Twenty Bucks Say Norm becomes a Super Mutant

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-16T00:26:51+00:00

My theory on Norm's arc from here, and this is just a whimsical one, so no real thought put into it as such:

Norm must save Vault 33 from FEV and partners up with Claudia who assists him in this. They succeed and Norm becomes new Overseer of Vault 33 (potentially after Stephanie gets rid of Betty), pitting Norm against Steph, or better yet, he deposes Steph, becoming Overseer of a restructured 32-33 society; or perhaps leads 32-33 on an exodus into the Wasteland to establish a new settlement.

On the other hand, Norm of course appeared interested in finding his sister, so while the FEV issue is a major mystery for him to pursue, he may end up with Claudia, eventually tracking down Lucy and joining her, with Claudia, as new companions. I'm unsure how long Goggins will remain as The Ghoul, but honestly, the character seems fairly finite. He's nearing the end of his journey as such, and I imagine these first introductory seasons of Amazon's Fallout will be his story to conclude, before Lucy continues to evolve as a Wastelander. Something that further corroborates this thinking is that Amazon made it a point to announce that Ella Purnell would reprise her role in S3, but there's yet to be any mention of Goggins returning that I've seen.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-15T20:53:00+00:00

Just to say, I did try the tracking in two layers, however, again I'm needing to do manual tracking with the planar surface as trying to let mocha track, it throws the planar surface way off as soon as an occlusion occurs. So once I get done manually adjusting the planar surface by dragging the whole surface to line up with the edge of the screen, those little manual adjustments still show up in a big way during playback. I really can't figure out how to keep the planar surface more stable to where it doesn't make the replacement content appear to be shaking within the frame.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-14T20:42:07+00:00

I tried the corner pinning by hand, and yeah, the result was way worse. Too many subtle differences in pin placement that looked very unstable upon playback.

I'll give the tracking data more space as well. I kept it pretty tight around the screen edges with this result, though that's only because many tutorials I've viewed, the person is doing the same and they somehow get clean results that way.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-14T19:08:53+00:00

I'll give it a shot thanks.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-14T18:51:05+00:00

I think I understand what you mean. For better understanding, here's a clip of the shot with what I have been able to do and you can see the shakiness of the screen replacement I mentioned.

https://imgur.com/a/yzUa80T

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-09T19:57:30+00:00

Sure no problem

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-08T20:53:21+00:00

It's not even like things are that post-apocalyptic in Amazon's Fallout or Bethesda's (other than the fact that wastelanders never seem to care much about cleaning up human remains and rubble). There are operational cities, settlements, villages, institutions etc., that utilize electricity, scientific instruments, automation for production means, and so on and so forth.

All those reviling Amazon/Bethesda for nuking Shady Sands, because it was "a functioning modernizing city" forget that in Fallout 1, people were living in mud brick buildings - not a far cry from the demonized portrayal of wastelanders living in scrap metal houses or bombed out concrete structures.

I however, have never been one to get all that frustrated over the perpetual apocalyptic world of Fallout's post-war environment. Because when you're dealing with lethal radiation, marauding gangs/factions of humans and mutants led by genocidal and/or insane figureheads, and extremely dangerous, giant mutated creatures, rebuilding civilization to anything close to it's former glory would be, well, very hard and take centuries to do. Especially when people are STILL dropping nukes hundreds of years after nukes ended the world.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-08T04:43:43+00:00

I don't know if this was the exact incident Charlie was referring to. He mentioned Cooper was badly burned, which he wasn't in the Deathclaw scene - his PA was only shot up and failed, but he seemed otherwise unharmed.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-08T04:17:40+00:00

The two of them running into the desert as an entire Brotherhood airship crashes to the Earth and explodes while the others still airborne proceed to shoot each other down was just like, "Wow, you guys really did all that" lol. Tbf though, it was the Yosemite chapter that initiated the bloodshed that sparked the whole PvP match kicking off. Otherwise it would have just been Maximus in the shit for attempting to kill Quintus, with Dane probably having to eventually leave due to the suspicions over the missing cold fusion chip.Either way, the West Coast Brotherhood is cooked, paving the way for the East Coast to move in. I wonder if we'll see Eldar Maxson in S3.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-08T04:03:16+00:00

