Meanwhile, Joe is working on...

Been trying to simulate a flock/crowd of butterflies using Maya nParticles and instancing a simple animated geometry. So far I had to add a better butterfly pointing vector as the default set is limited, butterflies do not pitch or dive steeply which the most usable default option available, aim by velocity, does. I had to write a custom expression to get the butterfly to get them to fly flatter. Wasn't too pleased with the result at the moment, looks like a mess, especially the flapping which does not relate to the speed or change of direction of the butterflies. Also, as expected, they behave like a bunch of particles, which is random enough for shots such as when they are collecting underneath the umbrella, obviously needs more tweaking for that.

Been rendering the Maya ramp shader using Vray for the lighting and rendering test for major project animation. May be considering using other renderers as so far I feel Vray is not really designed for non-photorealistic rendering.e.g. the edge cut off is still softer than I wanted it to be. I tried to imitate this render setup but in Maya but have been unsuccessful so far, the VRay materials does not seem to map the colours correctly on the lightMtl or the geometry shadow color and fall off does not get affected at all by the ramp shader. One of the first tests piping outColor of ramp to VRay materials I may investigate further into geometry shadow falloff in VRay shaders later on but we'll see how others go.