Ice Age scene

[Dune]

I'm doing this as a gift to a small museum, but it has to reflect reality. So I'm not sure about a lot of things yet; the greenery fitting together (have to choose either fall or spring anyway), the misty distance (it's supposed to be a quite dry era, but I like this more than a harsh blue sky, which I had before), and the Neanderthals wandering at the base of a glacier (they were here at the time, but did they wander near the glacier?).
I was also thinking about their 'clothing', as even on a modern glacier, it needn't be awfully cold, on a nice summer's day one can wear just a shirt (and trousers ). And they were really tough, so how much clothing is expected?

There's some distant greenery on ice chunks that need to be removed, and as it's to be printed at 190x120cm, so the ground needs finer detail.

Any comments are welcome!

[mhaze]

Great Ice, really realistic. The woman and right hand man poses look odd!

[Hannes]

I like it very much. Especially the glacier. Maybe the poses of the characters Mick mentioned are indeed slightly exaggerated, but nevertheless they look fantastic.

[Dune]

Thanks guys. Indeed I hesitate about those people. I may have to make (or choose) better characters.

[Stormlord]

The left one, seems to pee.... at a first glance...
The big one inside the group of three (left hand side) looks best. Very natuaral apperance in face and in clothing.

Your ice is also really realistic. It looks very good with these dust and debris lanes inside.
Maybe a little reflection on top would add more realism. This way it looks a little bit like dry chalk (But nevertheless a very good ice/snow material!).

STORMLORD

[mhaze]

Ice can lose it's reflectiveness because of dust sticking to the surface in the wind.

[Dune]

Actually I took  it out because I intended to render by Path tracer, and displacement and reflections take ages. But maybe I'll render it by standard renderer after all, or partially and blend.

[masonspappy]

It looks great!  Only thing I have a question about (and this is a nit so please take it as such) but wouldn't the neanderthals have had  prominent facial hair?

[DocCharly65]

Very great work!

If you don't want to change at the pose of the second woman from the right, she could watch a passing hawk or buzzard. But if you fill the right part of the picture, I think  you'd need some stuff on the left as balance.

[Dune]

I don't really know about facial hair. Perhaps nobody does. Perhaps even the women also had facial hair, or remains of it. There are some guys in this country (the Kennis brothers) who make scinetifically based reconstructions in wax, and they don't always show facial hair. But the big guy has a thin beard. They were apt enough to use razorsharp flints and cut their hair if it bothered them. Then again, if they venture out near a glacier, a lot of hair would be handy. So it's hard to say.

This freshman (made yesterday) does have a beard

About the composition; I like the line of view going up from below left from the rock debris to the group of people and the high glacier outcrop. But I could put something there, like a skull or so. The group will change anyway, I need better characters. I'm still a bit mean with the hairs on the skins, as they easily get into 100MB, but perhaps I shouldn't mind.

[Hannes]

For let's say furry elements on clothing you could also use populations of hair (or maybe differently colored grass clumps?), if you don't need too much control about "growing direction". Should be less memory consuming.

[Dune]

I could try that, but populating is a bit awkward, because most are on a vertical plane. But it could work with a rotated pop. Good idea anyway.

[SILENCER]

Neanderthalman_walk_4-sample.jpg


Homeboy looks blown out on Fentanyl

[Dune]

Yeah, they lived on herbs

[Dune]

Another iteration with a slight DOF. The PT part took almost 3 hours before I stopped it, even without any reflectivity, while the complete RT render took 27 minutes. Quite a difference, and I wonder why. And I wonder if it's worth doing PT (final needing to be 4x as large as this as well.)

What do you think of this version, guys?