Reach up

After a bit of tweaking I'm adding the final submission, mostly due to time constraints. Thank you for opportunity to check what's new in blender and what I can do after such a long time not using it. May the best win!

On the left is what I'm posting as a final version, on the right you may see the previous one. I've only changed the composition through focus length of camera (from default to 45mm). Seems more interesting to me. And as no one did say anything, then I'm let with my thoughts alone ;)

It looks like the first final submission. Some details may and most likely will change. But for now, whats your thoughts people?

Raw and postprocessed. Raw render was done yesterday, so in the meanwhile I've iterated on the bg and added a bit of displacement to make the sand more interesting and varied.

There you go, photoshop. Bland raw image and some passes mixed and added together to make it all pop. I appreciate the process view thing in here.

Test raw render (128 samples and denoiser, 1080p) will end up today if times allow the next day will bring me testing the cryptomatte and colour correction. What do you think?

(*-* ) No particles in preview, but that still blows my mind.

There is a great thing that I've just discovered now. If you select a camera and mirror it (Ctrl+M and then X) in rendered mode, then it flips the compo, so you can check if it goes well.

Ahh, materials! I'm amazed by the new Principled BDSF workflow. It seems to be just plug-and-play kind of deal to make believable things. While thinking about this entry I've decided not to go far and limit myself to 5ish materials and do them decently.

Sand is just a particle system made out of Principled BDSF shader and some dozen of octahedron particles to mimic the real thing.

At the drawing stage, I do not care about the quality of the sketch. Just to grasp the idea. In that case, it's a candid close-up of a crab climbing on a small plastic bucket. Blender 2.8 is downloading, and I think that this sort of thing will be good to explore what's new, and I've already read about some exciting features. Let's see what the day will bring.

Google: summer, beach, crab, bucket and throw it all into pureref. The digital reference comes indispensable if you are far away from the real deal. It will never cease to amaze me that reaching out for these things is so simple.

First look at Blender 2.8, it is familiar, yet different. After some tweak, I was able to block out the scene with some basic shapes. I love the new viewport capabilities from first sight.

No rocket science applied, just pulling and pushing the verts of basic objects. Crab was made from extruded planes to overlaying image (import images add-on is great for that, it puts the pics on the scene, so you can blueprint your geometry off them.

In my case, it starts with a sharp pencil and a piece of paper.  Pouring these little thumbnails without guilt to check what works for me and think through the next steps.

Yes, it is so cold. Picking on summer topic contest hopefully will warm the things up.