big red dragon

I like to use references from real life when modeling props or environments to use in my 3D universe. Coming up with Bland-Name Products is a lot of fun! But on more than one occasion, the real life reference will change shortly after I've made my recreation!!

occasion 1: student housing

The first thing any person does when given the power to make worlds/levels for a game engine is to recreate the room they're sitting in, and I'm no different. I bought a tape measure and started taking measurements of my room in the student apartment unit I was living in. After a short while I had a to-scale model of my room and a few pieces of furniture. I uploaded this room to VRChat and invited a bunch of friends over. We quickly realized that my room was ... too small (especially for furries of the large variety). And so the scope creep started.

After duplicating the room and adding a kitchen and bathroom, the unit was complete. Then I made the stairwell (which I had to crawl up and down at 3 a.m. with a tape measure to get right) and the exterior of the building. Suddenly I found myself downloading elevation data of my city so I could accurately model the neighborhood. After making simple versions of two neighboring buildings, the project stopped dead - partially because lacking motivation and partially because it was late january and I had to use my time to Actually Study™.

A few months later I received an email from the housing provider - all the buildings in my student village would be renovated one by one! When the renovation of one building finished, those living in the next-to-be-renovated building would move over. For me, this meant moving across the street (no moving truck needed!). Now I found myself in a student apartment with a brand new (different) kitchen and bathroom. My 3D model was no longer accurate!

I decided to keep the model as is - it's sort of a time capsule, letting me go back in time to visit the student apartment that no longer exists (in that state). Doubly so, since I finished my studies and no longer live there. I think VR is unique that way, letting you exist in a space that may no longer exist (or that never existed in the first place). The world is still available to visit in VRChat if you are interested!

occasion 2: a pizza box

The best reference is the one you can find in real life, because you can have it right on your desk as you recreate it, or easily go get pictures of it from any angle. This is why I like to use the local variant as a reference when I need to model something that has regional differences like power outlets and road signs. I even went so far as to buy the official font used on road signs in my country to so my road signs could be more realistic!

Local brands are fun to parody, because to someone not familiar with the original brand it will just look like a plausible design (because it's based on one), but if you know the brand it will be extra funny (hopefully). And that's how I ended up parodying this frozen pizza box design. I turned the heart shaped slice into a paw (because of course), and shoehorned something sizetrash-y into every text label, because I'm terrible like that.

And then the design on the real pizza boxes changed a month or two after I had made my version. I like to think that someone at the frozen pizza company saw my garbage parody and decided that a redesign was needed.

occasion 3: a local mcburger place

At one point I needed a fast food restaurant scene for some burger shenanigans, so I used a local mcburger as reference, because it had a rather simple design that is easy to model: a wide open space with tables and chairs and none of those modern intricate details for the sake of aesthetics.

A few months later the place closed down for renovation, and when it opened it was like a lot of other modern mcburgers: kiosks, more static seating, gray/green/wood color schemes. The new layout didn't resemble the old one at all, and my 3D fast food place no longer had a Real Life counterpart (so sad).

conclusion

Of course, all of these are probably coincidences and they just stick out to me because I specifically used those real life references. There's probably a lot of things in real life that change all the time, but you just don't notice it as much when you haven't paid close attention to it before. Still, it's kinda funny that this sort of thing has happened 3 times now!

_{The image grids in this post were made with @nex3's grid generator. I'm still new to properly formatting posts here on cohost, so tools like these are helpful!}