Hey all,
Long post today because we're going to be taking our first look at four teasers for the upcoming beach update. The last post was more technical and gave you an in-depth look at the changes that were made to the beach shoreline environment to help increase options for shots and just really put a fresh coat of paint on the environment that Lazy Jayke made several years ago.
The one thing that I will preface this with is that the selection of these teasers was pretty difficult and these were chosen to show talking points rather than just picking the best or super fun shots-- and believe me, there will be a lot of fun shots in this update. I'm spending some extra time fleshing these scenes out and just really adding a major upgrade to the visuals and the action we saw in the original— and I feel confident that will show!
As always, if you want the unscripted video version of this, it can be found in the $20 tier (I’m doing this on an IPad and have no idea how to do hyperlinks) and goes into even more detail on these changes. So strap in and let's get our first look at the sand, water, and… well… shirtless guys.
Pic 1:
Oooook. This first shot starts off with one of the typical shots you’d see from the original beach set and sorta sets the stage for the three reoccurring issues I talked about before. Here we got the sand texture that looks a little more plain than what we’ve seen in the revamp. The water here is also a bit smoother than I want and it’s not hard to tell that the water doesn’t actually extend out very far to meet that horizon— which also looks pretty lame here because I was using a flat image (flat water + flat background = a right angle horizon and that looks weird) which caused the camera shots to always be low to hide. Last thing here is the really boring and plain poses and the hollow eyes that were a consistent problem in the original. So the original beach worked but was plain— which honestly forced you to focus on exactly what was going on. but the goal for the revamp will to try and blend everything together to make it feel alive.
Pic 2:
Here’s our Revamp replacement and should give you a pretty good idea for the base quality upgrade we’ll be seeing here. Revamped sand texture that we saw in the parking area really helps here. It’s also much lighter than the original. It’s a beach so we got shirtless guys and the newer sand helps differentiate itself from the variation in the three skin tones of the guys. Water is much more choppy in the Revamp which will help with the background. Given that we have depth-of-field here, having an overly smooth water line ends up looking like glass with its distant and blurry. The choppy waves give just enough texture in the back to remind you that it’s moving water. Sky is now a dome so it’ll give a better horizon and depth to the distance (no more right angle). This shot also gives us our first example of the rock cliffs that surround the beach area and helps privatize the beach and gives us a natural boundary for camera work. You’re also going to see waaaay more action related shots in the Revamp. Guys will get undressed while talking and we’ll see more shots of them moving from one section to the other rather than just standard head shots that looked like they were teleporting before.
Pic 3:
In contrast to the last original image, this shot shows the only other opposite camera angle we saw in the original: a frontal shot of the sand dune. Note the lower camera to hide everything behind the sand dune. That lower camera may work for this shot by itself but when that’s all you saw for the entire beach sequence, it eventually got boring. This shot also shows how pixelated the sand texture appeared back then. Aaand we just have the generally soulless facial expressions and poses from the original game.
Pic 4:
Revamp volleyball replacement. This time the guys actually put the volleyball net up and this gives us our first look at the back side of the rock cliffs that enclose this thing. This is also an example of a transitional shot that’s allowing characters to move around during the narrative and all do different things to avoid that teleporting. Expect CGs to have multiple things going on in them at the same time. Also note the extra plants and stuff that just make things a little more realistic and break things up like they did in the parking lot and having that cliff background allows me to do way more dynamic shots in the Revamp rather than being depend solely on low shots for everything.
Pic 5:
Back to the original project again. This shot helps us take a look at the sand as well as some bad posing 😂. Mikhail’s hand in the front is disappearing into the sand— which was intentional because your hands can dig into the sand. However, the older texture made it look less realistic than I intended but I think body parts digging into the sand is needed here to show the softness of the sand being very different than the dorm room carpet or sidewalks that we see the characters on before.
Pic 6:
Here’s one of our direct replacements here. With the background, we again have more options for this stupid wrestling scene rather than being stuck with just one angle like before (we’ll see a couple shots here that makes things feel more dynamic). I also wanted to use this image to point out that the new sand texture looks way better when parts of the guys dig into it (Braden’s left knee). You may also note the sand sorta spraying away from Braden’s shin (and it’s also under Zack’s feet as he’s running). I’m wanting to try and capture more motion here in these static shots so you’ll see a few more camera blurs during action shots and the sand spraying, to me, really added something that I immediately noticed shots where it wasn’t used. It helps remind us this is a soft environment rather than a hard 3D floor boundary.
This shot is also another example where you’re seeing one shot that shows position changes with the guys. It helps bridge together subsequent shots where Zack is suddenly up by the bags and not near the water. Super helps with the cinematic part here and really makes these shots way more fun.
Pic 7:
Alright, back to the original. Not a lot to unpack here other than I wanted a pic from a different location on the beach and this setting is used for several shots. Original shot here was just pretty plain and boring. It also sets up a water gun scene directly after when you clearly can’t see any water guns in this shot at all. I know we commonly see items sorta materialize out of thin air in games— even in AAA games, but in this context, it’s also something that was easily fixable. Also, same low camera angle as all the other shots right?
Pic 8:
Revamp direct replacement. So rather than the boring head-on shot, we sorta come from the side here to give it more depth. Background cliffs help cover up the backdrop of the scene that giving options for the camera to raise up and just show more. Also, got the water guns shoved into the sand here while they chat.
I’ll also say that if you were a fan of this particular part in the original, I have lost my mind with this particular scene and tried to work in some fun action shots with the water guns. So same idea from the original but way less cringe and more… almost comic book style action. They ended up being some of my favorite shots so far and I’ll probably leak at least one before release because I can’t wait to share em :p
Pic 9 and 10:
Alright so here we are with the last shot and I wanted to do something different. If you saw the last post where I was talking about the Big Fat Lie scene, these are screen shots from that actual scene set up that I talked about before. Pic 10 is actually the side view that we didn’t see before. This shows you how truly fucked up this environment that I created was with all the slanted ground cover and even the flying rock that’s just there for a shadow. The idea here was that I wanted a transition environment from the parking area to the shoreline rather than the original game’s black screen scene change. I simply wanted to share this because it’s funny to me and it’s certainly the worst looking environment setup I’ve ever made and I’m sure it belongs on the podium if you compared it to anyone else’s worst setups. but the last time we saw this, I mentioned that I’d actually show you one of the real CGs that I shot you using this mess.
Pic 10:
Aaaand here’s the transition shot from those ridiculous cameras above. The original game didn’t have a scene to sorta connect the parking area to the shoreline and this descent will actually open up into the shoreline. The shadowed area behind that tree in the center is from the flying rock just because full sun to everything back there gave it zero depth. The shadow fixed that imo. All I did was just use parts of the previous environments and smash them together and somehow it came out into a really pretty shot for their hike down.
Ok, so that’s all for today. Again, sorry for the delayed post because of the stupid tornado. I’m still going full steam ahead on these shots and I’m sure we’ll see more shoreline teasers before the update.
Thank you as always and stay tuned. More thing coming :)
-Aaryn <3