Natsume iray wip (Patreon)

More work in progress! This is a character design I can't remember if I've shared here before; Natsume, a kitsune, who I've had in the works since before the new computer but she unfortunately needed to be put on hold due to her tail-floof being just straight-up too much for my old computer to handle.

But now? I'm really glad I decided to be a perfectionist and wait, rather than trying to cut corners or change her design~

Still a lot of little refinements to make and techniques to learn, I'm getting the hang of the new engine's shaders quicker than I'd thought, but it's still a whole new beast to come to grips with. Lots of trial and error (even now, I only just got her tail to look as soft as I wanted like thirty minutes ago; I've been working on it off-and-on all week), but it's coming together! 

There's settings for all sorts of things I thought I understood but apparently I don't, like how the Translucency setting can make surfaces turn all dark when you push it too high, instead of making things brighter like I'd expect. Or how bumping up the Refraction slider makes solid materials go see-through, and what used to be the Transparency slider in the old engine is now called Cutout and you're not supposed to use it to make things see-through. But a lot of the settings, despite having half a dozen more settings attached to them, are quickly making sense as I experiment with them more, and I'm excited to see what else I can do with this. ^_^

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More to come, soon! I'm still working on some other potential revisits, using Natsume as a platform to hone in on some solid shader presets I can start applying to the rest of my characters, all that stuff. I'm posting this one publicly to give folks a bit of a further peek at why I've been semi-silent lately, but with any luck, this is the trickle before the dam breaks :D (Is that a bad analogy for something positive? Too late already made it)