Photoscanned Vendors [Re-working the WaterWorks] (Patreon)

Heeyyyy- want to know a secret technique to never finish a film? Take so long to finish it that eventually you begin looking at the first VFX shots you did a couple years before and start wanting to re-do them.

Cause that's a slippery slope.

It's full-blown BICMIB syndrome [But I Could Make It Better]. When you're trying to worldbuild with CG, there's always that question of when to model new assets, and when to just copy-and-paste an old one. Copying-and-pasting lets you finish stuff a lot faster, but it can make things look a bit overly homogenous, and if you use the same assets for too long it starts to hold back the quality of your work. It also tends to limit your creativity, because you're not making assets specifically for a situation, you're just dealing with general stuff.

With that in mind, I did some new photoscans with Nate this last weekend, making some new vendor guys to fill out the Waterworks Market. 

I'll be uploading all this stuff as assets to the tier 7 folks in a few days here. They're maybe a bit too specific to be super useful, but there's hopefully lots of little bits in there to scavenge.

I really wish I had more than just 3 people to photoscan. It seems a little silly working hard to add all these rich characters and diversity to this scene when it's just the same couple people over and overrrrrr but maybe During A Quarantine wasn't the best time to get into this stuff, haha.  

Alghough! There are lots of ways to get just basic head photoscans (including just getting a few front/side photos and stitching them together in face-builder). Maybe at some point it'd be fun to do that and create a repository of digital heads.

Also- I'm in love with this workflow. These guys won't hold up perfectly if you get too close, but they should work great for mid-to-background shots.  I kind of want to make a few more. But yeah, setting up a little scene knowing you'll be able to copy and paste anything in the scene later is a little surreal. At one point Nate and I were talking about creating little signs for the shops, and the realization that we could just bash em together in CG to stick them into the practical set we were making felt like a very bizarre mishmash of techniques. 

This is the guy who was going to have the jellyfish shop- it's the only one I haven't assembled yet because I didn't know how the jellyfish would turn out. Why is he a cosmonaut? Because when you keep trying to come up with ways to hide someone's face, and there's a sweet helmet sitting on the shelf, at some point it's going to end up on someone's head.

Also huge thanks to Nate! It's very rare that I have a friend I can just spend a couple days making cool stuff with. It's always invigorating! 

And a quick scan of the card scanner I've had in a few scenes. Low poly but works great for anything besides closeups. ALSO I was able to use the same video file for the screen as I used in the practical prop. 

But yeah so- below is the first time we see the Waterworks market; it's a shot I made back in... 2018? And this is effectively what the final shot is in the episode. I added a bus driving by and a few lighting-mismatched greenscreened people, but it's basically just a jpeg with some handheld-wiggle (even that low-poly lady is still there, frozen mid-stride). I'm so tempted to update it with everything I've learned in the past few years, and all of the new assets.

But I'm also recognizing that I've been sitting on some of this footage for 4 years now, and I really need to start releasing stuff before it gets out of date!!

Lot of stuff is close to wrapping up- just have to give it that final push and stop making jellyfish! (I'm kidding. Some days you gotta make the jellyfish).