WIP images. (Patreon)

It has once again been over a month since the last time I posted anything, no idea where the time went, February just blitzed past.

I finished the new Keie model and rig. I made the scales a bit larger, partly to save time, and used softer forms in general. I do think that these two combined were too much and the end result is a bit boring when compared to the brown lizard.

That process took some time  though most of the time went to the environment, or more accurately, learning how to build large environments in maya (and what a huge pain in the ass it is when compared to ue4). The final environment will be a bit different, when I have finished the animation and know exactly what will be visible to the camera I'll add some more details where needed and ensure that there is no clipping. It would be a bit pointless to use a lot of time detailing areas that may never even be visible in the end product.

I also did much testing with arnold, maya's default render engine, but ultimate came to conclusion that I simply can't use it for this. It is a great engine, used in many high end commercial projects and I like using it but it is just too slow. Because of this I finally just went ahead and bought redshift. It is much faster and produces almost as good looking results. It is missing some things like good sss and certain uv smoothing options which is why I had to go back and work a bit more on the male lizard's textures.

But even with redshift I estimate the final render time to be around 4-5 minutes/frame, so probably 20+ days of rendering.

I still need to make clothes for these characters before I can really start animating them.

Also have to simulate better water, the current one is pretty bad.

Images above that have characters in them are rendered in 3 different lights, not sure which one I prefer. 1 Is a moodier, misty atmosphere which I think fits this kind of rocky river valley/coniferous forest and If I added a fire pit there it could result in some nice ambience. I also like 3 and because it is brighter with more direct light it would also be easier to render without noise.