The story continues from my previous render... Before Miho had parted with us and had gone to meet Kenta, she passed us 2 new devices and said one is for navigation and the other for communication. These were specialized devices that Miho had created specifically for this island after her first visit here when she had found out radio signals / compass / GPS, etc. didn't work... Also the view of the stars and sun was distorted here hence one could not use traditional method of navigation too. While on our way to the location Miho had programmed into the navigator we came across a clearing and saw a drilling rig and other vehicles. There were 5 men about and the machinery were humming. The men seem to be taking a break at the center of the clearing. I could see they all had automatic weapons near them. The wolf was growling and was ready to attack. I told the wolf to wait and called Miho over the comms and informed her about what I had found. She said she would be with us shortly... The men were talking : "What a godforsaken place we have landed on" "You can say that again" "I hate this place... we don't even know where we are" "Well the big boss said this place is mineral rich so we are going to make the best of it" "Look at him" one said, pointing to the guy who seem to be taking a nap in a chair with his feet up on some kind of hi-tech container - "he does nothing but take naps and we are supposed to obey him" "Keep you voice down, if he hears you, you will be in trouble. He has a mean streak." "Dam him to hell..." "Where are the other teams ?" "Who knows, we can't even communicate with them. Frankly I think they will be lost in no time. None of our navigation or communication gadgets work." "Well they said to stay here and do the drilling and that is what we are going to do" While this was going on, Miho and Kenta appeared next to us without having made any sound. The wolf had sensed them but I had not. I was startled at the sight of the orc. He was one ugly looking s.o.b and looked like could tear limb from limb with him bare hands. The orc just smiled, Miho had already told him about us. Miho quietly introduced the orc to me and the wolf. I pointed to the middle of the clearing. The orc said in a low voice something that I thought was some kind of cursing and started to move when Miho put her hand on his and stopped him. She said she will deal with them and in a flash ran out of our hiding place behind the treeline. All the men were pointed the other way except for one and they were still talking with each other... "So how long are we supposed to stay in this hellhole ?" "Until our ship gets fixed and we are able to sail. That storm hit us bad. We will probably be here for another week or so" "That is freaking unfair. They don't pay us enough. Have you seen the horrible looking creatures that we had to kill ? I don't think we will last the night with them out there" "Well that is why we have the armored personnel carrier with us. We sleep inside at night." "I hate this place" "Ya you just said it" "W..... h.... " The one who was looking at our general direction saw Miho emerge from the tree line and run towards them at incredible speed. Before he could even finish saying "what...", Miho jump over his sleeping boss and landed on all four of them knocking them all out cold. When Miho had placed her hand on the sleeping guy's head, she had pressed a point in his head that had paralyzed him completely and made his mussels stiff and immobile. He had felt something on his head and had heard the thud of Miho landing on top of the 4 men but he felt panicked when we was unable to move or open his eyes. He did not know what was going on around him.... Miho signaled to us to come and join her and then went to inspect the equipment and machinery these guys were using...... The story will continue form the next render...

I have really been frustrated with my render PC for some months now... constant blue screens and crashes every day... Sometimes I am able to run it for an couple of hours and can get something done and sometimes it crashes every few minutes making it impossible to create anything... I have tried cleaning the display driver with DDU and reinstalling it, reinstalling the OS, changing the motherboard, fiddling with the BIOS, changing the graphics cards... but nothing seem to fix it. I have been using this PC for the last few years without any problem until I updated the OS in march.. then slowly the problems started and became worse and worse. Have ordered my new computer parts. Always assemble my PCs myself. It will take a week or two. So well have to live with the crashes and frustration for the next week or two until I am able to build a new render machine. For this render I wanted to do a lot more. Wanted to make it my first multi panel render... but the constant crashes made it unattainable... Hence I am uploading the one render that I managed to finish out of the 4 part panel render I wanted to do. I will continue the story once I can get the next render done.... Had to do a few things in ZBrush for this render. The loincloth on Miho's dress was kind of pointing slightly upwards and though it is made up of thick and stiff clothing material, well gravity still should have an effect on it so I bent it a bit and move the end of the loincloth downwards. The sandal you see Miho wearing is a G3M footwear so the straps were very loose and did not conform after the auto-fit. So had to fix that in the ZBrush too. Now it looks like a properly fitted sandal. Also modified her hair a bit in ZBrush to give it a bit of movement. Moved her necklace a bit too so that it looked like gravity had an effect on it too and it did not appear glued to the middle of her chest like it does in 3D in general. Final thing I did in ZBrush was to deform / depress the cap where Miho's fingers are, a bit. But the cap was of poor resolution so I could not deform it much. Sill I think it gives a somewhat feel of her fingers pressing on the cap. To fill the background and create a treeline, I used a forest billboard prop (the orange trees) and some trees + instances of it to fill the treeline area. The ground material is the Quixel megascan material I had used in my last render. I also edited the drilling vehicle texture to make them actually look metallic. Well, it was fun to pose Miho like this on top of a person's head. Not something one would have thought about when thinking about this jump pose ;). That was the only fun part in this frustrating crash interrupted render.

I have re-rendered this again. The hair I think had too much highlights. Also the color of her hair was looking a lot lighter than I started this series with. So reduced the highlights on the hair and darkened the hair a bit.