When making buildings as background and middle ground props, should they  be made full scale relative to poser figures. I'm beginning work on a small town courtyard surrounded by houses. If I make the courtyard scene and buildings full scale (relative to poser characters) will poser accommodate such a large scene.
Assuming the base v4 character is 5'-5" tall with an obj height .739" thats roughly 1/87 scale.
A 100'x100' courtyard would be 13.79"x 13.79" footprint actual obj size.
Do problems develop when making scenes of this size and are there things I should look out for.

It's not the 'physical' size of the objects, so much as their plygon count, which uses up your computer's memory.So it would be better to work out a way to make ytour buildings nearest to the camera more densely meshed, and decreased the LOD (level of detail) as you progress further back in the scene. Background houses need be little more than a box or plane with a good texture map place on them.

JonTheCelt

Here is an example of downtown Feenix, home of Dr Geep Studios rendered in Poser 6.

All objects (models) are done full (Poser) size.

Does this answer your question?

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Attached Link: http://www.vanishingpoint.biz/productdetail.asp?productID=1454

Poser can handle a total scene polygon count of up to about one million polygons on my machine, so the scene should aim for about 100 000 maximum, so that you can still load props, vehicles, characters, clothing, weapons, etc.

Remember that a fully dressed and armed Poser character can easily reach 200 000 polygons, so two or three characters already take your scene to 600 000 polygons, add a few props, a vehicle, etc, and you quickly run out of memeory or slow the rendering down to an unacceptable level.

Thanks everyone
Yes that answers my question
Chris

The attached P6 FireFly render is of a Poser cone and a box rotated 45 degrees and scaled to 50000%, and at a distance of -1010.0 Poser Units (-2647.492995 Meters, or aprox  -8686.0 Feet). The Dolly camera was was used with the settings below (in Poser Units):

focal    200.0000
focusDistance    2.0000
fStop    2.8000   
shutterOpen    0.0000
shutterClose    0.5000
hither    0.0000
yon    2500.0000
zScale    1.0000   
yScale    1.0000   
xScale    1.0000   
scale    1.0000   
roll    0.0000   
pitch    0.0000   
yaw    1.0000   
dollyZ    0.0000   
dollyY    22.9791   
dollyX    -14.4986

As you can see, parts of the props, sides of the cube and top of the cone,  are beyond the range of the camera and do not render. One of the most significant factors in how far the camera can "see" seems to be its scale, with a larger scaler letting it see further. Also see this thread:

Camera setup for long distance?
 

P.S. I don't think these limitations apply to the P4 renderer.

I think that's more to do with the 'yon' settings for the camera, rather than anything else. There is a maximum setting for the yon, but it controls how far away things can be before being ignored by the camera, in the same way that hither measures the near distance to the camera.

JonTheCelt

'yon' seems to have little effect, note that in the above render yon was set to 2500.0000, much greater than the distance to the props.

Well, if your units are set to meters, then the centre of the objeccts is well outside the bounds of your yon there (-2647m with a yon of -2500). Of course, if it's set to PNU, then I'm completely wrong! :)

JonTheCelt

As stated in my post, all values are in Poser Units.  zTran of the cone is  -1010.0, yon of the Dolly Camera is 2500.0. The camera is close to the origin, but offset a little in X and Y.

Fair enough, I stand corrected.

jonTheCelt

Seeing is believing. Try this simple experiment! Place the Dolly camera at the UNIVERSE origin, use a focal length of 100mm, and a scale of 100%. Load a Poser cone prop, translate it to zTran -1030.0, scale it up so you can see it (probably around 100000.0%). Do a FireFly render and see what you get. Render settings seem to play a part, so if you can still see all of the prop, double its translation and scale of the prop and render again. I don't think you will see the prop this time.

or, failing that...you could always render the background city stuff (or landscape...or...;) in another program, and render it as a background picture, then supply details close up. Not as 'poser-centric', but it do cut down on Polys and render time...;)