More mushroom type of madness
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The weather is too good for sitting in front of the computer right now, so I’m further thinking about the final composition. Not easy, especially since it needs to be a real time model…
Time for more super ugly sketches.
In the second one, there is a glimpse of a little surprise, can you guess it?
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Those are Blender version numbers… are there going to be cameos from other splashes? 
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(and some random words so the forum accepts the post)
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Getting into the scene… I got some creative uncertainty here, I hope it goes in the right direction.
I thought wood was kind of boring, and I did not want to be constrained by a realistic ecosystem. SO I grabbed another CC0 coral on sketchfab, tweaked it, gave it a flashy material with red bits (the pointiness worked, who could have guessed?) and I think it sort of works.
I imported my mushrooms, and that was NOT good. They were so flashy you could not see the chameleon anymore 
SO I went into node groups to change the hue/value for all of them and so on. I chose pretty harsh colors here which makes maintaining a certain harmony difficult. I’d also like that the chameleon reflects it environment. And let’s face it, he is pretty flashy himself.
It gave me the first render below:
I like it, but everything is too flashy, and the main subject suffers I think.
At the moment, the whole scene is lit by a studio HDRI, a basic 3 point setup.
I need more focus on the chameleon so I added a spot with a narrow angle and lowered the HDRI power by half. I am both pleased and displeased with the result. On one hand, it really brings the focus, and on the other the lighting has become too “flat”. I’m hesitating working a lot of the lighting setup before trying sketchfab (which is planned for next week).
Your opinion is welcome!
PS: I find the bottom right mushroom to look delicious, don’t you?
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Plot twist coming up, this guy looks too friendly. Stay tuned!
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wonderful work, colors, topology, composition, everything shows a very inspiring work, I like to see people so creative when they share their processes, I learn a lot, thanks for sharing, I wish you good luck
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Looking great so far, and the new lighting is much better.
If you added some glowing yellowish tentacles, some translucent materials, and some light greenish subsurface materials, you could call it “Secret Chameleon”.
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I’m not sure I like this, what do you guys think? Hope you recognize the unluckiest butterfly in Blender history…
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mabe make the mouth a bit open and a leg or antena sticking out from the side… at first i thought it was just a flower. I can’t see the insect yet…
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Thanks for the feedback. Not so clear indeed, I’ll rework it.
I have yet another hesitation and it’s blocking me. It’s time to low poly bake the whole scene.
Option 1: I could unwrap the whole scene,
Pro: it allows me to bake AO or even lighting if needed
Con: it will result in decreased resolution
Option 2: I keep instantiating stuff (flowers, thorns, etc.). All the object instances share the same texture.
Pro: textures remain detailed
Con: if sketchfab does a poor job at lighting, the scene could suffer a lot. It is also more work.
What do you think?
Another take, I think I like this one better.
I keep reworking the lighting and the picture exposure. I’d like to get something I’m happy with before going into Sketchfab, knowing full well that I might be wasting time right now.
NB: the butterfly is the one from Big Buck Bunny which I could find as a CC-BY asset. I’ll post the link.
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