Worked on the night sky, fog systems, and the horse.
The moon turned out beautiful first try basically - soft glow, real shadows on the terrain, stars scattered everywhere. That part just worked.
The deer needed a fix - turns out the model I grabbed only had ONE animation in the whole file, no walk cycle at all, so they’d just slide around like ghosts. Swapped the model, fixed how spread out they get, now they actually wander around like real animals instead of clumping into one weird deer blob.
Then the horse. Got it riding, got a cowboy sitting in the saddle, mount/dismount working… and then spent what felt like forever convinced I had two horses glitching on top of each other. Turned out to be one misplaced node plus a camera setup I’d let get way too complicated, fighting itself every single frame. Eventually just gave up patching it and rebuilt the whole camera thing from scratch, way simpler.
Still finishing it up but it’s SO close - night valley, deer wandering around, a horse I can actually hop on and ride.