Hi all! I'm still fiddling about trying to get familiar with using props and buildings and I have a few questions. Do you plan your whole render scene before you start or just wing it? When you're using a character and buildings do you put the buildings in first?

I find myself doing the character then deciding he or she would look best with this or that building or furniture but I'm thinking thats exactly backwards. It turns out to be so amazingly fiddly trying to get everything in place that way. It seems like I can never quite get the buildings or props exactly where I want them...

as always - thanks for your input,

mystmaiden

A plan is nice, but if you get an idea, sometimes wingin' it turn out some really nice surprises.

I usually get an idea, try it, realize it isn't working out (cause my ideas are usually better than my skills), then start tweaking, zooming, panning, adding, removing, etc...

Sometimes it works out...sometimes, yuk.  I have a lot of never rendered pz3's on my computer.  Great idea, poor execution.

Always fun to try, though!

I normally just wing it.

Laurie

I always set up the scene I imagined in my head, with the props, buildings, scene etc that most closely resembles it, run a preview render, then a full render and then put it in the bin and start over half a dozen times. :)

All of the above.  There's no right or wrong way to build a scene.  Provided you end up with the image you wanted, all is good.

Coppula eam se non posit acceptera jocularum.

My Store

My Gallery

I tend to do the character and props they are touching and then add the scenery. There are some sets i have that just seem to need to be put in first, and everything else worked in around it.

As you learn more you can deal with stuff like walls that cant be made to disappear and that will make some sets more useable. 

Yup... wing it. Definitely wing it ;)

Guess I start with figures, or the focal point of the scene, usually... an idea for some sort of "situation".... then quite often end up trying a few different environments around that, more often than not.

I do lots of trial renders... and probably ditch about ten times as many scene ideas as I keep, at various stages of completeness.

Winging it works fine for me, but recently I've started to evaluate my workflow regarding setting up the optimal scene.  The approach begins with either characters or props, work out the exact parameters how the scene will translate with the models inserted.  Will it be more landscape or portraiture?  Will I need hires textures?  Lores textures?  Do I need to create normal maps to reduce the render load?  Do I need a zillion shaders for the model standing at a distance?

Those decisions will govern how extensive the scene load will be in terms of disk space and render.  Anything to reduce that load will make it easier to compose the scene. 

Next, tackle the lighting.  This is easy to overlook, but very essential when you want the render to look right.  Realism is another thing, but using lights correctly will make or break the scene.  Develop character poses and set creation in separate files, then merge the two when you are satisfied with the final results.  Nothing is more frustration than developing the characters in a fully furnished set and having nothing work out the way you chose. 

Concentrate on easy aspect separately, and if you need to commit the ideas to paper or storyboard, then do so.  Taking a different approach will refresh the idea from another viewpoint.

I've thought about that as well. Always considered that the film/tv approach should work best - i.e. create the scene/setting first, light it properly, get the correct camera angles and then introduce the actors...

but it's all electronic so you can do it in any order you wish...

Thanks for all the great replies, everyone!  I'm going to try one today by setting the scene first and see if I can get inspired by the scene rather than the model.  My problem with planning out a render is halfway through I change my mind and do something completely different. I think the image I posted yesterday is the closest I've come to actually completing an image the way I set out to create it but it didn't have any buildings or props.

It's happened... I have officially Lost My Mind, lol. I sat down just now to play with a poser scene and I have entirely misplaced a building and its attendant pz3. I'm pretty sure I didn't just imagine the darn thing but its just not there... so weird.

have you checked your Poser Recent files in the File menu?

                                                                                                                    

Poser 10

Octane Render

Wings 3D

I think in films they use a previsualization step, start with very basic shapes so it's easy to work with the layout and quick to render, then add complexity when they become more confident. If you're getting bogged down in detail too early when composing the scene, maybe this approach will help. Poser doesn't have a replace object function so possibly this will work better for props than for characters.

 

I finally the lost building, it had landed in the wrong folder - just glad I'm not crazier than I thought!

ironsoul - thats a good idea because I do tend wind up spending hours on one fiddly little thing if I'm not careful.

"I think in films they use a previsualization step …"

I've even heard rumors of Poser being used to do previz for films. Within Poser, you could certainly use appropriately scaled primitives as proxies for props of figures - or substiture low res figures if you have them - to get the general layout and lighting.  

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Depends on what it's for. Fun project.... just go by whatever my mind thinks up and I don't plan or worry about what goes where. More serious work, like promo renders, I look at what is the important thing I want to show and then visualise what would work with that thing and how the scene will look like. Then in my mind I picture the whole scene and go through light settings and camera angles. Once it's perfect in my mind I work it out in Poser.

 

For larger projects, like comics, I draw rough sketches of the scenes, make a storyboard. What goes where, what's the cam angle and so on, it's all on paper. Once the storyboard is done, work starts in Poser.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

One trick if you, like me, start with the figures and their poses, and work in the buildings later:

Once you've gotten the figures in, and posed, use parenting. Suppose I want to have someone on a motorcycle stopped at a light staring and two people wrestling on the ground while a dog is busy eating the sandwhich one of the wrestlers has dropped. I would get to the point where I had the figures clothed and posed, and textures adjusted. Then I would want to bring in an urban set (such as one of Stonemason's wonderful scenes), and want to move everyone to a convenient corner.

So, here is what I would do. I would parent the driver to the motorcycle (or vice versa), so that I could make adjustments of the two together (by adjusting the parent.) I would parent the sandwhich to the dog, so that if I moved the dog, the sandwhich would move. I would then bring in a primitive, such as the cube, and parent the cycle, dog, and the two wrestlers to the cube.

Next I would load the urban scene in. I could then move the cube around (using the translation dials) and everyone would move together. (I could also scale all of them by scaling the cube.) I could use the rotation on the cube to line them up with the road. I would probably use y-translation on the cube to make sure the wrestlers were on the ground, then on the dog to make sure it was, then on the motorcycle.

That's my workflow, anyway.

(D) Modular.  All of Poser is modular in that you can drop whatever you want into a scene whenever you want, but I only do poses in a setting if they are specifically dependent on the setting - leaning into the ropes of a boxing ring or leaning against a wall, for example.  If the pose can be accomplished anywhere, I never clutter the scene with props or set dressing.  Same for working on everything else - if it is hand held, I need the hand but, if it quite literally stands alone, it is the only thing in the workplace.

Everything I make is stock, in that I will use it in more than one setting with a variety of figures (poses included as best I can manage).  If I need a boxing ring on the beach with aliens smacking each other around, well, that is just another day at my house.

To make sure everything fits, though, it is set dressing (beach) > large figures/props (ring) > everything else (aliens).  If I do not establish the size of the stock set first, I have to resize everything else as I drop them in.

Quote - Hi all! I'm still fiddling about trying to get familiar with using props and buildings and I have a few questions. Do you plan your whole render scene before you start or just wing it? When you're using a character and buildings do you put the buildings in first?

I find myself doing the character then deciding he or she would look best with this or that building or furniture but I'm thinking thats exactly backwards. It turns out to be so amazingly fiddly trying to get everything in place that way. It seems like I can never quite get the buildings or props exactly where I want them...

as always - thanks for your input,

mystmaiden

A carefully laid out ROUGH plan will save you tons of time. 

1. Come up with a rough plan in notepad, see the entire scene in your head first.

2. Setup the scene in poser.

3. Figure out the lighting.

4. Now you can setup the character poses based on the scene.

5. Once everything is setup you can make adjustments here and there and add filler props where needed.  If you followed your plan, this should be a fast process.

This is what works for me but i'm always looking for advice and critique.