Rough-haired Grouter

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This is the rough-haired grouter of Eta Carinae VII. It grouts. Whatever that means.

I noticed that my 'bestiary' section was looking a little thin, and then remembered that I'd downloaded an alpha version of Sculptris from Pixologic. Sculptris seems to be something like a cut-down version of the company's popular (but pricey) ZBrush, a 3D modeling tool that allows you to create organic shapes in a manner more like working with virtual clay than the more formal lofting, skinning and vertex-pushing used in other modeling tools.

Sculptis proved to be pretty easy to use, and while I can't match the complex models shown on Pixologic's pages, it didn't take me long to produce an alien 'head'. I exported the model in OBJ format for import to Carrara where I textured it with a procedural shader and then used Carrara's hair tool to add some fur. The head actually has two distinct hair models: brownish hair over most of the head, and then some purple fur applied separately to the tips of the tentacles. A second Sculptris shape provided the body, which was also imported and furred in Carrara.

The eye is a pair of nested spheres (the outer one with a glass shader applied, the inner one using a complex shader using the 'cellular' pattern) inserted into a convenient concavity that I had created in the model. The tusks were created using Carrara's spline modeler.

For the backdrop, I created a few terrains, set them as the base for a pair of surface replicators, and then added plant models in large numbers.