Composite characters into scene?

[Leonides02]

This is potentially a dumb newbie question.

I use DAZ and Octane to make comics. For many panels, the background / scene remains the same. Only the character moves, or even just their facial expression.

Is there any way for Octane could treat the background scene almost like an HDRI image and only render the character? That would speed up my rendering time significantly. But in order for it to work, the lighting would have to stay consistent.

Or maybe only render a small part of the scene?

Any suggestions would be great. Thank you!

[Leonides02]

Hmm, found this in the 3DS forum. Sounds like this would work? I'll experiment.

Hi, its dead easy.

1. Create your scene.
2. Create a octane camera, set the type to spherical
3. Put the FOV of the camera to 360 and the FOV Y to 180.
4. Place the camera in your scene where the origo should be.
5. Uncheck the "Apply tonemapping for output." In the render rollout.
6. Render and save the output as an EXR file and you have yourself a HDRI map.

PS! If you want it to "pop" really good with the reflections and everything you have to take great care to study and find out what are good strengths for your light sources relative to each other. Its a bit of an art to make useful and good HDRI maps. Would strongly suggest using a dedicated tool like the HDR Light Studio.

[face_off]

Is there any way for Octane could treat the background scene almost like an HDRI image and only render the character? That would speed up my rendering time significantly. But in order for it to work, the lighting would have to stay consistent.

Yes, you can do this via the workflow from the 3ds max forum. However would it really save you that much time? Also, I think you potentially loose some realism by swapping out actual geometry for a HDR, since the DOF will be uniform for the HDR, but not for geometry.

Paul

[Leonides02]

You're likely correct now that I think about it, Paul. Thanks!