Hey folks,
So today I wanted to finally dust off and share the next part of the Beach environment Revamp. No CG screenshots here but we'll be looking at some unrendered shots of the actual set itself and talk about the additions and logistics; the why's and what the changes bring to the table. Last time we looked at the parking area and part of the walkways the guys take to get down to water so today we'll actually be looking at the water part and shoreline where the bulk of the update and various events takes place.
Goals for this set revision:
Respect, retain, and use all of the original set that Lazy Jayke made for the project
Do NOT transform this set into something that was unrecognizable to veteran readers of the original. Your memories from the original need to not be trampled on so I wanted to keep that
Upgrade the textures and populate the scene so it's on par with the rest of the Revamp and doesn't look empty (I have better hardware now so I can do more than before)
Fix scene boundaries to open up more camera angles
This is a long post but if you're interested in the extended version of this, there's a video format here where I discuss everything in real time and show things off in the actual program.
That being said, let's jump in and take a lengthy look at the set itself with all my arrows and scribbles :)
This first shot is just a simple aerial grab of the full original shoreline set. This gives us a good place to start to pitch some of the pros and cons here and some of the original limitations. From the screenshot, you can see where the water starts (yeah, it's super feint because water is clear until it's rendered) but the water only extends out to that "horizon" line and then the set ends. To the bottom of the shot we have a handy rock wall (more on that later) and absolutely fucking nothing to the top side of the shot.
The red arrows should give you an idea where to start at here since the space between the WATER LINE and the first sand dune is where the bulk of the events play out. However, there were some massive limitations here that I had to work around. 1) the HORIZON itself isn't very far away and this is even more obvious when I use a flat image as a background for the sky. This meant that almost all of my camera angles that faced the horizon had to be very very low shots so that we could never really see the actual HORIZON line and how short it was. 2) To the top, you'll see a big fat NOTHING. That's because there's literally nothing there except blank infinity. No land or water or anything. Which meant I could absolutely not use any camera shot in the game that pointed towards the entire top of the set-- effectively eliminating 25% of all possible camera angles. 3) to the bottom, you'll see that ROCK WALL. That was an amazing border and allowed me to use a ton of shots facing towards it because the sky background could peek out over the top of the rock wall and it wouldn't look weird. However, that ROCK WALL only went so far as you can see by the GAP in the diagram which opened up NOTHING behind it again, making any shots that faced that GAP of the set unusable as well.
The second image here is showing the full set from the HORIZON point of view and facing towards the land. In the original game we saw a lot of shots from this angle. However, as the shot shows, the entire back part of the set was NOTHING again. Now, in the original game, I simply just had a blue sky background here; however, those dunes aren't very tall so I had to again drop the camera shots very very low so that we didn't see how awkward that line was between the sand dunes and the sky. The red arrows here show a very liberal depiction of possible camera angles here but even then, any diagonal shots towards the top right or top left had to be excessively low because the environment is square and if you saw the corner of that at any point, it made the entire shot look fake.
The bulk of the story here is that the beach set did what it needed to do for my skill level at the time but the camera limitations here on top of the older textures were going to make a set that I really appreciated, look less valued than it was and that was unacceptable.
So.
Let's jump to the Revamp and it won't take long for some of you to just imagine how fucking hot my video card gets with these renders now.
Here's the full aerial Revamp beach and it's insane. From this shot, you can see the water is extended out much further. This allows me to raise the camera up a lot higher and that, alone, gives me some crazy flexibility with shots I didn't have before that face that direction. I'll also note that the background for the set is no longer a flat image but an actual dome that surrounds the set (it's invisible in these shots) that will give more depth and curve to the sky itself and i promise the differences are staggering-- if you saw the beach parking shots you've already seen what I'm talking about but it looks even bigger with the shoreline cliffs.
The ROCK WALL to the bottom remains in place as Lazy Jayke intended but behind it is a new wall with a different type of rock texture that extends all the way to the back of the set. This wall is much higher and set back further so along with the added space and depth-of-field camera work, the bottom facing shots will effectively have 3 layers of rock formation depth to really make the set feel bigger and give that illusion of distance and an actual world here.
Top side, we have a new ROCK WALL that both spans and closes in the coast. This completely opens up that top side of the set for shots we never saw in the original. Having that cliff extend all the way out into the water also closes off that gap between the horizon line and the top of the set-- remember, this thing is a square so where those two points meet is a very sharp angle-- which is depicted here with the edge and corner of the water. However, depending on which angle I'm shooting, I can just slide that water over to cover that horizon so it fills it out in the actual CGs. I'll also note that these cliffs look pretty cool when we drop in depth-of-field. It just gives it a really fresh look with the brighter sunlight.
That next Revamp shot shows the new frontal angle. The big thing to note here is that the ROCK WALLS enclose this thing (except for a small path in the back) and basically turn it into an arena which opens up full 360 degree camera shots the original didn't have. Thus, I'm not limited to trying to make things work with only certain camera angles, but I can solely concentrate on the events and bringing the story and shots to life. It also sets this section of the water off from the rest of the coast, making it a private cove-- helping to punctuate that this is a "secret" spot and not the public part of the beach where most people go. We know that from the story but wrapping this thing up with big ass rocks helps set that physical boundary.
Real quick to also note: both of these new screenshots also have all kinds of new trees and shrubs and stuff that help break up that rock line or just fill in the background a lot better . You may also note multiple rock formations here and textures just for variety.
The BFL Transition
Ok, this last section here is just for fun but it's sooooo bad that I had to share it. So some of you saw on bsky about me talking about making a transition between the parking lot and the shore line. I mentioned this a little before in the parking overview, too.
Well... I did a thing and it's somehow both terrible and awesome at the same time but it's also the most absolute bullshit set I've ever done and I had to share it.
So..... the Big Fucking Lie (BFL) of an environment is here for you to feast upon.
The BFL Transition shot shows an actual camera angle used in the game and the stupid little stick men sorta show how the guys are going to descend down through all these rocks and crap. After showing you the parking section and the shoreline, you can see this part sorta meshes them both together and really helps give us that illusion that the guys parked up top and had to walk down to this thing.
The issue is that this shot shows exactly what I wanted. I wanted something enclosed and simple but also didn't want to spend all kinds of extra time making a brand new environment-- especially when it was for like 5 pics tops. I was already redoing two environments for this update and a third one would've killed me.
Sooooo, I sorta just pulled on sand and spun rocks around from the shore line and duplicated shit until it filled in space. Hell, some of those sand sections are literally tilted at like 40 degrees just to make it look like a slope and if there was any light shining through... welp, i just covered it up with a fucking rock 🤣. There's even that big ass flying rock up there because I wanted a shadow cast down the middle of it to give the illusion of it being a valley so fuck physics-- that rock can fly.
The camera down there shows you the actual V-shaped shot that you saw in the previous one but this set is such an absolute trash can I had to show how bad it is. That being said, I'll share the actual CG screenshot in an upcoming post and probably link these back in so you can see from beginning to end. The actual pics themselves are surprisingly good considering how much of a friggen lie the set is.
But anyway, I wanted to share that section just so you could laugh at me.
So that's all for today, folks. Next post will probably be the first CGs from the shoreline. I'm deep into these events now and already started going through trying to figure out which ones I was going to share so we'll be seeing those very soon.