The story continues from the previous render.... Miho got into the inner building without any of the mercenaries challenging her. They thought if the ones at the gate had let her through, then she was ok and in any case, they all were under her spell.... They opened the door for her and she stepped in. Inside was a bar and was filled with many criminals and corrupt politicians. Suddenly they all noticed her and the conversation died completely... only the music played in the background.... They too were mesmerized by her. They all watched her as she continued walking to a door guarded by more armed mercenaries with a big sign which said private. Here too the guards opened the door for her even though they had strict instructions to not let anyone in unless the arms dealer told them too. Inside was a bit surreal scene for Miho. The arms dealer was sitting in the middle of a vast room bathed in light with mercenaries standing guard along the wall on 3 sides. He sat on a single chair on a raised platform in the center of the room. There was 2 serving girls placing a fresh bottle of alcohol and a glass in front of him. Miho also noticed his right hand man standing there plus his 2 companions. She had seen photos of all of them taken via her satellite surveillance of this place. When the door had opened, everyone in the room was a bit startled as no one expected them to be disturbed without the arms dealers permission and the serving girls quickly stepped off the platform. The arms dealer was very annoyed for being disturbed like this and the girls knew he was bound to shoot someone just for the heck of it and they did not want to be the target. But then the arms dealer's eyes settled on this girl walking towards him looking extremely gorgeous and he too like everyone else in the room could not take his eyes off her. Miho walked straight to the raised platform in the center, kneeled over the coffee table, put one hand on the arms dealers knees and with the other grabbed his tie and pulled him towards her and looked into his eyes with her seductive eyes.... The others in the room were completely shocked at the sight. They knew the arms dealer shot people in the knee if anyone disturbed him or touched him in front of others. Even his companions never dared to do what Miho had just done.... The arms dealer simply sat there frozen... He wanted to say something but his mouth moved but no words came out.... He was totally under Miho's charm and control. The serving girl in the center was actually an undercover agent who had been trying to get close to the arms dealer for months now so that she could get to the compromising ledger but without any luck up til now. She was amazed at how Miho had just walked in and went straight to the arms dealer and completely overpowered him without saying a single word.... In fact she now she had a very big girl crush on Miho and was enjoying the scene unfolding in front of her... Miho leaned closer and whispered to arms dealer to get everyone out and he obeyed without question. He waved for everyone to leave the room and they all left. Even the companions left even though they were feeling very jealous and annoyed at the sight of Miho seducing their man so openly. They knew he would shoot them in their knees if they disobeyed him. The moment the doors closed, Miho's smile vanished and immediately the arms dealer knew he was in big trouble. Even before he could react to pick up the pistol at the coffee table, Miho jabbed her fingers at two different points on his neck. One paralyzed his vocal cords and the other induced excruciating pain. The arms dealer fell down from the chair withering in pain. Miho asked him in a very soft voice, which induced extreme fear in whoever had heard it, where all the records of his dealing were. That voice conveyed to them in no uncertain terms that she would do absolutely anything to get what she wanted out of them. This arms dealer who governments officials, politicians as well as criminal kingpins feared because of his brutality now was rendered fearful of this young beautiful girl in front of him... His mind was having difficulty understanding what was happening to him... Slowly crawling on the floor still in extreme pain he went to the fireplace with Miho following him. He knew he had no choice but to do as she had told him. He feared what she would do next if he didn't hand over the data to her. He pressed a hidden button and the fireplace moved into the wall showing a small entrance to the room behind. No one else knew about its existence. He had already killed all the men who had constructed this place so that no one to tell about it. There was a big safe inside. Miho again presses a point on his neck to reduce the paralysis of his vocal cords and asked for the combination to the safe. This time he was able to whisper her the combination. There was no way he could still scream for help and in any case the big room was soundproof. He thought if he survived this, he was going to change a few things. Never again this was going to happen to him. Miho opened the safe and took all the records and went through all the details. It was coded but it hardly took Miho seconds to crack it. This was going to shut down billions of dollars of revenue for the evil corporation and also put countless criminals and corrupt politicians behind bar and most importantly stop the killing of innocent people in countries ruled by the crackpot dictators the arms dealer was selling weapons too. She pressed on his neck again and this time his world went dark and he lost all consciousness. Miho got out of the hidden room and pressed the hidden button to close the fireplace. She left him there. He was going to be unconscious for then next 6 hours. So far so good. Now she needed to somehow capture all the mercenaries, criminals and corrupt politicians in this place. She needed to make sure this place could not defend itself when she called in the government troops before she along with the wolf and me vanished into thin air. Miho spoke to us over the comms and filled us in as to what all had happened. She asked me to spread the rumor of a government raid on this place among the adventures who were still there and get them out of this place. I got out of the Ranger Rover and told the wolf to stay. People might scream seeing the wolf there and that would brings the mercenaries out and put an end to the plan before it even began. The wolf understood and stayed put. I started to mingle