Running Clydesdale - Update2

Hey everybody,

Don't you just love murphy's law. You fix something just to have two more issues pop up.

I know this seems like a giant leap back more than a step forward, but I have learned. I managed to find out what was wrong with my textures and it had nothing to do with the baked maps. It was an issue with the gamma correct node on the ambient tip and base color in my fur descriptions, something I completely overlooked. You might also notice the flickering on the fur, which was caused by me not turning off smooth uv's when smoothing out the geometry

Many mistakes I have made during this project, but the one I regret most is leaving the hair motion last. It seemed to be working at first, but the more hair descriptions I added to the scene, the more the simulation messed up. It is something I have been troubleshooting for a while and I will continue to do tests to figure out the best way to get this scene working. I will update with my findings as they come, but currently I'm not able to correctly simulate the feather movement.

I also had troubles caching out the hair simulation. At first the workstations I used would crash a few frames into the cache. I went ahead and manually optimized the scene because the automatic would delete very needed nodes, and this let me carry out the cache, but as soon as it played back, you could definitely tell something was wrong:

Many paint effect strands would freak out and bunch up in the origin, as well as shoot out into infinite space. Moving around the scene in this state you could tell there were more strands all over not immediately visible in the viewport because they would flash by. The paint effects still following the motion would stand up and be pulled in other directions. It was impossible to find any information on this issue online so cache was not an option at this point until an answer was found. Any input on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

I did manage to get a nice still render of the more accurate texture with all the hair in it's initial state, it had to be done in an earlier version due to file corruption, so there are s few changes still missing.

And here is the reference I have been trying to match... If you zoom in you can see what the individual image is reference for;

There is still a lot to do here before I can truly say I am done, but I am happy with my progress so far and mostly with what I have learned.

Sadly, Renamon has to be put on hold while I solve the issues with my first scene. I am committed to have the horse up and running by next week,  but in the meantime, here is a small update on Renamon's texture and animation.