Layered Fur Shader (Patreon)

Zoe's fur has seen quite a development since the first animation that featured her. Not only has the density of such increased significantly, her hair has also been getting thinner and less clunky over the years. This has primarily been thanks to better hardware since the density of her fur is mostly dependant on the limitations of the GPU I have currently available. I feel that constantly increasing the density alone wouldn't cut it anymore at some point whatsoever, which is why I've been starting to look into fur shading with multiple layers and passes.

Fur shading in the recent animations has always been a little too perfect, which is why I found it necessary to implement a second fur layer that adds longer hair of slightly brighter color to get a somewhat more irregular look. I'll eventually pair this with dynamics that will have her hair move just like her tail fur. At the moment this effect is just a little too heavy to calculate, but with future hardware upgrades this might finally become a possibility!

For now it's likely that future animations with all use this new layered shader, given I can squeeze it into the current render budget. Kind of looks like Nvidia is still taking a while to release their new generation of GPUs, so I'll have to see if I can squeeze this sort of detail out of my current card without crashing the renderer. I'll use the next animation as a sort of test run of this new technique, which will be a new short gif animation I'm planning to post by the end of the month!

Been wondering, did I ever show you what Zoe's back looks like?