Here is one of my projects based on the Schizophyllum Commune mushroom, but on an alien planet with large amounts of copper. Part of a much much longer story I have yet to publish but I'll get there in time, life permitting. I Made this in Houdini, Substance Painter, and V-Ray

This project means a lot to me, so much so I have a print of it hanging above my bed. I'll keep whittling away at it and the story on my patreon, but I'm hoping to really deep dive into it, life and struggles permitting. When I first posted it I hid metadata story snippets in the images but no one ever found them. Here is the one that was buried in this project :

//LOG ENTRY AZU-03//
I found the source of the signal emissions, such a strange planet. I'm no botonist but even I know a surface this copper heavy is normally a natural fungicide. All species on this planet seem to not only thrive on it, but have adapted to use it. I'm going to carefully study the signal after I setup some more atmospheric barriers, I don't want to strain the suit if I'm going to be down here awhile.

Two explorers barrel down an alien valley, a dreadful storm brewing on one end, new worlds to escape to on the other.

This project has been a technical test of sorts and it's also serving as a concept for a story I'm working on. The only post work on these shots was an ACES color conversion and color grading. The trees and all of their leaves/needles are instanced geometry, enough of a memory savings that I could render on my GPU. The terrain erosion, foliage scattering, cloud generation, procedural planets, and VFX were all things I created in Houdini. The ships were quick concepts I banged out in Zbrush and textured in Substance Painter. The materials I designed in Substance Designer and with a little help from Substance Alchemist.

This is a project I resurrected after a year-long hiatus from art and creating, and there are things I would change in hindsight but I'm happy to be doing this again with a healthy mind and I think I'm heading in the right direction.