Small sneak on facelifts. (Patreon)

I've done some updates to the characters' faces and textures and I'll post the rest of them here later. For now here's Evan's updated face(2nd pic). The difference might be a bit jarring especially if you see them side by side.

I've migrated to the new hair system in blender. The old one was the very first one I made for this project. It was a hair-card based hair(meaning hairs are rendered as groups on each 'card' that is put on the hair as geometry - its lightweight and fast - it's how videogame hair works. The new system has actual geometry on each strand and is able to receive better textures. It is geometry-node based as well and reacts better to lighting. But is not very fast in realtime because its heavy.

The ginger-ness is much more obvious now, but it looks better in different lighting scenarios. I also really intended for him to be this ginger but toned it down in the original because the hair-cards I made didn't look good when colored lightly....

The eyebrows are the same, just colored differently to match the hair.

I repainted his facial hair. Because the older one was just ugly....The new one matches the color of the rest of his hair-which makes him even more ginger. I might put actual geometry hair there if it doesn't render well, but for now it looks less painted on than the previous facial hair.

I also updated his skin to bring out the details more especially in the highlights. In this regard, I also stopped denoising my renders. You can see the difference here - the 1st had been denoised, the 2nd wasn't. (The difference is noticeable in the darker areas like his shoulders. - The lost details in his face aren't so much the denoising but the older texture.) I've thought about adding a film-grain to my renders, and realized - why not just stop denoising altogether and keep the natural grain.

Anyway, what I do miss the most was the double eyelids(the crease on your top eyelids)...I think I'll bring that back, though it's absence is not very noticeable.

That's all for now.