/3/ - 3DCG

>>699465
The smart way of doing it is thru customization that alters the outline and visual impact of samey content to make it look diverse and varied.
It works as long as you are doing bland stuff that isn't so specific it becomes highly distracting and obvious what you're doing.

Need to fill an entire city with people? make like 5 sets of forgettable leg garments and 5 sets of forgettable upper garments and a few bland everyday head variations and randomize between
these and do different color swaps and it'll be good for making crowds of 100's of people look fairly believable.

If you did the same with very flamboyant unique outfits and highly attractive faces the illusion would shatter.
Also if you're an indie dev people will forgive you for tricks like stretching assets thin. The Pokemon backlash is directed at a AAA dev and different.

Soldiers in uniform can also easily be combined so that everyone you encounter looks a bit like their own character instead of a lazy instance
as long as you have a few different gear layouts, helmets and camouflages etc to swap between.

These old goblins from a personal project of mine highlights how much variation even a very small number of swaps can give.

The legs, arms, torsos where all interchangeable with one another, They where further supposed to wear interchangeable pieces of armor
and gear on top of these bases to break up the outline and cloak how low effort reskins of the same simplistic 'jumpsuit' mesh they all where.