Race Day, just on dawn ... the story is, this guy has rebuilt an old machine, it's faster than it ever was, and today's the day he's going to prove it. This was a fun project. It started with Rex for Genesis 8, but I re-re-remoulded the face till it's another face entirely ... I guess we ought to call him Roy now. I used one of the pre-done Adama poses for G8 Male, and when I saw it, a scene just popped into my imagination. The challenge was to take the old Pacificator prop and remake it with new shaders. The original prop is by Powerage, and the oooold version I have doesn't have all the fancy new Iray materials It's fairly rusty and renders very flat. So ...
I used various shaders for this and that bit, but I also got into the Surfaces pane and just reworked the original mats to bring them to life. Am just really starting to get my head around Iray Surfaces. Then -- the ground. This is "just" a shader, set it with a single click:
The realism of this is such that the rest of the render pops. This shader, I think, might have been a freebie from Deviant Art; or do I mean the car paint shaders I used for the fingernails?? Anyway, the result you get here is a combination of the shader itself plus the environment map for the IBL lighting (a free HDR image. Try this, if you're interested), and one spotlight configured to look like early morning light. (The sky was rendered in Vue, a decade ago -- by Dave. I never got into Vue, and I must get back into Terragen, to render custom skies.) The result is astonishing! In terms of complexity, this is by far the best Iray render I've done yet. Very, very happy with it. Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours in the afternoon!
And this morning --
I do enjoy a challenge, and the old Generation 4 figures stretch you, in every way imaginable. This is a Victoria 4 ... I designed the face and body; the skinmap is Angel, the hair is Nana, and it's a fifteen minute render in Iray. The dress is ShadowStorm, with new shaders from Sveva's Shimmer and Shine and Satin packs -- I used the fabric from one and the bump map from the other to get this effect, kind of mixing and matching shaders. Nice! And the eyes --
If you've got a second going spare, see this at full size. The eyes have rendered brilliantly. In fact, I'm enjoying V4.2 so much, I might buy a couple of extra skinmaps, LOL. Sure, Genesis makes it easy, but the challenge of the old Generation 4 figures is such fun!