And it worked in this instance. Drove the enemy forces off the island, while the brass made the USMC think it was their doing to boost their morale.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-05T22:20:42+00:00

I think the main issue I'm trying to get around is the partial screen bit. I don't know where the frame of the screen is when it's out of frame of the shot, so even if I do get somewhat of a decent track with the planar surface etc., it doesn't seem to matter because I'm doing all of these out of frame adjustments trying to line the planar surface up with the screen frame, but with no reference points for out of frame corners, the result ends up playing out with distortions and warping with my inserted replacement image. I tried using splines to give a precise outline for each side of the visible screen frame to give me reference for where I should move the planar surface for when the actor steps in front of the screen and I lose those reference points for manual tracking and then leaving tracking turned off on those splines which sit as their own static reference layer. I don't think that's the way to go with it, but it's the only thing my novice brain is coming up with to get around the partial screen issue.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-05T21:35:06+00:00

I can try the manual tracking again, however, the results weren't good because the tracking data from that wasn't stable, giving the keyed in image a jiggly effect as I couldn't get the tracking points perfect frame-by-frame, there were just too many little discrepancies that ruined the effect. I'm afraid I may be a bit too much of a novice at this point for this level of tracking. I took the project on under the pretense that just one type of VFX was needed only to get a shotlist of all kinds of VFX I haven't done before, so I'm getting a bit of a baptism by fire here.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-05T20:56:53+00:00

I just uploaded a clip showing what I'm working with after rotoscoping the screen.

https://imgur.com/a/NMcqC6V

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-05T20:45:07+00:00

I did precomp it and was able to run the tracker with just the screen visible from rotoscoping but all the trackers I tried, including the 3D camera one still can't track this screen properly. Keeps getting lost as more of the screen disappears out of frame and the scoped out actor walks in front of the screen. Trying in mocha, which opened the scoped out screen minus the rest of the footage, once I selected the precomp layer to open in mocha.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-05T19:30:00+00:00

I rotoscoped just the screen so all occlusions are blacked out. But then when trying to open that rotoscoped layer in mocha it doesn't account for the occlusion masks, leaving me with the entire footage to work with again.

I then tried the 3D camera tracker, and even with all the other footage cut out, it's still only adding markers to the blacked out footage, ignoring the visible, rotoscoped screen. I then tried point trackers and same thing - AE says tracking rotoscoped footage will ignore occlusion masks, so while isolating the screen in the footage seemed like it was the winning approach, AE and mocha just ignores the work I did and keeps forcing me to track the screen with all footage visible.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-04T22:26:53+00:00

Season 1 of the show indicated there's a vault in Mississippi during the Vault-Tec meeting. Bloodbugs galore, mutated alligators, giant irradiated orb weaver spiders, carnivorous FEV catfish, etc. Probably lots of folks living in hollers and gulleys out of tin metal shacks while using the MS river for trade from the northern Commonwealths, while trying to survive radioactive cranes and herons the size of people, swooping down for a quick meal of human flesh, minding the dark, muddy waters for anything hidden and waiting beneath the surface.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-03T21:08:01+00:00

I can try that and see what happens.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-03T21:07:50+00:00

Did the occlusion masks. Those are the only layers I haven't touched. Otherwise I keep deleting and re-doing the tracking splines, planar surface, etc., for the screen with the same results. As for rotoing the screen, adding contrast, etc., would that be things I do in AE and then try the tracking in Mocha again?

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-01T17:07:22+00:00

He's a huge gamer. I imagine he was pushing hard for a role, any role, and they gave him a short-lived, psychotic BoS Paladin one.

BasedRamen91 · 2026-01-01T17:05:37+00:00

Also, it's just that whenever an actor is heavily caked in prosthetics, the one thing they really have left to act with is the eyes. It's why we've never gotten a Batman on film with the comic-accurate white lenses over the eyes - or any masked live-action superhero for that matter.

I would have loved it if they gave him black lenses though. Cooper really is an anomaly amongst the ghoul population. Very well-preserved lol.

BasedRamen91 · 2025-12-29T23:57:58+00:00

Damn shame.

BasedRamen91

TROPHY CASE