Tech Update #11: Environments!

Hello, dear friends! Allow me to do a bit different update today, one that is a bit less spicy than usual but hopefully just as interesting!

As many of you know, I make an effort to have backgrounds in Star Periphery of the same quality as the smut itself. One, I believe that these two can complement and enhance each other, and two, as was mentioned before, I want to have my game a complete package, both hot and providing cool and interesting things (and places!) to see. So, since I have never really shown you how I make my environments, let's take a look at the (simplified) process!

The first step is usually making a basic scene: how it will look, what will be in it, and what (simple) story it will tell. This means putting down simple architectural building blocks. In this case, we'll be looking at one of the streets of the PS-10 spaceport. After I put down the basic structure (and added some lights so that you can see something), I am left with this:

Rather plain, and not much can be seen. So, let's liven the whole place up and add some lights! Good lighting makes or breaks the scene, and Star Periphery is no different. So, after major tinkering with light sources, colors, angles, intensities, and volumes and making custom neon textures, here is the result! Easier said than done!

We now have the vibrant, neon atmosphere PS-10 is famous for. But the scene is still sorely empty, in dire need of filling! No matter the lights, it is also quite flat.

The third step is adding clutter. Objects, both small and big, everything to help to fill the scene, give your eyes some detail to look at, and make it look more alive. More importantly, clutter will react with the lighting we gave it earlier, giving the scene more depth.

From my experience, cluttering should be done in layers, with more details closer to the camera. So, with that in mind, our street towards the spaceport looks like this:

Now we are getting somewhere! The objects should also be placed to tell some story. In this case, this street is a part of the large PS-10 spaceport. As such, it is a sort of city within a city, providing all the necessities for all the spacers who can't or won't go deeper into the station. That's why you can see a fast food joint, a grocery, an electronics repair shop, and multiple other stores and kiosks. It is a busy place, so there is a little bit more garbage around than elsewhere on the station. And, of course, there is a holographic advertisement for Purple Den, the famous brothel! All so that a visitor can spend some of his money there, get everything he needs, and still be close to his ship.

But without people, the supposedly busy street is still too empty. So, let's take a look at that and make us some NPCs!

I generally keep a number of rather raw, basic characters for scenes like this. However, as there will be some people up close, I still need to make a few more detailed ones.

Characters like these serve two purposes: to make the scene alive and to test-run some potential side characters for the future. These are all still very raw, without the detailed work I put into my main characters. But still, if some of these raise some interest, they might later become much more!

So, with that in mind, I make characters that are spicier, like the busty shopkeeper, the billboard lady, or the fast food visitor:

I make weirder/funny/alien characters:

I make both grizzled space mercenaries and femboys:

Or romantic asteroid miner couple for the background:

And many more. I keep these models simple, with little detail to optimize the rendering process.

I finally put them all to our scene, pose them and do some last-minute changes with the environment, then render the scene and do all the post-work, and that leaves me with this:

(you can right-click and open the image in a new tab for full resolution!)

So, that's a simplified way of making my backgrounds. There is a lot more work going on under the hood, but these are less visually appealing activities (like making textures or doing post-work), so I won't bore you with these!

During your adventures in R6.5, you will see multiple new environments, all made with the same workflow!

That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed this little different tech update!

Have a fantastic rest of the day/night, and until next time, take care, friends!