Sinking Archaeologist (22nd pic added)

[Aiko]

Thanks for the helpful feedback. I'm not quite sure yet how I could have done this sequence differently so Lara's actual depth would have been more apparent, but I'll figure something out. Always trying to learn and improve.

That aside, Lara's struggles continue...

[Aiko]

Aaaaaaand No 7.

[muckerman_01]

Aaaaaaand No 7.

Nice!

This series continues to amaze, inspire and intrigue. With every pic I can't wait to see what happens next.

Will Lara escape? Part of me hopes so... on the other hand I also want to see her submerge!

Please please please can she go under but then escape?

[water_bug_62208]

In Image 6, I like how you conveyed Lara's stubborn determination and resilience as she presses forward in her efforts to escape in spite of sinking even deeper into the mud. The expression in her face shows her focus and confidence in getting out. Then in Image 7, there appears to be a slight bit of, "OH S#%&!" in her facial expression as her efforts to move forward are thwarted by the thickness and suction of the mire as she finds herself settling further into the depths of the quicksand.

Thanks for sharing!

[Kingsmythe]

Great work, Aiko. That's pretty great stuff there.

[Aiko]

Thank you for the praise, everyone! Stay tuned for more. This is not over yet.

And now I am about to get into some technical details that nobody who does not do 3D rendering will care about...

The expressions and poses in this well-conceived series are marvelous. You also did a fantastic job on the mud cover on her skin and the little depressions in the quicksand/mud. The only thing I wonder about is the surface of the quicksand. What did you use for that? Are you at all working with displacement maps?

Compared to the mud on skin you did in the Wilderness Hike series, my approach is really pretty basic. I just clone the figure, replace the clone's skin surfaces with my mud shader and then add a Push Weight modifier to it and edit that to have the parts that are covered out mud outside the original figure while the rest hidden inside. All done inside Daz. No textures or other maps edited in other applications involved.

The shader I use for the surface is my own Shader mixer creation. It is purely procedural using 3 Perlin noise bricks for color and bumps. I have tried using displacement (also based on Perlin noise) in the shader as well but that has led to some weird artifacts when I combined it with the D-formers so I turned that off for this series. However I do intend to look into that again sometime. But for now the surface geometry is perfectly flat except for where I manually applied D-formers.

[Aiko]

Thank you for sharing your tricks! That is obviously really interesting for me. Maybe we should start a thread for 3D shop talk.

I am working with geometry shells and a modded version of the "Dirt Shader" (have to look up what that is called). I've never used shader mixer. Is that easy to learn? Is the mud a primitive? How many segments does it have?

I don't mind sharing my experiences with Daz and other tools. It may take a while for me to get around to it, but I would definitely participate in a thread about this topic.

Whether Shader mixer is easy for you to learn depends on your prior experience with shaders If you know your way around the Uber shader, you have already seen a lot of what Iray shaders can do. But that also means that Uber is one of the most complex shaders out there because it tries to cover a multitude of options. You can load any shader into the shader mixer to see what bricks it is made of, but don't start by looking at Uber.

The quicksand surface used to be a plane with 512 divisions. In the upcoming picture I replaced it with a cube for reasons you may soon see...

[Aiko]

It's been a while. I have been experimenting with various ways to give you a better idea what's going on underneath the surface there. And this is what I eventually came up with.

If you don't see what I mean you are either not viewing it full-size or you are too impatient (Stare at it! Use your x-ray vision!! ) or you are using Internet Explorer / Edge.

[bogbud]

Very cool and my Chrome is showing the animation properly.
Poor Lara, she is in real danger now. I have to admit, that is quite my favorite depth...

[MichaelL_Photo]

I have been super impressed with this project - and my Firefox browser also shows your animation! Great concept.

Thanks for sharing.

Michael