Experimenting learning new stuff (Arnold render engine) (Patreon)

Recently I have not been focusing on much projects this month as at the moment I am experimenting with and  Improving techniques and learning more about 3D applications and what more I can do. This desire to experiment and improve mostly came about when I started re working my jaguar model Valencia. I felt that even though the current render engine was good, and the overall result of the new fur and shaders for Valencia  were pretty decent as well, I found that I hit a wall as far as realism goes with the fur. I found that this was a limit with the cycles render engine. the engine is great, but working with Valencia I found that its not particularly great at  short fur compared to other engines.

So I experimented with another free engine called luxcore, again a great engine but no good shaders for smooth animal fur. Using the engine also forced me to rollback to blender 2.79 in order to use it, which caused a few bugs that made its difficult to finish a project. At this point I looked at what Arnold could do, and holy heck! Rocket raccoon, Paddington the bear, all rendered with this engine. There are two caveats though, firstly, support for blender is in beta, though I can still use it in 2.8 and the development for the engine and blender integration is going strong I am even part of a discord! Secondly, Its and industry standard render engine and its over 600 a year to get a licence!

So at the moment I am going to try the engine as a demo and get to know how all the shaders work, but I am really considering buying the engine and using it WHEN it runs smoothly on blender 2.8. I want to aim to finish at least 2 models this month (characters I already have) with cycles. I am thinking the raccoon and bear perhaps, but this month I am also considering  experimenting with Arnold and tweaking and refining what I already have so I might finish the month with one render.

So anyway, just a quick announcement, so everyone knows where I am at right now. any questions and thoughts? please let me know!