with the adventurers and slowly started rumors of an impending raid on this place. Soon they started to talk among themselves and one by one they all left. Non of them wanted the hassle of dealing with the government troops. While I was doing this, Miho was wondering how to tackle the rest of them... She had to get all of the mercenaries at the same time otherwise a firefight was bound to start with the remaining mercenaries. The corrupt politicians and the criminals she was not worried about as none were allowed to bring any guys into this place by the arms dealer. Anyone tried to disobey or tried to smuggle in a gun was shot in front of everyone by the arms dealer as a reminder not to try it. An idea formed in her mind but it would need the help of the serving girls. Then she remembered the one looking at her not in shock but with admiration. Suddenly the door opened slightly and that girl peeked in. Call it cosmic timing. The girl was surprised to see only Miho in the room with no sign of the arms dealer. Miho put her fingers on her lips and motioned her to come in. The undercover agent entered the room and locked the doors behind her. She felt unbelievable safe in Miho's presence and asked Miho if she was some kind of undercover agent, Miho lied and said yes and then the agent told her about she too was an undercover agent and that she had been working here for months trying to infiltrate the inner circles of the arms dealer to bring him and his organization down. Miho told the agent she needed her help to execute a simple plan and told her the plan and ask if there was anyway to do it. The agent listened, nodded and told her yes (I am purposefully not giving details as probably that would be the 3rd part of the story). The agent left the room to get the items Miho had asked for... The mercenaries outside the room did not bother the agent as they were used to seeing her enter the inner den at all hours of the day and night. They were thinking the boss was having his way with the new girl who had gone into the room..... How wrong they were... The story will continue with the next render....

Boy, oh Boy ! Did this scene take time to do ! To continue the story, specially after my last render which is my favorite one till now of Miho, I need to do a render that was equally good. And I am one of those who does not think about the next chapter when doing a chapter for a story. So was thinking of what scene to do and how to continue the story. And this time it had to be indoor scene as she had already entered the compound. So after much thought I decided to do a scene with the focus on Miho seducing and overpowering the arms dealer with her charm. I had to make the room feel grand as obviously the arms dealer had a lot of ill gotten money and well he spent it lavishly on himself. This also meant his clothing needed to look good. Obviously he had to have tremendous ego to have decided to create a room with a center platform with only one chair on it. His guest were made to stand or kneel depending on who he was meeting - a client or a traitor or someone he was upset with. I even needed to make the arms dealer look good as he would be in the center of the scene with Miho. So with that in mind I started with building a room that might go for a grand room out of parts and props from different sets. Every single item in the room is from a different sets. From the walls to the floor to the chair to the table to the lights to the decoration props on the back wall. I did not load any set fully, just went content library diving to find elements from different sets that I could use to build the room. Spent a good deal of time finding the items I could use. I started with the floor and then to create the center stage I just added a plane primitive and added the wood texture to it and raised it a bit. Then I started to add the lights. I found a nice water lamp object that I could use as floor lights to put around the center platform. After adding it and placing instances of it around the center platform, I looked for a wall I could use. Found this nice wooden wall in one of the sets and added it. It had a nice fireplace and fixed lights on it. So after adding it and lighting the lights and the fireplace, the room looked nice but still looked dark. So decided to add some floor standing lighting. With 12 of them spread around the room, the scene lighting started to look good. Then as this was an arms dealer, I thought he should have mercenaries guarding him even in this room and placed them under each light on the far wall. I also added some display props on the far wall display shelves. Now the floors, walls and the center platform was looking good in that light, so thought of adding a sofa to the center stage from where the arms dealer would rule his empire. Tired a few different chairs and sofas and then finally settled on the one you see, Added Octane leather texture on it and then edited the texture to make it look somewhat dark and rich. Then needed a nice coffee table so added one and scaled it to my requirement. Again changed its textures to much better ones. Then thought of adding an alcohol bottle and a glass and also an pistol in the coffee table. Interestingly I found an alcohol bottle that had a skull on the label ! Went well with the theme. Edited the texture of the bottle, glass. So now I had the room done with the lighting in place. Miho was in a default position in the center of all this so it was time to do her pose. But before I did that I wanted to place the arms dealer on the sofa to see how good could I make him look. I loaded one of the male figures I had in my content library and then went hunting for a good set of cloths I could use on him. Found a nice set for G2M. Applied it on him and he was looking good. I edited the clothing materials to create some contrasting colors and finally settled on what you see. Then added hair and a moustache . After that came the pose. He was to appear leaned back and relaxed. But then the more I looked at the scene the more I wanted to pose Miho kneeling over the table grabbing his tie and pulling him towards her. So I posed him with his hands to the side as though he was relaxing until Miho pulled him forward by his tie. Then I spent some time posing Miho kneeling on the table. The hand pose holding the tie also took time. Now when I looked at the pistol on the table, it looked ordinary and as this was a arms dealer's den, I thought of adding a red velvet grip and