Chapter Eight remake process

This post will give an insight into all the subtle and slightly less subtle improvements that have been made during the process of reviewing, amending and expanding the Academy series.

Chapter Eight starts at 1pm on Thursday afternoon with a visit to the canteen.

The canteen was one location which suffered from an early configuration before I knew what I was doing with lighting and camera settings.

With some subtle lighting changes, added scenery outside the windows, and the use of shallow depth of field camera settings, the canteen scene is closer to where I want it to be.
I'm still not entirely happy with some of the images when compared to my current work, but I have to balance time taken with overall improvements.
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The short scene where you can talk to Maria and Holly at the top of the stairs has definitely been improved.
All of the linking corridors were created way back at the very start of the series about seven years ago. The lighting was very harsh and basic.
The remakes here were an opportunity to use much more favorable lighting and shallow depth of field to blur the background.
As with many images I've adjusted the camera height to a more realistic eyeline.
In general, the PC is supposed to be a bit taller than the female characters.
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The original scene with Alicia in the elevator was too dark and suffered from the wrong camera height.

Even though the emergency lighting in the elevator is supposed to be dim, it's no good if you can't see anything.
The new version has been completely remade and significantly extended.
You may also be happy to hear that it doesn't all take place in the dark any more.
Not only that, playing this scene won't automatically result in getting fired.
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Another example of sub-standard lighting and composition here.
Sorting out the lighting in the Principal's suite also required a whole new load of renders.
Time consuming but worth it.
Of course, I couldn't resist the temptation to add much more game time with Principal Valentine. A whole new set of scenes are part of the new Chapter Eight.
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Here we have a good reason why I wanted to remake all the scenes that occur in the corridors. Olivia Goodhead looks so much better in good lighting.
There will be more to come with Miss Goodhead so it's important that you all get to see her properly...
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With the size of these images, it's probably difficult to spot the difference here.
It's more noticable on the full size in-game images, but the lighting has be altered and the background blurred slightly.
I've also altered Bridgette's eye surface and adjusted her face morphs slightly.
'Tweaking Bridgette' could become a post on it's own in future...
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Outside the library was another location which originally suffered from poor lighting and a camera angle which was too low.
I've also added Bridgette's bra and adjusted the clothing morphs around her cleavage.
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This short scene, which you probably want to avoid, has had the lighting and camera settings altered to bring them up to the same standard as the rest of the series.
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The stairs down to the media department are used increasingly as the series progresses. Originally the location was only really created as a background to a couple of conversations.
As the story developed so did the 3D environment I was and still am using.
The lighting improvements are most noticable here, but I recall many hours went into building these stairs.
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Although these images may look very similar, they were from a scene that I had to almost completely remake from scratch. The original archived files created in 2017 formed the basis for the remakes but all of the lighting, character posing and camera settings had to be reconfigured.

Along with the improvements in lighting and background blurring, it was worth it just to add a glimpse of Bridgette's bra.
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The various potential closing sequences also needed some attention. Again, it was mostly lighting and camera alterations. Bridgette's eyes, face morphs and clothing have also been adjusted.

As above, a bit of tweaking makes all the difference. The closing scenes to Chapter Eight have had some extra elements added to them to add a bit more to the ongoing story.
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It's not just the interior lighting the required some updating. This is taken from one of the very last images you may see at the end of the chapter.
The lighting improvements are particularly noticeable on the grass in the foreground.
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So that's just 16 image comparisons taken from the 3390 images in Chapter Eight.
What you don't see here are any of the new images from any of the four bonus scenes. I've included some of those in other posts.

The best way to see everything will be to play the game though right...?

dsp3000