Reply To: Halloween Challenge 2021 WIP- Rat Invasion

This is how far I am currently am and the numerous places I am confused and stuck.

I am using cycles to render, which is a pain.  I am used to the speed  of EVEE, this takes 10 plus minutes to render one frame vs a couple of seconds.  The shadows worked better and  it is what is covered first in the lighting  course.

I read some about compositing an image, have absolutely no art or photography background.  This is my takeaway from  that, viewer will first look the larger rat, due  to its size and motion.  The red tongue teeth also stand out.  From there the eye should be drawn  down to the other rats.   Going to add more water droplets around the large rat to attract the eye to the large rat also.

The large rat is set up as depth of field, I like the way it blurs some of the things in the image.

The world is set up as a volume in and attempt  to set up god rays, only worked so so. There is a plane in  the window with random sections deleted to do this and to add some more shadows.

There is a small amount of compositing done,  sort of stuck on what else to add here.  I know that I can do a lot of color correction, really bad at colors and color differences

I started out using hair on the rats,  a disaster.   I am currently using the node layout below.  I wanted to make some of fur look shiny and wet, but not all of it. I also still need to UV unwrap a rat, but I hope to get a better looking rat so it’’s not worth the time now.  I may add some hair to the large rat to add detail to it.

There is an armature in some of the rats, needs to get refined, but close to good enough  for just positioning .  Will change the position of the others, when it is better.

I need to change the  appearance of the rats, ie color.  Currently the mesh, armature and material are all linked in. Is it possible to like in just the mesh and armature and then set up a colorRamp to assign a random color.  I can do the random color, don’t know  about the material on a linked mesh.

Last issue, lighting.   There is a nighttime hdri and a spotlight for the  moon.   The only other light is a  small area light behind  the large rat.  I have no idea where to put other lights and how  to make them not look strange,  I have  yet  watch the video about lighting the bedroom, hoping that will help some.

To me it looks more funny than scary to me, but at least the things look more like rats and less like teddy bears that they did a few renders ago.  

Last question, in the last  two of these I ended up adding detail that you never really saw, so how do you know how much detail to put in,  ie.  Image on my phone less detail than on my lap top, but more if the  image  is on  a tv screen,  and what about if is  VR or AR ?

This is one is definitely harder for me than the other two I did, but still learning a lot,  now if I could just remember all of it and how to use it correctly.