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Making Billboards

cedarwolfcedarwolf Posts: 64
in New Users

Probably not the correct forum, sorry, but spent most of the morning looking for an easily understood tutorial on how to make billboards for studio. Suggestions?

Thanks,

Tony O'seland

Comments

  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    edited October 2019

    @cedarwolf

    I don't know about a tutorial, but here are a few tips to get you started:

    • To start with, you need a plane. Create a Plane Primitive with the Primary Axis set to Z-Positive. This will create a vertical plane facing forward and your images will be correctly oriented on the plane. (Top up and also facing forward.) What size you use isn't too important, you can always scale it larger or smaller, but you should normally use only 1 division.
    • The origin will be in the center and the plane will be half above and half below world center. Assuming nothing else is in the scene, the easiest way to change that is to hit Ctrl+D to move the plane up to sit on the "floor" and then export it as Billboard.OBJ. Import you're new OBJ and the origin will be centered on the bottom edge. (Once you have this OBJ, you can import it every time you want to create a new billboard.)
    • The Materials for your billboard will usually include both an image in the Diffuse (3DL) or Base Color (Iray) channel, and a black and white mask image for Opacity Strength (3DL) or Cutout Opacity (Iray).
    • If you want to create your own isolated images from renders, make sure Draw Dome is off (Render Settings > Environment) if you're using Iray, and nothing else is visible. Render, then save the image as either a PNG, (which preserves the transparent background,) or TIF, (which will include an Alpha mask layer.)

    I hope this information is useful to you.

    Post edited by L'Adair on
  • shootybearshootybear Posts: 139
    That's a nice little micro-tutorial, L'Adair. Thanks! (even though I didn't ask the question :) )
  • My 3D SpinMy 3D Spin Posts: 608
    L'Adair said:

    @cedarwolf

    I don't know about a tutorial, but here are a few tips to get you started:

    • To start with, you need a plane. Create a Plane Primitive with the Primary Axis set to Z-Positive. This will create a vertical plane facing forward and your images will be correctly oriented on the plane. (Top up and also facing forward.) What size you use isn't too important, you can always scale it larger or smaller, but you should normally use only 1 division.
    • The origin will be in the center and the plane will be half above and half below world center. Assuming nothing else is in the scene, the easiest way to change that is to hit Ctrl+D to move the plane up to sit on the "floor" and then export it as Billboard.OBJ. Import you're new OBJ and the origin will be centered on the bottom edge. (Once you have this OBJ, you can import it every time you want to create a new billboard.)
    • The Materials for your billboard will usually include both an image in the Diffuse (3DL) or Base Color (Iray) channel, and a black and white mask image for Opacity Strength (3DL) or Cutout Opacity (Iray).
    • If you want to create your own isolated images from renders, make sure Draw Dome is off (Render Settings > Environment) if you're using Iray, and nothing else is visible. Render, then save the image as either a PNG, (which preserves the transparent background,) or TIF, (which will include an Alpha mask layer.)

    I hope this information is useful to you.

                              So if load a PNG image on the Billboard plane in the surface tab - base color there will still be a background to it and if i
                              use the Cut out opacity the whole image dissapears?? How does that work?

  • scorpioscorpio Posts: 8,415
    My 3D Spin said:
    L'Adair said:

    @cedarwolf

    I don't know about a tutorial, but here are a few tips to get you started:

    • To start with, you need a plane. Create a Plane Primitive with the Primary Axis set to Z-Positive. This will create a vertical plane facing forward and your images will be correctly oriented on the plane. (Top up and also facing forward.) What size you use isn't too important, you can always scale it larger or smaller, but you should normally use only 1 division.
    • The origin will be in the center and the plane will be half above and half below world center. Assuming nothing else is in the scene, the easiest way to change that is to hit Ctrl+D to move the plane up to sit on the "floor" and then export it as Billboard.OBJ. Import you're new OBJ and the origin will be centered on the bottom edge. (Once you have this OBJ, you can import it every time you want to create a new billboard.)
    • The Materials for your billboard will usually include both an image in the Diffuse (3DL) or Base Color (Iray) channel, and a black and white mask image for Opacity Strength (3DL) or Cutout Opacity (Iray).
    • If you want to create your own isolated images from renders, make sure Draw Dome is off (Render Settings > Environment) if you're using Iray, and nothing else is visible. Render, then save the image as either a PNG, (which preserves the transparent background,) or TIF, (which will include an Alpha mask layer.)

    I hope this information is useful to you.

                              So if load a PNG image on the Billboard plane in the surface tab - base color there will still be a background to it and if i
                              use the Cut out opacity the whole image dissapears?? How does that work?

    It can be a jpg or a png, in the diffuse base channel put the colour image in the cutout opacity channel put a black and white version of the image, white is visable black invisible.

