do the same as above.

Aso you CAN use the standard Poser low res hair.
Make a texture (does NOT have to be very detrailed) and do:

1. Put the blender in the displacement map at 0.3 with a noise and a weave texture.
   Set the weave at x=20 and leave y at 0. (For some hair you have to reverse these settings.
2. If you use the P4-Lo Res figures, most ( not all) P4 clothing should work.
   Do a search on my name and you should find some examples. if not I can mail then to you.

Tony

Thanks for all the useful response!

Right now, my plan is to tackle this wit a combo of lo res people from P1-4 and probably also do some layering if I can maintain a constant camera and lighting pose.  Might be a while before I have time to produce a viable result, but I'll try and post it when it's there.  Thanks again.

here is page 22 and 23 from the forth coming 3rd Dimension Graphics eZine...a mini tutorial on creating BG Crowds :)

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/rrfilelock/download.php?fileid=28139&key=2498

I find it eases the blow to system resources in complex scenes to assemble figures in small groups, export each group as an OBJ, and then import the OBJs as props.  Without any morph info, most figures are much slimmer to Poser and easier to deal with.  Of course if you start out with groups of lo-res figures to start with, you can handle more groups total, too.