Talk:The Simpsons: Virtual Springfield

Accuracy/Canon
Though I do not know myself, an interesting point to address in this article would be how accurate (canonical) the layout of Springfield was at this stage compared to future incarnations, such as in The Simpsons Road Rage. -- Ianiceboy 05:03, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I was 3D Art Director on the project; I was responsible for the layout of the town. We looked at the first few seasons of the show (This was in 1995) and noted relationships between the various major sites. Though they were inconsistent in the show, we tried to incorporate them in a relationship consistent with the way the locations appeared on the show, consistent with a normal town layout. Additional buildings were added as fill-ins and points of interest; the entire project was accomplished in Autodesk's 3D Studio R.4 with a custom line-art postrendering tool. A DOS-based network of up to 18 P5/200s was used to render the animation frames. The Master Project File was believed to be the largest single 3D Studio file ever created at the time; it comporised nearly 3.5 million polygons. Autodesk unofficially confirmed that it was the largest they'd heard of, when they had a presence on the old Compuserve 3D Studio forum. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Threejagsteve (talk • contribs) 09:59, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

New dev info

 * https://noiselandco.medium.com/the-voyeuristic-high-jinks-of-virtual-springfield-335cd7bf7952 (which quotes this inaccessible interview: https://www.patreon.com/posts/talking-simpsons-11768031?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copy_to_clipboard&utm_campaign=postshare)
 * https://ganker.com/making-of-virtual-springfield-a-journey-through-the-simpsons-at-its-peak/
 * https://www.pcgamer.com/au/the-story-of-virtual-springfield-the-simpsons-walking-simulator-that-spawned-a-tourist-attraction/

"The 3D portion was modelled entirely in 3DS4, and the VS Main Project File is, to my knowledge, one of, if not _the_, largest single .PRJs ever created. Comprised of over 100 city blocks holding more than 500 individual buildings, most of which were modelled from the actual model sheets used on the TV show, the final Main Project File totals nearly 8 million polys. 84 cameras are animated to traverse the nearly ten scale miles of two-way-navigable streets.

More than 1100 individual flics were rendered, all using Dave Gould's Illustrate! IPAS to achieve the cartoon-in-3D look to match the show.""

- Sean Platter [Project Director] - Vortex Media Arts

--09:26, 13 February 2021 (UTC)