The story continues from the previous render... If only the rapid response team had known who they had just let pass without asking any questions... They had secured the site and taken the backup using the special device they had been given and were on the move after triggering the self-destruct at the site. They speed through the old streets, lights flashing and siren blaring.... Those who saw them thought they were police but not seeing any marking on the vehicles they thought probably these were from some other government agency. Miho had gotten onboard the hyperplane and she took over the control. We were still in invisible mode and we went up vertically. Once we saw the convoy of the 3 vehicles Miho started to shadow them very close. This was also a test Miho wanted to perform to see how close she could fly the hyperplane without giving any indication that it was there. Miho had seen a drone fair bit above the convoy. It did not matter, the drone could not see us. We just needed to find a secluded place to intercept them. Meanwhile in the convoy the team were talking over their encrypted comms which we were still listening on. X1 to the commander at their base- "Sir, we are on route. The drone above us shows all clear." Commander - "Good. You have the coordinates. It should not take you more than half and hour to reach it. Make sure you hand it over to Prof. Smith. He will be waiting for you at the entrance." X1 - "Yes, sir. Will do." X1 - "X4, keep a constant eye on the drone feed. Alert me if anything tries to approach us." X4 - "Yes, Sir." X1 to all - "Gentlemen, be on your toes. We still do not know how that alarm was triggered and no one inside the premises had any clue. In fact the shock on their faces when we breached was genuine. Though we followed protocol and took the backup and triggered the self-destruct, I believe this is not over yet." X73 - "Sir, do you think we will be ambushed ?" X1 - "Yes, I am afraid of that. But we are heavily armed and are wearing specially made full body armor and these vehicles have active protection and everything including our suits are bullet and RPG proof. Plus we have the drone above to warn us and we can take evasive action. We should be okay. We exit the vehicles only as a last resort." One of the men - "Yes, sir" They were all anxious and alert. They had trained hard for these kind of situations but this was real and not training... Thousand and one things could go wrong... They had crossed the old town edge and were on a road with open fields on both sides... Trees lined the road. X4 - "Still all clear from the drone feed sir. Nothing in front or back or on either side of us." X1 - "Keep monitoring". Miho looked at me and smiled. That was the signal I was waiting for. I sent a signal to the onboard computers of the 3 vehicles and suddenly all of their engines died. But before any of them could utter even a word, I sent another sound signal over their encrypted comms that rendered all of them unconscious at the same time. By controlling the onboard computer on the vehicle, I brought them to a stop and unlocked all their doors. I sent a third signal to the drone that took over the drone's control and camera and shutdown it's feed. Miho landed the hyperplane in the open field next to the road and we got out. She went to retrieve the backup device and I went to check the other two vehicles to see if they had anything of interest. I was just finished with the vehicle at the back when Miho emerged with the center vehicle hold a pretty big device. She said we got it and we headed back to the hyperplane. These poor guys were about to have a really bad day. Once we were airborne I once again a sent a signal to the vehicles to start them up and another to wake the occupents up and the third to the drone to start the feed again. X1 - "What the hell ? What happened ?" X54 - "I don't know sir, looks like we all were knocked unconscious" X3 - "Holy shit ! The backup device is gone!" X1 screamed - "WHAT ??? LOOK AGAIN !" X3 - "Sir it is gone" X1 - "WHERE THE HELL CAN IT GO. X4..." X4 - "Sir, the drone feed is clear. There is no one around us within 1 kilometer" X1 - "What the hell just happened ???" Suddenly the commander's voice came over the encrypted comms - "What the hell have you all stopped for and why were you all not responding just now to the comms". The vehicle tracker shows you all are stationary." X1 (almost whispering) - "Sir, we lost the backup. It is gone". The commander actually fell from his chair. "WHAT ???" he screamed. X1 (stlil whispering) - "We don't know what happened sir. One moment we were traveling at speed and the next moment we woke up and were stationary and the doors were open and the device was gone" Commander - "What kind of nonsense is this ??? What are you not telling me ?" X1 - "Sir, it happened exactly like I told you" Commander - "That is BS. Check the drone feed" X1 - "Yes, sir". X1 eyed X4 to playback the last couple of minutes. It had only been a few minutes X1 had noticed. X4 - "Sir, there is a gap for about 93 seconds" Commander - "You are telling me the drone stopped recording for 93 seconds ?" X4 - "Yes, sir" Commander - "Damn you whoever you are !" X1 "Sir ?" Commander - "Switch to channel Z99". No one else other than the local team leader