Mostly informative WIP (a lot of text) (future plans)

At first, I thought I could do everything in one day and I won't be doing WIP. But it took some time, as always.  Also, my previous WIPs were not that informative. And now I think you need to know a little more info about future plans (which are always not going as intended).

This is the new model in my collection, Auroth the winter wyvern. I knew that valve had uploaded their models for the workshop dudes, so I just downloaded the model from their dota 2 workshop page.

Local plan part
Everything can be changed, but right now I have this short  plan:
- Make 2 renders with wyvern (solo and human/wyvern) + joke variant of the last one. If you think that preview render looks like someone's else work, I assure that environment, lighting and camera angle will be different from "that" render. The idea is to create dark artwork in cold tones where I could show wyvern glow, maybe there will be warm lights to create color contrast;

- Next is to make double loop animation with pineapple Adder and armored Torque. I have some fun idea to combine two loops with transition or with a split screen to tell a little story from two perspectives. While I can't make a sound, I thought to add subtitles when a character is saying something. Still thinking about it, because in the loop subtitles may distract a viewer;

- And after all that I think I'll be ready for something big again. So maybe I'll do the poll right here to ask what do you want to see next, a new 3D model made by me of some OC from a top 2D artist (I'll ask about permissions) or new long animation.

Global plan part
- Right now I have a vacation from university and I post artworks as soon as they was  made. In the future, there may be situations where the uploads will be distributed by fixed dates. I'll tell you when it will happen and what is the schedule;

- About models and artworks. Right now I already see that I cannot (don't want) to do everything by myself and I need to choose the main direction of work. My main idea when I started making this was to be unique from other artist. I thought about it like that, "My artworks must be the good compromise between sexiness and beauty like top tier 2D artists do, but in 3D". So My strategy was to get or to create as much rare models as possible and make static renders like copies of top 2D paintings. But people don't like renders, they like animations more. A low quality animation may beat in rating middle or top drawing/render. And to optimize my workflow for regular posting, I need to choose a main direction and supportive one. Renders, animations, model work. I still don't know which is better in relations between effort/rating/income. But when commissions will be opened (I don't think soon) from that point I'll be doing one thing more than the others;

- Not stopping. No matter what, I'm not stopping my creative work. Even with university or with the real job, I'll be doing what I'm doing right now. I spent 3 years on finding my own big half-life or even full-life goal. And now I know that I want to be the top tier 3D NSFW artist who is making unbelievable quality works.

Tech part
The problems with the model:
- Separated mesh. I'm pretty sure the model in the game has a little different mesh. This version just messy af and without fixes can't be used for custom rigging. So I spent another 12 hours on fixes and rig with IK wings (shitty tho but still better than original FK rig);

- Texture mess. I don't know why, but around 50% of the textures are flipped. Model's UVs are normal, and it leads to wrong texture placement. Also, dota 2 texture system is garbage, even worse than XCOM color channelled textures. Many textures are not important and used only in source. There are no roughness textures, only specular. But even good spec texture won't give you full PBR look of the model. So I did what I could and just placed all the textures that were usable in blender. Normal maps are flipped in green channel as any game textures but the problem is that in OFFICIAL manual is said that source 1 has flipped normals and source 2 has not. On the page where I downloaded the model, it says that all models available here are for source 2. But the normals are still flipped, wtf? Transparency textures have quite bad transitions. The tail fur is really dark (I don't even know why);

- Missing body parts. The original model has no movable eyes and no tongue. Just recreated them myself. I have done the tongue in 3 color variants. I think the purple one is most fitting. Fun fact: Actually I didn't want to model the tongue with my skill, so I've taken it from the model where an artist did an amazing job with modeling and texturing (the tongue is from Sorlag lol).

And yes, I've modeled a cloaca (this time vertical). But it's "meh" quality, so we'll see it only in the renders.