Sammie lets his more reclusive forest pals know that he brought a tasty mushroom for dinner!
==AMY’S NOTES==
When I started working on this, I wanted Sammie to be bringing a mushroom to a creature pal, but none of the creatures I tried looked quite right, for various reasons. So now the creature is relegated to being off screen (and in your imagination!).
In the process I tried several different forest settings, but nothing looks as good or renders as quickly as this set from Stonemason, which is remarkable b/c it’s one of the most peculiar sets I’ve ever worked with. If you own it and have ever pulled back the camera, you know what I mean. Also, parts of the ground are missing, there aren’t many clear spots suitable for characters, and you can’t hide that one plant in the way of the camera w/o hiding the ones you want to show. And yet… I love it and would buy it again!
I do wish I better understood why some scenes with plants render fairly quickly and some are so dreadfully slow. I have a theory that when plant leaves have a lot of surface area that’s made transparent with a map, that makes them render more slowly than when it’s only the edges of the surface that are transparent (like with hair). Fully modeled leaves work best of all, but those are hard to find, possibly due to the common perception that high poly counts cause more problems than trans maps. I do not find that to be true. For me, the main thing that slows down a scene in preview is having lots of conforming items, and the main thing that slows down a render is lots of trans maps. Switching to depth map shadows is faster, but of course the shadows aren’t as nice.
Rendered in March 2022 using Firefly in Poser Pro 11.3 for Mac at 2048 x 1152 pixels. DOF and DepthCue atmosphere enabled.
SCENE CREDITS: Return to the Enchanted Forest by Stonemason; RDNA Morphing Mushroom.
CHARACTER CREDITS: K4 with Sammie character by Shaaelia; Overalls by Sparky; Tee from K4 Basic Wear with mats from pd-Dirty Pretty; Hr-149 by Ali; Flutterby Wings by Faerie Dreams.