Bioshock - Gatherer's Garden

First project of 2025, and if you couldn't tell, over the last month I've been replaying the BioShock series for what feels like the umpteenth time, but this time I actually went and replayed the 2nd and 3rd games in the series and didn't just stop after the first one. They're good, but the first one just has the hold on me as one of my favourite games of all time, despite the unease I feel every time I play it, but hey! It's meant to be unnerving so if an 18-year-old game (wow) can still do that, then damn, that's great world-building.

So here it is in all its splendour, my reimagining of the Gatherer's Garden, the handy little drug dispenser that gives you crazy addicting, DNA-altering drugs, cause what could go wrong with that right?! (Spoilers... A lot.)

I thought I would also share some behind-the-scenes stuff to take you through my thinking/working process

1) The first pass with textures. I was trying to lay out exactly how I wanted to the machine to look, I knew I wanted graphics on it, but wasn't sure what were the best to use, and what felt right. Sometimes the machine felt overcrowded, other times I felt like there was too much blank space. It was a tricky balance, I did find a lot of inspiration in older coke machines, so I ended up trying to replicate the amount of graphcis they had to what I was doing. The only caviate for that were the logos on the sides. I knew I wanted to add the Plasmids logos and I knew exactly where I wanted to put them, and of course had to add my four favorites, the three the game makes you get, and of course. Bees! Cause it's my personal favorite, and no matter how many times I play, I always yell BEEEEEES any time I use it

2. Some more refinement in the logos, happy with what I had at this point but still wanted to add a little something something, so I went and made myself a little teddy bear. I've been using V-rays Fur generator for a while now at work so it was nice to be able to have a chance to use it here as well! Plus I think it's a little cuter than the version in the game, but hey, I might be a little biased there.

3. Enough of the white lights, let's start making this look like something that you'd find in a city at the bottom of the ocean. Some more bluish lights to help sell it. Now, I should say at this point I was going for a more idealized version of the machine, maybe from it's haydays before the fall of Rapture, so I still wanted some white lights in there to make it more like a product shot more than anything else.

4. A little more enviroment, a backdrop, some shadows, and started playing with Caustics. I like the vibe of this one, but thought the caustics just on the machine was a little boring, and hard to see, which leads us to.......

5. Walls! Yeah, that's it, I added in an enviroment around the machine to help should the caustics and flesh out the scene. I was liking this idea a lot at the time, before I remember that half the enjoyment I get from these games are all the amazing neon signs (I happen to have a "Plasmids" sign in my office.) So I thought, it has to be darker.

6. So now it's darker! and the neon sign gets a chance to shine (ba-dum) I like this a lot more, but knew that I still had some lingering lighting issues, like, for some reason the machine, up against a wall has a wickedly bright, white rim light for some reason?! Odd! I also found the space around the machine was too empty, and it felt empty. Normally this is fine with me and usually how I like to showcase my models, but this didn't feel right to me this time around thus....

7. Stuff! Now I should say I did leverage these models from the game, and aren't acually mine, but I just wanted some appearence of items to help flesh out the scene, I also fixed the rim lighting, and played with the caustics more, all in all, I was pleased with the look, but wanted to push it further

8. Details! I added some more enviromental details on the walls and floor to help it fit in the scene nice. Also, if you happen to be looking at this photo and think, hey, there aren't any shadows in it. Then two things, yes, you are correct, and secondly, you noticed about two days quicker than I did, as you can tell from the next render also not having shadows.

9. Again, no shadows, I added some reflections and specular influence on the background elements to tie them in a little bit, but couldn't figure out for the life of me why these images felt off. I was looking at image 9, back to 6, then 7, then 8. Couldn't figure out why it looked off. Yup, no shadows. Somewhere along the way my render layer for shadows opted to add every light source to it and have them all cranked up, basically blowing out every shadow by making the whole scene light. One of those Brain-isn't-Braining moments.

Thankfully I was able to right my mistake, and finished with something I love from a game series I love. Just in time too as we're getting towards the end of the month, and my unofficial deadline!