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Hi, I’m looking to use 3D-characters in a 2D picture for creation of some presentation media. I think i had seen SI on-board rigged 3d-character that i can adjust and use, but probably there is some more needed than what is on-board, such as using existing other rigged photo-realistic type models. My general skills are not at a grade for fluently going alone this task and im looking for some much appreciated help step by step over live chat :-|
Cheers,
Frank

Perhaps to take look at Species. Otherwise, I'm afraid your chat will take a long time.

Hi Mathaeus, looking to add vr-goggles to photorealistic 3d-people, which have casual clothing like below, and position them right etc.

is there maybe a free package for rigged somewhat photorealistic people around ?

There are some free 'people generators' to be found online, even with rigged results.
But afaik there's nothing that can spit out something directly usable in Softimage.

Max and Maya, yes. Even C4D.

rob

p.s. importing/exporting 'regular' stuff we use in 3D has always been the Achilles heel of SI, due to the lack of plugin creator interest

yes like Poser etc.
asking is there maybe an already created set of 3d people available in the community ?

For that level of realism you may need models that are based on 3D scanned data.

I've seen a few websites with 3D scans but usually they are just scans with a color texture.
ex: www.3dscanstore.com

You would need to buy them, retopology, set up materials, create textures, weights and rigs if you need them to move, etc.

Photo-realistic level characters aren't easy, cheap, or free.

hm ya seems the wheel needs to be re-invented each time.
Medium photorealistic type is fine here for my medium simple presentation stuff.

Rt now i've fallen back to photoshop because of lack of having a functional 3d workflow for characters and positioning

Like I said, and as myara said, there are solutions out there for what you need, unfortunately not for SI.

Most of the (rigged) character stuff out there is for 3DSMax, as that is the 3D app of choice for most of the archviz work.
Same goes for cars, greenery, pre-built scenes, furniture etc. etc. Also most of this is set up for V-Ray too.

You could see if you can transfer a rigged 3dsmax character over to SI with nulls as bones for basic positioning. I can recall a AD video explaning this workflow.

Also, the abundance of archviz related plugins for 3DSMax makes it almost a no-brainer if you do these things on a regular basis.

But if you want to stick with SI, I can only suggest buying a decent set of 3D models, and rig them in SI yourself for future use.

No real 'click 'n go' solution here I'm afraid....

rob

Hey Rob, thx for your info. I probably then stick to photoshop for now and switch to 3DS at a later point.

And you can't export / import rigs from or to Softimage, Maya, or Max. Rigs are not exportable. You could create a workflow to make an specific rig easily exportable/importable but that's another topic.

Being said that, you can easily export / import weighted characters with FBX, from and to Softimage, Maya, and Max.
That should be good enough to pose but not to animate.
There is nothing like Softimage's bones in Maya or Max, so the imported bones will be nulls. BTW, we almost never use Softimage bones for envelope.

Meshes and weights are not a problem, but Material settings probably won't translate properly if they are using complex shaders, non standard materials, or external renderers. If you are using the standard materials, and simple trees, then it should convert fine.

Still, you would need a Maya or Max license to make the conversion.

ok thx for your info Myara

Adding to mYara's statement, you could always apply a shadow rig to the exported characters that have weights on them.

Basically, all you're doing is applying a constraint from the nulls to the bones of the shadow rig in your 3d package (maya or max ...etc). Then you can animate normally.

Once you're done, just plot the animation to the nulls if you need to export them again as FBX a long with the weighted character.