Every few million years, evolution makes a huge step forward...

We know less about the depths of the sea than about the depths of the universe...

So, what might be awaiting us there...

Ekkaia / Essence

"Equipped with an almost impenetrable armor and fluorescent organs, the newly found species seems to live at the depths of the seas. It is still unknown how they can survive so far away from their natural habitat or why they are now gathering below the surface of the sea.
We'll continue our research and try to catch one of the specimen but noone was able to get close to them yet. The specimen are quick and also show signs of a surprising intelligence which makes it almost an impossible task to catch them with the commonly used methods like nets.

Therefore, in order to prevent hysterical reactions of the public, we'd advise to keep their existence a secret as long as we haven't classified these creatures. "




Sooo, it is time for some freshness in my gallery...
After some experimentation with different techniques and stuff in Blender, I am very glad to finally release something new. As you can see I've tried myself on various new things:
:: I haven't done an underwater scene yet. At first I thought it will be pretty though to recreate something that looks acceptable but then it went much better than I expected. Tell me what you think about it...
:: Obviously it was necessary to adjust the model's lighting so that it matches an underwater feeling. I have mostly worked with Blender's Internal Renderer this time and therefore used no "tricks" like GI and stuff - just plain simple area lights and omni lamps.
:: And as usual I tried to use new modelling techniques, too (or rather, use more complex shapes for the model and try not to use only primitives).

edit: A bigger and full version of the picture that I used, which contains the name, too, can be found here: [link]
Someone on a Blender board told me about that.

For a long time I didn't knew where I was going to. After I modelled some basic shapes, I found a picture that was a great reference for adding details to the shapes and adjusted some of my earlier modelling to get a better look. Still, I didn't realize what I wanted to do. Then, after finishing the upper part, I knew what I wanted to achieve - and realized that it was going to be a great challenge to get an acceptable look. I hope I suceeded in the end.

About the technical details of the image:
-- I worked like one month to finish the scene - but you know the deal...I didn't have much time (and sometimes not much motivation), so, I added very little day for day...
-- Modelled in Blender, Rendered mostly in Blender, too. Only one GI pass with Yafray this time, but it really isn't worth mentioning this time...
-- One of the creatures has 792,877 Vertices and 536,835 Polygons (after subdivision). You see that I didn't work very efficiently this time...(also, I have an excuse for not animating that thing - what kind of beast could render the animation...!).
-- Rendertime: Long enough (not too bad though)
-- Original size: 2400 x 4000
-- The BG is made out of a bunch of Photos from sxc.hu and resurgere (actually I didn't know that you could use photos of worn metal and walls to make an underwater scene ).


So, I hope you enjoy it and let me tell you - your feedback, be it comments, critiques (especially appreciated!) and favs are GREATLY appreciated
Tell me what you think!

_{BTW: I had to change the deviation's title because dA doesn't allow a '/' character...}