Hi, I’ve been playing with volumetric lights and I thought of how it would look the resting place of this forgotten statue, with anemone growing around conforming bed and hair.
Straight render, in cycles experimental, with a little color correction + lens distortion + glare on compositor.
Barnacles are totally procedural, the mesh is created using a displace modifier with a procedural texture. Material is all procedural texture driven and the nice pointiness node. I might upload later a blend with the barnacle setup.
The girl is makehuman’s, It was just a test and I hadn’t use makehuman previously so it was a nice surprise, very friendly rig (at least for a newbie like me)
The caustics are feked somewhat, I’ve placed a plane with a voronoi based texture as transparency, hence controling the light coming thru. Same could be achieved with a more physically acurate surface, but this is “cheaper” and give’s less fireflies, plus is easier to adjust.
Finally I got the chance to play with hair dynamics animating the whole “falling” of the statue and the reactions of the anemone floorbed and “hair” but it got what might be “correct” results, but not what I was looking for, so after lots of tests, I combed to my liking… 
The statue’s material is based on a node-group posted by Michaelis for a great sculpture of his, it was quite simple yet effective, so I added a procedural bump and some simple lichen material pointiness driven and it was nice to go.
Some floating dust that add a subtle effect, and finally a volumetric world to give that effect and finally achieve “god rays” lighting.
Hope you like it and comments are more than welcome.
I’ve decided to play a little more with the light. I tought of adding a quick jellyfish. Just a simple loft, some hair as the outside tentacles and 3 hair for the inner ones with a simple particle instance and some displacement fun.
Since they are hair driven some linked copies and a new comb and you have a nice variation.
Some minor tone and lens adjustments in compositor, the rest all render.
Might do some latter tests, I kinda like the jelly fish
The 2nd image looks much better in my opinion. The jelly fish look outstanding.
Great concept, and a very good looking render. Nice work mate!
+1
maybe an avatar 2 screenshot !
cool job !
very great skin shader
Thanks Jamie B and sharlybg, I appreciate it.
The jelly fish were a quick modeling test but they turned better than expected, so I decided to have more fun with them, did 7 variants with shapekeys and particle-filled the scene… I just finished watching an episode of a tv series…and this came to my mind, anyway don’t want to spoil anyone… so, here they are.
Little colorcorrection on compositor, besides that all mesh and particles magic, this time with so many of them on screen it took 14hr 2500 samples @GTX780.
Also, just in case someone wants to have some fun with them, I’m “freeing” my “barnicle generator” which I used in the first two images. They are not exactly correct, but to my eye and from mid range they look okey, so if anyone wants them, here they are, to use, abuse and improve
barnacle.blend (628 KB)
