Some decent time has passed since my last render, although I’ve been working on this new one for at least half of that time. Some other short-term projects had come up, as well as new hobbies. When I was nearing the end of this project the render times were somewhat prohibitive for further progress, which kind of burned me out on this a little. Since I only needed a couple fixes from what I thought was my final render, it was demotivating to nearly leave my computer alone for a long period of time. But recently, I made the fixes, looked at it with fresh eyes, then rendered a few ‘patches’ to place over the previous render.
I think I spent considerable more time on this than my previous few renders. A lot more was involved here, such as my most intense dive into hair-like systems. My previous shader fixes greatly helped in this render as well, but I also made a few more for performance reasons. I’m not actually using my shader for the hair or light effects, but it’s there for everything else.
I’m not sure about what I’ll do next… Perhaps a more robotic or mechanical character? Other, more functional, 3D projects are consuming more of my time than this, so it might be a while before I can do some more art.