I don’t believe this is necessarily a technical issue. It may be related to the Carnival holiday in Brazil. Perhaps he released two chapters in one week in order to take some time off, or maybe he plans to publish something only at the end of next week. The Nun Isabella chapter itself was quite extensive, with no fewer than 118 pages, which may suggest that everything was completed in a rush.
This urgency could have directly impacted the rendering quality. When faster settings are used, it is common to reduce parameters such as texture subdivisions, render samples, shadow quality, and the level of detail in maps like bump, normal, and displacement. This can result in smoother textures, with less detail and a slightly “plastic” or washed-out appearance.
Additionally, lowering the number of render samples reduces processing time, but it also compromises sharpness and image depth. In engines such as Iray or Cycles, fewer iterations mean fewer calculations of global illumination, reflections, and micro-surface details. The final result is an image that renders faster but looks less refined.
Another possibility involves hardware limitations or instability. If the GPU is operating close to its VRAM limit, the system may automatically reduce texture quality (texture downscaling) or shift part of the processing to the CPU, which impacts both performance and consistency. Overheating can also cause thermal throttling, reducing GPU clock speeds and affecting render stability. Outdated drivers or VRAM issues may produce visual artifacts, loss of detail, or inconsistent texture behavior.
Therefore, the smoother texture could be the result of a deliberate choice to speed up production due to time constraints, but hardware limitations or instability cannot be ruled out as contributing factors.