  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    My 3D Spin said:
    L'Adair said:

    @cedarwolf

    I don't know about a tutorial, but here are a few tips to get you started:

    • To start with, you need a plane. Create a Plane Primitive with the Primary Axis set to Z-Positive. This will create a vertical plane facing forward and your images will be correctly oriented on the plane. (Top up and also facing forward.) What size you use isn't too important, you can always scale it larger or smaller, but you should normally use only 1 division.
    • The origin will be in the center and the plane will be half above and half below world center. Assuming nothing else is in the scene, the easiest way to change that is to hit Ctrl+D to move the plane up to sit on the "floor" and then export it as Billboard.OBJ. Import you're new OBJ and the origin will be centered on the bottom edge. (Once you have this OBJ, you can import it every time you want to create a new billboard.)
    • The Materials for your billboard will usually include both an image in the Diffuse (3DL) or Base Color (Iray) channel, and a black and white mask image for Opacity Strength (3DL) or Cutout Opacity (Iray).
    • If you want to create your own isolated images from renders, make sure Draw Dome is off (Render Settings > Environment) if you're using Iray, and nothing else is visible. Render, then save the image as either a PNG, (which preserves the transparent background,) or TIF, (which will include an Alpha mask layer.)

    I hope this information is useful to you.

                              So if load a PNG image on the Billboard plane in the surface tab - base color there will still be a background to it and if i use the Cut out opacity the whole image dissapears?? How does that work?

    Notice the third tip, (guess I should have numbered those after all.) The image you put into the Diffuse (3DL) or Base Color (Iray) channel will be displayed on the plane. Sometimes you'll want the entire image. For example, a photo of mountains and sky as a backdrop. More often, perhaps, you'll want to use billboards to populate the scene with objects that would otherwise bring your render to a crawl. These can be people, animals, plants, debris, etc., and one thing they all have in common is area on the billboard you want to hide. To do that requires a mask in the Opacity Strength (3DL) or Cutout Opacity (Iray) channel, a black and white image that tells Daz Studio what to hide, (black) and what to show (white).

    There is a trick for creating masks using Iray, but it won't work for all situations:

    1. Render the object or objects for the billboard and save your render
    2. In the Environments pane, select Backdrop from the drop-down menu and set the color to white.
    3. In the Render Settings, set the render engine to Iray, if you were using 3Delight for the original image.
    4. In the Render Settings > Environment, set the Environment Mode to Scene Only and Draw Dome to Off, (if it isn't already.)
    5. Hide any and all light sources in the scene.
    6. Render.
    7. The resulting render should the opposite of what you need for a mask, the background white and the subject black.

    In your favorite graphics program, use the invert option to make the background black and the subject white.

    Or use Daz Studio to invert the colors, when applying your materials to the billboard:

    1. Apply the black and white image to the opacity channel.
    2. Click on the image icon and select Layered Image Editor from the popup list.
    3. Locate and enable the Invert checkbox in the right column of the LIE dialog window and click on Accept.
    4. Click on the image icon of the now inverted image and select Brows from the popup list.
    5. In the browse window, locate the inverted image. It will have a non-descript name, such as d43.png.
    6. Click on the image once. so it's highlighted.
    7. Copy the image. (Ctrl+C, or right-click and Copy)
    8. Browse to the location where you are saving your billboard textures.
    9. Paste the image in that location. (Ctrl+V, or right-click and Paste)
    10. Rename the image. The best naming option would be the same as the diffuse/base color image with a modifier at the end. (For example, if the original image is BlackCat01.png, name the mask BlackCat01_Tr.png
    11. Double-click on the newly renamed image to select and use as the mask for this billboard.
    12. Make sure Opacity Strength or Cutout Opacity is set to 100%

    Once both the color image and mask are in place, and you're satisfied with the results, be sure and create a Materials Preset. Even if you never use this image in another image, it can come in very handy having a way to reset your billboard if try something that doesn't work out.

  • MelanieLMelanieL Posts: 7,382

    A video tutorial on this very subject can be found here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4955716/#Comment_4955716

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500

    MelanieL said:

    A video tutorial on this very subject can be found here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4955716/#Comment_4955716

    Found another video tutorial - very easy to follow:

     

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500
    edited June 2021

    Just to add to my last comment, I tried it and made myself a bunch of character billboards for use in the background. Great fun but I still need to find the knack of having the feet look like they are planted on the ground. In this scene only the one foreground figure is "real" - the rest are my billboards.

     

    SC 001.png
    1600 x 1280 - 3M
    Post edited by marble on
  • Steel RatSteel Rat Posts: 398

    @Marble, seems like a delicate balance between camera angles and poses. I haven't figured that out yet either.

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