Hey! Here I am again. This image was made in Blender 2.44. I used SSS for the mantas (but i’m not sure it was useful), particles with sprites for the dust, and displace and bump for the sand. Cheers.
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I think the modeling on the manta is great! Try a render without the dust though. It doesn’t add to the image (rather distracting actually, I thought they were clouds at first). One other suggestion is to move one of the mantas so it will cast a shadow on the sand in the foreground. Great work so far.
Yeah. It’s really nice but looks a bit plain and flat. The dust doesn’t really look like dust ( in my opinion ) It could be a big-ish ball of dust ( not exactly like a ball ) going in one direction ( like wind is pulling the sand and making a sand - dust - ish cloud )
Oh. And shadows are indeed needed.
Great job so far, and I also like the modeling of the manta. Keep up the good work.
i agree with the aforementioned comments, but i think that the bumps on the sand needs to be more random, with the hieght of the individual bumps that is. right now it looks to uniform i guess.
great work other wise!
~superkoop
Are those the ones from Vampire Hunter D? If so, I thought they moved more in unison, like dolphins. Great job on the modeling.
I like mantas in general… nice job 
I like the sand-shader (but the mesh could use one subsurf) mind sharing the material?
and the moddeling of the mantas looks really good.
This is a dust test I’ve made some time ago - you can use it if you want to.
Image:
http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/4871/dustzf4.jpg
.Blend
http://www.ihud.com/file.php?file=files/130607/1181759829/dustforyou.blend
It fits for animating (it has quite long render though…) Here is a small animation I have made with it:
Those mantas are awesome! Scene just need some improving…