Hanuman in the jungle (Blender Render #111, April 2023)

This project has taken me quite a long time to finish. Partly due to the complexity of it, but also due to holidays, camping, being laid off from work, job hunting, interviews, and preparing to move house to another country. All of this is still ongoing, but I managed to finish this Hanuman project, finally.

The Hanuman mask was originally a free 3D photoscan I found on the web. I spent a lot of time cleaning it up, retopologizing it, texturing it, etc.

The cloth sim for the 3 strips of cloth on the costume was a real pain. Best result I could get from Blender was still fairly jittery. I wrote a python script in Blender to convert the cloth sim (plus a whole stack of modifiers on top of it) into a new object that used separate shape keys for each frame of animation. With that in place, it was possible to reduce the jitter by adjusting the weight and timing of the keyframes.

The temple was also a free download that I ended up modifying a little. The Buddha was the same, but I didn't modify the mesh, I just textured it.

Music is from the YouTube audio library, and the sounds were done using the free version of Soundly, plus Audacity.

Hanuman is a much beloved character from the Ramakien, which is the Thai version of the Hindu epic story Ramayana. The mask representation, like this one, is from traditional Thai dance performances called Khon. I do not personally have any knowledge of how to perform in a Khon - I have simply made up the movements of Hanuman here, based on some videos and live performances I have seen. I apologize for the lack of authenticity. The costume is also merely inspired by Hanuman khon costumes I've seen. The end result was a compromise between an authentic looking costume and one that I could actually manage to work with in Blender given my limited skills.

Blender 3.4.0, Cycles engine

Started chipping away at this in December of 2022, and finished in April of 2023.