Alright, folks. Today, we're going to be taking a look more behind-the-scenes with the logistics of part of the upcoming beach update. Those that played the original, may remember that the beach has two different settings: a parking/prep area and then the actual shoreline. This will focus on a short discussion regarding all the additions we'll be seeing from the original beach to the Revamp as well as a short reason for some of those decisions.
If you really want an in-depth look at this, there's a video version here that goes into way more detail and features screen record rather than just the screenshots below.
The first CG teasers will be coming soon. I'm 230 images in.
Beach Glow-Up
So I've gone into this a little bit before, but if you haven't read previous posts. The beach section was an environment created by Lazy Jayke who also designed the Main Menu room animation and the Chapter 8 intro animation. In a previous Dev Log, I discussed how the original campus environment was lost so I had to recreate it. But both sections of his original beach setting remain so I wanted to ensure I could preserve those in the Revamp.
However, the problem here is that these were designed years ago so the quality of the game and technology has improved greatly. Back then, he was limited to working with my skills as a base so that pretty much limited things. Since, he's no longer working with the project, I wanted to take a second look at the beach setting and preserve as much as I could from his work but give it a glow-up that fits the quality of the project we've seen already. If I hadn't done this, we would have seen a marked drop in quality for the beach setting and I feared that would have made his work actually look bad rather than showcase it.
So let's jump in and take a look at the original full setting.
Ok. Here's a screenshot from my viewport. First, I want to note that this image will not have shadows or lighting or anything like that because this is just the environment that I work in. We'll actually see the real finished picture once it renders (so don't freak out about the visual quality here).
Just like in a movie, the beach isn't an entire lake or ocean. It's just a slice of land where you use the camera position to make it look bigger than it really is. However, in contrast to most environments for the game-- this beach environment is fucking massive.
So the goals for this Revamp of the parking area focused on three major areas:
The sand texture used in the original looked like sand but there wasn't much of an actual texture to it. It was more like blurry sand you'd see in the background of a shot. So Goal 1 was to update the sand texture.
The landscape here has a lot of grass and stuff but nothing else. I wanted to fill this environment out more and give us more foliage and stuff to build the world detail.
This is a super small one but Goal 3 focuses on the wood texture used in the fence, a signpost, and the trail that leads downward
Here's a closer shot from the original with the same points highlighted. You can sorta tell how plain the sand is here and while this environment is certainly not bad, i had a marked reaction going from something like the cluttered dressing room, to the messy wrestling locker room, to this. It needed more than grass.
So let's jump back to the original again to show the Revamped additions.
Ok. Here's a screenshot from my Revamped viewport where you can easily tell there's more stuff here.
The beach texture is updated with feet marks and tracks from various things and is much lighter than the original dark sand. You can get a more accurate view of this in the original CG at the top of the post.
Added tons of foliage here included lots of withered trees that have a cool twisted shape to them that feels like they've gotten a shit-ton of sun out here. There's also bushes and smaller grasses and weeds that we'll see in the closer shot to break up the previous grass and give it a more layered appearance.
The wood texture on the fence and path have been updated and look much more weathered now-- think driftwood appearance.
Let's jump to the closer look for a few more details.
This shot should give you more of an idea of the difference. I wanted a transitional area here from the parking section to the shoreline section (which we'll be looking at next time).
This shot also gives you a good look at more of the grasses that stick up and those twisted trees. There's also been a bench added here and a trash can to help fill things out more.
While we won't be seeing it today, the lighting in this section has gotten a dramatic lift as well. You can expect bright sun and clear or partly cloudy skies and much more accurate sunlight depiction than what we saw before. Honestly, this section looks pretty dope so far so I can't wait to show you the actual teasers.
I think the original beach scene was fun but it was fun because of the characters that we already knew and the setting just sorta felt like a backdrop at the time because of where i was at my own skill level. In the Revamp, I want to fuse the characters and the environment more and these changes just make it feel more real and hopefully that will be enhanced by the quality of facial expressions and body language you've seen in the more recent updates. I want this scene to actually be fun this time rather than the idea of it being fun just because it's a beach.
Stay tuned. I'll drop the Before/After teasers soon.