Mammillaria something-ssima

Aand another super-late blog post. It seems that the more I try to get it done early, the later I actually write it. But I have a good excuse this time. I've managed to cram a full project into the class work. And the result is not too shabby either. I'm unlikely to win, but I'm still fairly happy with how it turned out.

What I find most ridiculous about this project is how much invisible work went into it. The render you see is about 5 % of what I've done this week. Iterations after iterations of particle systems, materials and lighting setups mercilessly discarded as they either didn't look good enough, or mysteriously stopped working  somewhere down the line.

I hate particle systems.

I started to imagine that I've got the hang of things. I now understand about half of the bazillion settings the particle menu offers. So, what's the next logical step? Oh yeah, let's make the particles misbehave randomly. I know it works in all of these tutorials, but why should an identical setup behave in a predictable way? Silly you. Where would be the fun in that?

So, I trudged on, reworking the thorns hundred times over, until I was somewhat happy with the result (which usually means I'm about fifty redoes from the final image). Then the flowers happened. Oh boy. I tried to distribute them with a particle system. Didn't work that well, so I had to apply it and move things around manually. And then I spent ages on the material (this is the point where rendering and re-rendering becomes popular. Where is Eevee when you need it?) The final material is slightly inspired by someone's node setup for a rose. (Day 3514: I still don't know how to correctly set up subsurface scattering. Or translucency. Are they the same thing? Sigh.)

Anyway, I finished the image on Friday and started working on professor's retopo. (Remember the guy? Slightly plump, very grumpy, with a thing for magic wands. Yeah, that one.) I like doing retopo. But I don't want to see it for at least a month. Especially when it comes to hands. Ghhhh. 

Which reminds me that I still need to finish them in order to submit my homework for this week. This is going to be tight... See you next week!