red tinted metal to match his shirt / pants and shoes. Now the scene was looking really good but Miho's dress was shrink-wrapped around her body as conforming cloths do in Daz Studio special with a leg bent pose. I needed it to have a smooth flow of her skirt and also the skirt part needed to ride up the back of her legs as would happen in real life when a girl bends over wearing a skirt. So took the dress and Miho into ZBrush to drape it properly over her. I think I spent more than an hour going back and forth between Daz Studio and ZBrush to get it to drape naturally. I also had to maintain the skirt length to look similar in all directions. Most Daz conformaing clothing will stretch as though they were glued to the where the original starting hem line was and the hips. After that was done, I decided to do a off shoulder strap look so again in ZBrush did some work to move the strap of the dress off shoulder. You would notice as the top is tight, the shoulder strap stretches on her right shoulder like it should. Again done with ZBrush and Daz Studio using smoothing modifier (which I have talked about so many times). Otherwise the top would be hugging her body as though it was glued to her and this off shoulder strap look would not look natural with her bending forward. I am always pushing myself to do more than what morphs a dress comes with can do to make the dresses look more natural on Miho than what they generally look. Miho looked seductive now. Then came the time to decide what to do with her hair, let it hang in front of her or move it back or move it back on one side... Finally after another round of back and front between Daz Studio and ZBrush decided on moving both side back to open up her side profile. Now came the final part of the pose of Miho holding the tie of the arms dealer and pulling it. So I parent the tie to Miho and took Miho and the tie to ZBrush. After some effort I think I got it about right. The tie he is wearing is a loose tie like the character with the hat in the scene so I think the pull looks ok. The scene looked good with the arms dealer seated and Miho seducing him by kneeling over and pulling him towards her and looking straight at his eyes. But the room was feeling a bit big and empty. So I decided to add a few more characters... I added two girls as the arms dealers companions. Another two as serving girls and a guy as his right hand man. Placed them properly so that the background mercenaries characters were still visible as was the lighting and reflection of the lights on the floor. I gave all the characters close to the center platform an expression of shock over what they were seeing except for one who was looking rather taken by Miho and had a shy tilted head look looking at Miho with the corner of her eyes. The scene was looking really good. But there was a lack of lighting on Miho's face and hair. And this caused me a lot of grief to get right. Finally added 4 lights on top of Miho and the arms dealer and after adjusting its power many times, I got them to light Miho's face properly. I also made sure the background behind Miho's face was dark so that her face stood out against it. There is a small flaw - the mirror reflecting my reflector behind the camera. But it is low enough that it does not effect her face part. After one final look at the scene, I properly set the position of her necklace, the butterfly pendant and earrings to point towards the ground properly and not appear glued to the body and appear at odd angles to the floor. After that I was finally done ! Whew ! One of my most time consuming scenes.... It took me 3 days to get this scene done ! I think the next scene is going to be even more difficult to create. Maybe I should have ended the story with this one ;). One last note, this scene was a pain in the rear to render. Even after multiple times of multiple hours renders with tinkering the skin textures in between them, the noise simply refused to clear from the skin textures of all the characters including Miho. This is the reason I don't like doing indoor scenes with mesh lights. Finally removed all scattering and specular materials for all of the skin textures and that helped considerably to noise clear up the noise but yes it is still noisy after 11+ hours of rendering on my souped up workstation. Probably the effect of so many lights and glossy materials around. Anyway I stopped the render and uploading it as is (Still looks good I think), have lost all patients with it after 3 days of working on it. On my last render HADCANCER has mentioned about anyone using ZBrush is on a different class of artist and I kinda agree. But the thing is I am not in that class ;). I just use maybe less than 5% of ZBrush power to do what I want to get done. In fact I stick to only 5 brushes to do almost everything I need to for now - Inflate (deflate) / Move / Move Topography / Move Elastic / Smooth and that is it. So it is not that hard to use ZBrush to do the object manipulation (same mesh) and I think there is a reduced functionality version which is a lot cheaper and probably would have better suited me but when I had bought it there was only one expensive full version of it. I do plan to learn it specially to create objects but as of now no time. I also want to create clothing for Miho... and still haven't started after more than a year of having the tools to do so.... I agree with him, there is no do over in life.... and time is always of essence and once lost cannot be found again.... I have some regrets in life... but at least for now, I am trying to dedicate more time to learning more things I like and not just getting bogged down with work life....

To drape the dress over Miho in that natural way, I used ZBrush like I had mentioned. And I had also mentioned I did a lot of back on forth between Daz Studio and ZBrush to get the draping properly done. If you are wondering why I needed to get back to Daz Studio to get the dress to drape properly, well, when you tug and pull / push the mesh in ZBrush sometimes you introduce uneven edges at the edge of the dress that is a pain to correct in ZBrush. I found while experimenting that whenever I got uneven edges, if I exported it back to Daz Studio and then rerun the smoothing modifier, it corrected the edges and made them even. And then I could re-export it back to ZBrush to continue the changes. And hence the back and forth between ZBrush and Daz Studio to get the proper draping and smooth edges and stretched looks.