Hey all,
So today we're going to be taking a look at the first few scenes of v18. If you haven't finished v17 (the first part of Chapter 8), you may want to avoid this post because I'm openly going to give v17 spoilers.
For everyone else, my last DevLog stated that my attack plan for v18 is to just focus on the beach scenes in addition to the intro and traveling to get there. So this post will focus on outfit changes and the intro and the traveling portion, comparing 3 shots from the old version of the game to the replacement teasers from the Revamp.
And the differences are huge.
Pic 1: Alright, this first pic shows part of the intro/wake-up scene and beach prep as well as a quick reminder of what Braden's beach outfit looks like since... ya know... things happened to the last outfit the previous night 🎉. So not a lot to talk about here other than this being still the pretty standard, boring shots from the original game and Zack with some kind of... I don't know... tough guy walk for no reason at all. This picture makes him look mad-- like he's stomping off to throw a tantrum.
Pic 2: Here's the revamp replacement. Completely different camera angles to make this scene feel more cozy and cinematic. We have morning light coming through the window that sorta highlights Braden. His outfit will be the same as it was in the original game-- although, I did have a lot of fun having him wear socks with slides because I do that all the time and I know it really sets some people off and it's funny. Braden also has sunglasses this time around. It's a small addition but it does add a little flavor to his character and feels like it captures a little of that jock side of him. In this shot, Braden's looking out the window and turns to talk to Zack. Capturing small movements like this, just seems to add more life to the characters-- despite it actually being a lot more work. I really like this shot, though, and I think it also helps highlight how the Revamp continues to improve at the same pace as the original game did.
Pic 3: Ok... lot to talk about here. The first thing you're going to notice with this original shot is how washed out it looks and how bland the textures look. Some of you may have even openly talked about this shot and a handful of other ones outside the dorm and felt they were just... a little "off" from the norm at the time. This shot is actually really important to the history of the project.
I didn't do this shot, the guy who was helping me at the time, Lazy Jayke, did this shot as well as the Chapter 8 opening animation that I previously mentioned and the Main Menu spinny room animation. Unfortunately, he's not working on the project any more and back then, I never asked for copies of his original files so all of that is actually lost now. The reason these shots look so weird is because the transferring of textures from my program to his program didn't play nicely back then. Lazy Jayke built the campus you see here and he was the only one who had a copy of it so I sent my characters over and just had him pose them and render the outside images. Unfortunately, his program didn't pose as well and it's a combination of multiple programs: things just ended up feeling off. And because I no longer have any of these files, the old campus is now lost and couldn't be updated or reshot with today's technology. I'll talk more about this when we get to the beach scenes because I do still have those environments that he made and they got a glow-up while still preserving what he original put into the project and I'm super excited to talk about it.
Pic 4: Ok, so here's the Revamp replacement scene. Same idea here, just loading up Braden's car. If you want to hear me have a complete meltdown, you can listen to the longer video version of this where I talk about how much of a pain in the ass it was to open that fucking trunk. But because Lazy Jayke's original campus is lost, I had to recreate some exterior shots. So here we have a small parking lot. You can also see another angle of this in the intro pic with Zack and Mikhail waiting. You'll also notice that I'm trying to work with bloom (the fuzzy, glowy light) more. We saw this in the bar originally and it's something new that I occasionally work with but I'm only practicing it on some of the newer environments. This next update will feature a lot of it because I do think it's something that can look nice and blend things together but it's also pretty difficult to work with when you're color blind so I'm certainly going to develop any skill with it slower than most people will. So my goal is to use the hell out of it in v18 and hopefully figure it out by the time I get to the end. This scene does have some really bright shots in it but when i was looking at clean cars outside on sunny days, the reflections can be blinding sometimes and I sorta wanted to capture that as a way to show how clean and well taken care of, Braden's car is.
Pic 5: Aaaand back to the original. Here we have our driving scene. These pics were frustrating because originally, I thought these shots were ok. In fact, I'd honestly planned for this to be the "easy" part of the update for me to quickly glide through in like a day or two to allow me to spend more time on the other parts of the update. Welp... that didn't work. I opened these old shots up and I was like wtf, these aren't great at all. They're just lifeless imo. Braden's eyes are looking at god-knows-what and Mikhail's shoulder looks like it's popped outta socket. The other issue here was the background. The background here wasn't rendered in a 3D environment and you can tell. Basically this was just a car scene that I rendered and dropped a picture behind it and the longer I work at this stuff, the easier it is to spot "cheating" like that and it's distracting.
So the updated plan was to just pull this car scene into the 3D environment that I had and make some posing adjustments.
Welp, that didn't work either. Queue: Meltdown # 2 in the video version . The short story is that this exterior forest scene is insanely resource heavy and I would sit at my computer for several minutes between mouse clicks waiting on things to catch up-- that includes navigating drop-down menus, too-- so I couldn't leave the computer or move the mouse during that time while I waited. It could easily take 2 hours just to move a camera. In a 16 hour day, I was lucky to get 3 pics done and the required focus was absolutely draaaaaaing. Was insanely frustrating and ended up having me create things in separate windows then import them into the woods just for the shot.
It was a mess.
But...
Fucking look at this shit! 🤯
Oh yeah... Pic 6... whatever. But holy crap!
So here we have the updated driving scene. All rendered in full 3D. No lame backgrounds, bloom is giving us a little tickle of morning sunlight. The poses are completely redone to try and better capture the individual personalities here. So the funny part is that I got shots like this done and I was trying to figure out if all that frustration and tedious window copying and pasting was worth it-- I wasn't sure-- until I reopened those original pics again to compare. Completely different vibe to this car ride this time around. We'll also be seeing multiple camera shots inside the car so that visually things don't hopefully get boring and you can expect some small movements in the characters like when Braden talks to Mikhail, he looks up to use the rearview mirror. Little details made this so much better and it spanked the old version. Oh, and for people curious on Braden's sunglasses... here we get a shot of them down. I actually liked working with these sunglasses because the reflection adds an entirely new set of depth into the scene that just takes it up another notch so that you know this shit is real.
This scene was not the break it was supposed to be but damn, I'm super happy with it visually.
Ok, well that's all for today. The next DevLogs will focus on beach settings and stuff and there's a ton of new work put into that and I'm gonna go over-the-top to show you what all I've done along with behind-the-scenes pics of the process.
So stay tuned. This next one should be a visually pretty update.