On stage

[Hannes]

I had the idea for this one, when I woke up one morning. Just the phase between sleep and awakeness.
It's more or less the sequel of my "Rehearsal" image. But the band replaced the drummer, because he was constantly stoned. They have a new lead singer and a background vocalist.

[Dune]

And now for something completely different... Very cool! I guess this would be nice from between the audience with heavy blur in front as well.

[Hannes]

Thanks, Ulco! Good idea!!

[schmeerlap]

Great scene building and great lighting. Another idea would be to have a girl sitting on the shoulders of a guy, waving her arms.
Like I used to do 

These past few days I've had a punk rock band persistently shouting "We live by the river!" in my head. Do shut up, John. And take your pills.

[masonspappy]

!!!FREEBIRD!!!

(you get it or you don't.....   )

[Hannes]

Lynyrd Skynyrd?
I gotta admit, that, if it's what you meant, I haven't heard it. I googled it.
I really love to say, I might be a tad too young for it... (Turning 62 in june...)

No, not really an excuse. Actually I'm more into progressive rock stuff. Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis (older stuff) etc.

[masonspappy]

Lynyrd Skynyrd? , Absolutely!

I'm 68 and go back just a little bit further and am still a fan of Pink Floyd, Genesis, Boston, etc.
But I still like Moby and some of AWOL Nation's older stuff.

Anyway, I did like the image!

[Dune]

Cool, so we have the same taste in music, and I am right in the middle. Lots of people 'our age' say you're only mature if you like classical music. I always feel like my life is ending if I hear it, no matter how well composed. It makes me sad. The only classical music I like is Satie (which my wife plays on the piano). A bit strange and unconventional, taking you into unknown territory.

[Hannes]

Interesting. When I was a boy, my brother, who's seven years older than me only listened to classical music. So I heard a lot of it. But my brother's friend was a die hard prog rock fan. And so I found it very cool to hear something like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, who used classical stuff in Rock music.

[KlausK]

That`s a cool cool sujet, Hannes!
Even though the "crowd" doesn`t look overly enthusiastic :] and ticket sales also did not go through the roof, I`d say.  
They actually behave more like a audience listening to a classical performance rather than a rock show. Or are they all 60+ and can`t barely move

I was wondering about the spot lights. Did you place them one by one in TG or did you import nulls/placeholders from 3DSMax?
And how long did that image take to render approximately with all the visible light cones?

ps:
Btw, I had tried to build some of the stage designs I did back in the days for theatre plays in TG, but failed miserably I just could not keep myself going in this GUI. But I guess it`s just not made for that, right. Using a dedicated 3D program was the way to go for me.

CHeers, Klaus

[Hannes]

Thanks a lot, Klaus!
Well, you're right, it's quite an ignorant audience. Or the band sucks.
I used what I had. To avoid too much identical instances (unfortunately some are noticeable) I had 18 populations of different people and a few single higher resolution ones near the camera.

Actually I loaded the stage into 3ds max and placed spotlights wherever I needed them. Then I exported the lights as FBX scene and imported it into my scene. So far it was easy. Too bad the lights weren't spotlights in TG, just lightsources (omni lights), so I had to replace some of them and rotated them correctly (only the actual spots). Quite some fiddly work...

It took about 9 hrs to render in 3K.

I took the challenge to render such a scene in TG. Yes, it can be done. The biggest problem is the handling of things. Once you have rotated a spot for example, the rotation handles sometimes become quite unpredictable as I already mentioned in this thread:
https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,29602.msg290087.html#msg290087

And a grouping feature or the possibility to link objects to other ones would be very helpful. I think, this is really the problem with Terragen. There are some features, that would be essential, and they aren't implemented yet, which makes it very hard for new users to get around these problems. You need a lot of experience to find (or remember) solutions, and a lot of times they don't sound logical, but they work.

[Hannes]

By the way, I rendered a view from behind. I rearranged (and replaced some things. I also switched off the lightsources from behind to focus on the six main spots.
Right now I'm doing some tests following Ulco's idea of a view from within the crowd with a little DOF.

[Dune]

This is also pretty awesome!

Yeah, ELP, great stuff!

[KlausK]

@Hannes, thanks for describing your workflow.

This view from backstage is really nice, too.

The biggest problem is the handling of things

I guess, TG was never ment to do a lot of handling of objects. Rocks, plants and skies, more or less. Backdrops, Panoramas, Skyboxes for compositing.

And I personally do not think that TG gets that kind of workflow enhancements anytime soon - if at all. But what do  I know, since there is no public development roadmap it`s all speculative. The GPU render Matt posted makes me think, that this is where most of his work time hours will go. Pushing basically everything else to the back...we`ll see (maybe).


I really appreciate to watch people like you put in the effort to work on these themes.
My attention span is simply too short timed

Looking forward to the next iteration

CHeers, Klaus

[masonspappy]

Nice! You don't see backstage views too often.
Nitpick: looks like bongos on right are floating?