The story continues from the previous render... We finished our lunch and took Miho's bike back to her private airport. The private airport was really a smoke screen. She did have some vintage planes there that she liked to fly when she managed to make time for them... but all those were there to keep up appearances. The main purpose of the private airport was to act as a base for one of the hyper-planes she had built. During lunch at the restaurant Miho told me about the lab. Indications were that this one was hidden underneath a city and not in some completely off the grid place. So we needed to take care as to how we permanently put an end to it. Demolishing it with explosives may not be an option as there where lots of old building around that may topple if there was any powerful explosion below ground. She told me how she had tasked her AI computer networks to scan all the cities of the world for suspicious construction activity with the priority given to those cities where the AI computer networks had located multiple people from the evil corporation we knew about. The AI computer networks were sucking up all recorded details of every construction done since the first such records were available. It hacked every single computer and network in the world without detection and got every photo and video that had captured some construction activity, be it a tourist photo with some construction work going on in the background or some building next to a construction site that had a video camera pointed that way or actual records taken by the construction company, rivals, government bureaus, etc. Anything that showed any sign of construction was sucked up and analyzed by the AI computer networks. While analyzing such data the AI computer networks came across something that fitted the pattern Miho was looking for and that was the alert Miho had got while we had taken the detour after scanning her wilderness property. A city was highlighted as a potential place where the evil corporation may have a lab / base. Miho had looked at the data of that city and found that for the past 6 years every construction done around a certain area with an old subway line going through, there were more trucks used for removing the soil out from the construction digs than they should have had actually needed. As per the calculations she did regarding the cubic tonnes of soil removed versus the trucks needed to transport that soil out, there were 40% more trucks being used and all were full all the time. And then she had also noticed the number of cement trucks were also a lot more than what would have been needed to construct the buildings as per their specifications. Also lot more equipments and fittings seemed to have been brought into the site than what would have actually been needed. So there was something down underneath that part of the city that had been / was being built which was done off the books, hidden among the construction projects going on around that part of the city. The AI computer networks had also managed to figure out that a shell corporation which belonged to the evil corporation actually owned all the construction companies in that city and though they appear to compete with each other, they were actually all working for the same owner. So this was definitely something that we needed to explore. The plan was to get to the old subway tunnel and then proceed from there. Miho did not want to use her powerful satellite based ground penetrating scanners as she had not yet tweaked them for city scanning and well the result could not be relied upon fully and during such missions there were zero room for mistakes. Our lives depended on it. So we decided to use hand held ground scanners to figure out the hidden tunnel that were bound to be there connecting into the old subway tunnel that in turn led to the hidden lab / base. We changed and geared up and and got onto the hyper-plane. The wolf was already there. Miho had a self driving car to transport the wolf around and that is how the wolf had gotten here from Miho's home. With all three of us in the hyper-plane, we turned on the invisibility mode of the hyper-plane and took off. It took us mere minutes to get to destination area because of the hyper plane's speed (It did around the world trip in 15 minutes flat, that is how fast it was). We landed in a remote location outside the city limits and then drove into the city on a vehicle we had brought along in the hyper plane. Soon we found the entrance to the old subway tunnel and we gathered our equipments and made our way down into the tunnel. All the weapons we had were non lethal but they could destroy any electronic and put people to sleep for more than 24 hours and also induce memory loss of the last 24 hours. These ensured we did not kill anyone and also that none of them remembered us when they woke up or remembered what had happened to them. Miho had also created gadgets that rendered any electronic security measure useless including cameras, heat signature cameras, multi spectrum cameras, motion sensors, heat sensors, laser detection systems, pressured floor systems and the list went on and on... Most of it I had not even heard of. Suffice to say, I felt confident that we should be able to get near the lab undetected. The last part of actually entering the lab / base was always an unknown in spite of everything. It was dark and it stinked inside the tunnel. The air was stale. We walked along the tracks scanning the walls for hidden tunnels with the hand held scanners and suddenly saw bright lights ahead. We stopped and Miho scanned it using her scanner. It turned out to be an abandoned station. Strangely the lights, vending machines, train timing all seem to on and working though there was no sign anyone had been here for years. It probably was a forgotten subway station in this long disused subway line and someone had forgotten to flip the lights switch off years ago when they shut this line down. We got onto the platform and quickly explored it. They was a strange smell in the air once we moved from the tunnel onto the platform but nothing else. Finding nothing Miho pointed to the tunnel at the other side of the platform and said we should continue on. Suddenly the wolf gave a low rumbling growl and switched to a attack stance staring at the tunnel at the other end. Miho too put her finger to her lips and turned towards the tunnel at the other end. I started to feel hairs starting to stand up at the back of my neck... Something had gotten Miho's and the wolf's attention and that meant trouble was heading our way.... The element of surprise seems to have gone up in smoke... The story will continue from the next render...

This is another one of my rare non daylight renders. Though I am pretty good at lighting such scenes (You can take a look at Come here... to see another example of that), I hate how Miho's skin textures looks under such lighting. I really do like to light up sets in Octane. The lights render beautifully and realistically. The sign boards, adverts and train timetables look pretty good here in my opinion. I modified almost all of the other textures of the station to make them better. Mixing the original textures with other metallic materials to give the original dull surfaces some glint and shine. Only the wall textures I did not touch as they were ok. I added a bit of mist / steam to the platform floor. I am still not really happy with Miho's skin texture under this kind of lighting but at least she looks better than in my previous non daylight renders of her. I need to spent some quality time creating a proper skin shader for her that works for her under these lights. For Miho's shorts and Tee, I took care that there were no poke through and also that the Tee was not intersecting with the belt or the shorts. I used Zev0's Fit Control (found @ D) to shorten the length of the Tee so that the bottom edge was just above the belt area. I also hid the shorts belt loops as they intersected with the belt prop and the belt prop anyway had its own loops. If anything I can't fix using these tools, I will export them to ZBrush to fix them there. Btw. the Station is Cyberpunk Subway Station by Polish (available @ D). I had fun doing this scene :). Took me many hours to get everything as I wanted it. But am happy with how it finally came out. Now need to figure out what the next scene is going to be.

I just re-rendered this and updated it. It is the same render but I was tweaking Miho's skin shader and finally got the same shader to work for both daylights and indoor lighting. This is an update with that updated skin shader being used on Miho. I still will be tweaking it further but at least it is better than before. I had also changed the wolf's hair shader yesterday to add a bit more translucency and shine. The last update had made the hair too matte. So using that too here