Prepatory work for Gadabout Episode 2 - Building the environment (Patreon)

Hi!

Let me address the elephant in the room first: My sound designer also took some days off during christmas which I absolutely can't take away from him. I am not entirely sure when I can release DM but the absolute latest deadline would be around mid january.
It's definitely possible that i'll come out sooner but I can't make promises on that.
What I can promise is that I'll keep you updated on a weekly basis while delivering WIPs to bypass the waiting time a little :)

Speaking of christmas, I hope you enjoyed your holidays as much as I did! As much as I love my work, it felt good taking some days off and eat some fine german christmas food :D

BUT I still managed to do the major prepatory work for Gadabout 2:
I realized that the second episode really misses the horror aspect that I've implemented in the first Episode so I will change that by adding a "little" intro to the movie, which will also serve as a nice introduction for Tina and the Walrider.

Building the maps
Map#1 - The factory:
So the one and only "map" I've used for the second episode which I've got from the SFM database back than is uncompleted. Here's what I mean:
https://ibb.co/gmrSM0L

The old factory misses a huge amount of important textures so I had to build a new environment in order to animate the scenes for the intro, where an outside view of the factory is necessary:
https://mega.nz/file/l7g0jCTJ#X8yRPUG74mttA8yao_C6vFjM6FnPbJsWUM2CQYCp0Zs
(copy/paste the key in the link after the '#', if required)

This process is called "scene building". You basically load a big black void map and place all the objects you've collected from the SFM database and arrange them in order to create a believeable scene build.

I did want to build an isolated environment and I think it turned out fine, especially since I have absolutely zero experience in that area :P I will have to do some corrections here and there.. the cliff will be higher and I want to have a more distant look for the montains which is not possible by simply moving them farther away due to the terrible technical restrictions of SFM :/ I think adding some fog effect will do the trick.

Map#2 - The alleyway
This is the map where the horror comes in, without wanting to reveal too much for now ;)
https://ibb.co/LCR3nrb
https://ibb.co/NsGh3Wc
https://ibb.co/FKtLVRm

Alright, finding the right objects for this scene build was an absolute pain because there are  a very few good, usable buildings in the SFM library but I am happy with the result.
My goal with this was to build some kind of oppressive(?) environment to underline the horror for this sequence.
I am going to animate a little chasing scene and I think the very narrow alleyway will fit perfectly to transfer what I want to do :)

The issue with SFM
Building the maps was more than just placing objects inside a black void.
Since SFM has a technical restriction of showing a certain total number of objects on the screen since it's only running on 32-bit systems to this very day, I had to learn a lot of workarounds and parameters so it looks somewhat fine without SFM deciding to not show the sky or object xyz.

SFM actually has a 64-bit version BUT I'd have to buy a VR Game (Half-Life:Alyx) and I would have to convert EVERY model and object I have on my HDD since Valve decided to change the data format for these and it even might miss the facial flexes for the models I use which means that I couldn't do facial animations. Big no to that.

So for the "learning days" I mentioned in my schedule, I am going to learn a new 3D program (besides getting to know SFM a little bit better and learning their map editor tool)since I don't want to stick to a very limited 32-Bit program and move forward.
Don't get me wrong, I love SFM but it's a huge problem when it gets updates so freaking rarely and when they arrive, they are so insanely restrictive that it sucks to work with that while I simultanously see other programs in that area with monthly or weekly updates and it shows in the renders which look absolutely beautiful most of the times. The render times for those are way way way way longer than SFM which is the big plus but that can be compensated by buying a second high-power PC.

What's next?
I definitely want all the prepatory work to be done until 2021 so for the next week, I am going to finalize the maps and start writing the script for the intro with all the camera shots I want to do for it and start to animate the first scenes so you finally get to have a view on some new animations :)

Have a great week!