The 25th image for the 2023 Halloween Countdown
This was a fun one. I love the Z's as in Zombies! The 25th prompt for the Halloween Countdown 2023 Project was "Virus"! My chance to get some zombie action going on! This can prove challenging because there are so many stories you can explore in any zombie apocalypse.
I don't recall why I set the scene up this way. I probably wanted a city street scene, but for this one, I do not remember how it came together other than I wanted to use billboards for the other characters except the main two. Billboards are flat 2D images that have been previously rendered and created to save computer resources in a large image.
With billboards, you do not have the full geometry or textures of a character, instead, you have a simple 2d image that takes up very little resources. You could even create an entire scene using billboards if you know how.
I rely upon pre-built assets from the Daz Store, and in this case, once you have the camera in place, there is a script that you run that auto-orients the billboards towards the camera, so there is no going into each one and tweaking the angles. It tremendously helps to keep it with that one-hour goal I try to adhere to.
I think I had wanted this to be like you were viewing from another officer's perspective and frozen in time, you could then start to see what is coming behind all the upfront action.
I also think I had wanted there to be some sort of intelligence behind the zombie. This is why he is holding the girl instead of making her his lunch. Maybe they know each other, but her face is screaming for help, so I don't think that is the case.
I still like it overall, a lot is going on and it is truly thanks to the billboards. I am not sure my PC could handle a scene like this if I had to use characters.