I've been thinking about a possible new location... a nightclub holding a bachelorette/hen party. To make it a little more realistic and atmospheric I wanted some bystanders, perhaps a lot of them, but Daz would have fits with all those extra models. I'd heard about billboards and decided to give them a go. So here is my test scene. The only actual model is Denise. The others are 2D billboards... sort of cardboard cutouts. I don't think it came out badly for a first attempt/

Lightning is all off, but that is as expected, due to using of 2D screens of characters.

But that could a problem for a club, where you do expect a very specific lightning. This would probably work much better in the open.

you could try taking an ezcomposite approach to the thing and iteratively bake the extra characters into the background. it's a bit of work but you can reuse most of it if you keep the camera in the same spot.

it might be a fun feature to add some of the existing characters with alternate composites into the composite/ez-composite shots, and not that hard to add.  I'll think about it.

finally we get some denise :)

Yep, the lighting on the billboards is awful. I just created them without really thinking about lighting as it was a basic test piece. To get them properly lit, I'd redo them using the scene lighting. I was also considering the use of some sort of composite as well. There are pros and cons to each method. It's easier to get the lighting right with composites, but then you're stuck with the crowd in place...unless you do multiple composites. Billboards are more flexible with placement, but the lighting might end up off in certain positions in a scene... kinda depends on the scene. But, it was an interesting experiment and I learned something, so useful in it's own right. My thinking was that for this particular location in a CSP sense, you might want the male stripper(s) as part of finales, and therefore it would make sense to have them somewhere in the main scenes. Speaking of finales, I'm still clueless about a theme for the office, if anyone has any ideas.

And you're welcome, Swag

If you've got the money, a 12gb vid card will do wonders, even an old 3060 like mine. 32gb ram will be fine, too, and the CPU doesn't matter anywhere near as much if the vid card is handling the rendering.

Here is a link to a YT video for creating billboards. As for the cosplay set, I've not done any further work on it as I've been trying to help fill out the office. Mary's main renders are now done and I've just the composites left to to do.

Windows update went badly wrong and left the system glitchy... Sigh