Miner Ants of Mermus

[fleetwood]

Now endangered by greed, this highly specialized species of ant digs, chews, and digests copper ore and builds its nests of pure copper somewhat in the manner of Earth's paper wasp.
The humanoid miners of Planet Mermus risk life and limb to harvest these extremely valuable nests in spite of the fearsome and poisonous bite of the ants.

Ant model - Marc Gebhart

A lazy experiment, based on the same seeded 3d/4d noise I've used previously

[luvsmuzik]

great colors! What an imagination.

[Oshyan]

I, too, love the story here, and the unique image. And the ants are blue, similar to the oxidized color of copper perhaps?...

- Oshyan

[bobbystahr]

awesome and fun, I love a back story as it makes an image 4D for me

[Dune]

Great image and very inventive. Good work!

[bobbystahr]

I, too, love the story here, and the unique image. And the ants are blue, similar to the oxidized color of copper perhaps?...

- Oshyan

good spotting even if unintentional

[fleetwood]

Thanks all,

/quote]

Yes, intentional. Please, Bobby, give me some credit. 
The name of the planet is also supposed to suggest ants - myrmex or myrma is seen fairly often as a suffix to names of ant genera 

[bobbystahr]

Thanks all,

/quote]

Yes, intentional. Please, Bobby, give me some credit. 
The name of the planet is also supposed to suggest ants - myrmex or myrma is seen fairly often as a suffix to names of ant genera 

I sit here properly chastised.....won't happen again...although I did say "even if" implying it may well have been intentional..I am a bit of a grammar nazi heh heh heh

[j meyer]

  Very nice.
Great copper shader.

[DocCharly65]

Cool story, cool render and I like the contrast between the copper and the ant's color.

[zaxxon]

Fun experiment, and even nicer result!

[Hannes]

Beautiful!! I love unconventional uses of TG.
May I nitpick a bit? The lighting is a bit flat, almost from behind the camera, so I'd love to see how it looks, if you'd play with the sunlight's position.
And is GISD checked? If no, a bit more occlusion weight would surely look nice.

[fleetwood]

Beautiful!! I love unconventional uses of TG.
May I nitpick a bit? The lighting is a bit flat, almost from behind the camera, so I'd love to see how it looks, if you'd play with the sunlight's position.
And is GISD checked? If no, a bit more occlusion weight would surely look nice.

Thanks Hannes,
I'll try some lower angled lighting and see how it does. Gisd was on and occlusion weight was actually at 1.3, but I think a translucency I'm using is competing with the Gisd values. Will try some other values.

[archonforest]

great stuff! well done!

[fleetwood]

An orbital shot of Planet Mermus.

Tried a several different ant renders with lower light angles but the high IOR reflection of the simulated copper raises the over all brightness so things don't have typical dramatic shadows.  The lowered sun doesn't affect the render as it might in a landscape with lots of ordinary diffuse materials.
Tried some higher gisd also but again the reflection causes a lot of areas to brighten that might otherwise be in shadow. I didn't judge any of them to be improvements.