had the cability to do so. X1 "Sir ?" over the new channel. The others were looking at each other. Commander - "We have word that someone or some group has been targeting our sites and bases and we don't know who or what. It is definitely not any government agency of any country as we have spies everywhere. This is someone / some group we know nothing about and they seem to have vast resources and technology far superior to ours" X1 - "But sir, ours is the highest tech that there is. No one has access to technologies that we have access to." Commander - "Well, obviously someone has technology superior to us. Dammit. I need to report this up the chain. There will be hell to pay for this mistake." X1 (very concerned that he will be blamed and held responsible) - "But sir, there was nothing we could do. We were not even aware of anything was happening. According to the drone everything was clear." Commander - "Precisely because of that. Knowing what hit us means we can prepare for it for the next time... This unknown is going to blow a lot of fuses above my pay grade. All of you continue on to the location you were given and report for debriefing." X1 - "Yes, sir" We were already halfway across the world across while this was happening and had already transmitted all the petabytes of data in the device back to Miho's computers in her hidden base. The data being heavily encrypted did not matter. This data plus the brain scan data was yielding a treasure trove of information with which Miho could inflict serious damage to the Corporation. They would loose hundreds of billions of dollars in funding and also would have to rapidly close all the bases and remove their double agents that were referenced anywhere on the backed up data. A lot of their strategies and efforts to take over governments and companies would be laid bare. Bribes paid, officials blackmailed and compromised, the list went on and on. Miho was mighty pleased with this. She started to prepare special packages for agents in different governments and agencies around the world who she knew were trustworthy and could use this information to take care of the tentacles of the Corporation. And to think it was not even a full 24 hours since they had captured the board member and the highly trained killer / bodyguard of the Corporation in that mysterious island. In fact the Corporation did not even know as of now that their board member was captured / missing. Yes, they had tired to raise the ship, but they all knew the route they were taking would come across places where there was natural interference to all radio signal so they did not think too much about it. And the ship in any case was told to run dark. What they had not yet come to know was that the aircraft carrier group had captured the ship based on the information Miho had provided to one of the trustworthy agents. Things were going to get bad for the Corporation very fast. In fact they might not even have time to remove all their double agents.... The story will continue with the next render...

Finally got around to doing the renders to continue the story. I was attempting to again try the motion / camera blur in Octane and though I managed to get some sort of motion effect on my first render, the second one proved to be a pain. So had to live without the motion effect. I did turn off the shadow for the Shuttlestar. After all it was invisible to the people in the vehicles and the drone above and should not be casting any shadow. Octane allows you to selectively turn off shadows of elements in the scene and I used that feature. I put the Shuttlestar and Miho into the scene just to show how low they flying above the convoy. After doing the two panels I wanted to add another panel to show Miho taking that backup device from them. Had to find an interesting prop in my runtime and apply custom materials to it to make it look like a hi-tech container. Then came Miho's pose. Finally settled on the pose of her getting off the armored vehicle with the device in her hand. Had to pose the security people in the armored vehicle as though they were unconscious both in the front seat and the rear cabin. Finally had to take care of lots of small details like finger pose, etc. I used the same set in the three renders (same as my last post). Each time loading the full set, selecting the view and then deleting the objects, buildings and things that were outside of the camera view to reduce the memory requirements. I actually put multiple characters wearing the sci-fi suit in each of the vehicle so that it looked occupied. You can see the lights on their body suit through the tinted windscreen. I did reduced the index of refraction on both the Shuttlestar windows as well as windscreens of the vehicles because the high refraction was distorting Miho and the other characters in the vehicles too much. The vehicles have custom textures for all parts. And in this I am using Miho's latest custom skin shader. In fact I also update and re-uploaded the last image ("First Target") with this latest version of Miho's custom skin shader. Will be updating the old renders with this shader as and when I find time. Each of the panel took around 20 minutes @ 4K. But thinking about what scene to do took me a whole week ! lol. Well, was fun :).