The Journey of the Mannequins

One question probably ever developer asks himself at some point is "how do I fill the scene with people". How do I make scenes that don't feel completely empty, without spending a crazy amount of work and rendertime on it?

There is are so many different solutions to it and we wanted to find something that fits for us. So we tried, hours became days, days became weeks, until we had our solution.

First we tried billboards. You can adjust them towards your perspective with a bit of tweaking. They look human and take almost no resources. Many games opt to this. However, since the shadow aren't cast they look unnatural, no matter how much work you put in them (Yes of course you can blurry them in the background - but still looks strange). Even though many great Dev's use them, we decided not to. They felt like they were just not enough.

Second were black mannequins as we have seen them often in other games. The benefit of black figures is that they make the rest of the room seem brighter, as there is some contrast. However it looked quite unnatural so we tried different colors.

After that we came to the best outcome yet. Transparent Mannequins. Actually we really liked that version. However as we tested it, it turns out that you cannot place them that well. You don't really see where they are, especially if there are more. They kind of "overlap".

So we continued our journey. This time we adjusted the shape, away with the faces of the mannequins. Additionally we started testing different surfaces. To show, brown and dark - both not that good. Something was still missing, another iteration we were at gray Matt variants, with adjusted bodies.  We still weren't happy and continued to try on.

And finally we came to our final version. Metallic, adjusted bodies and faces. Naturally we needed to test it regarding render times. (If a character is on the scene multiple times, it won't increase VRAM after the first, but they still increase render time) and how it looks in different settings. The tests were passed, they are well worth it!

There have been many more tests and renders until we arrived. Some as attachments found below.
Proud to show you the result.

And lastly a bonus render, fully clothed.