July/Aug - Norm - Ryan Watkins
 

I'm very excited to be here, and look forward to seeing everyone artwork, I have been using Lightwave for about a year now and it is the first 3d package I have ever use. I have been visiting the forums and have been learning a lot, but still have only scratched the surface.

I love to learn and hope to learn a lot from everyone here and hopefully others will learn from me.

My idea for the contest is a still life, with a bottle of absinth, glass, candles, and maybe some drug peripheral.

Good Luck to everyone.

Ryan

Concept Drawning
 

Quick concept drawning.

Bottle Render
 

The Ansinth bottle render with one sport light.

Same reder but with a bloom effect aplied.

Coming along very nicley :)

David

Wow, that looks amazing. Texturing glass like that must be pretty tricky

Nice refraction and light scattering, another good entry can't make anything else out of it.

Thanks for the post,
pianoman - the glass really isn't all that tricky, the bottle is basicly a box with the inside polys copied and pasted right in the same spot then flipped( in side air polys) this is very important in creating the glass.

Here is a screen shot of my layout with the surface editor open showing the surfaces.

Ryan

Modeled the Glass today, how I'm working on the candels and think about other sence elements I would like to add. Any Ideas?

Ryan

ur liquid seems dotty (little black dots in it) is that intentinal?

no he needs to up his rays per evalutation I beleive. It will also cause increased render times. I would say stick with what you have for now and for the final increase your rays.

I'm not sure what is causing the dots, but I know it gets better as I incress AA.

Here is a new low res test

it's either your rays per evalution(located in the global illumination settings) or a bad HDRI image.

Hey I love the candle you've got on the right.
Looks like you got some subsurface scattering going on.
How'd you achieve that effect?

He probably used G2 or Ska.

No plugg'ns, I'm using a weightmap and gradients to control the translucency and other surface propriety’s

U need soem serious anti on that render dude.

lwwiz - Ya, for the final I will max out the AA

For now here is a hi res test render with 5 pass AA

Thats better but FOr soem reason the image looks sideways.

I was going for a drymadic effect with the tilted camera angle.

Guess I shouldn't have posted as a Norm. Looks like you got me beat...

I think at this stage of the compitition it is any ones game. good luck to us all.

Ryan

Been work on the candle surface and add a flame. Crits very much welcome.

Been work on the candle surface and add a flame. Crits very much welcome.


Whoops DP

no question, the lighting and the glass textures are amazing. stick with the dramatic angle, it gives the scene a feeling of dread or uncertainty.

so far, my only crit is the lens flares. I've never ever been a fan of them and you have three. From a photography standpoint, lens flares are despised, unwanted elements and you have three in the form of candle 'halos'. Strictly speaking from a realism perspective, you wouldn't have three in a photo, maybe one, but never three, because a flare is the results of the angle of bright light compared to the surroundings bouncing off the various lenses of the camera.

They are distracting in your image and you want your focus to be the bottle.

On the flipside, I'm a huge fan of depth of field and the ease with which LW 8 makes it with the built in focal plug-in, you might want to give it a shot.

jedimasta - Thanks for the crit, I agree that the lens flars are distrating. Made some changes some I like, its a very delicate balancing act to get the candle light.

No big changes, I add fog to help push the candles into the back ground and added a suger cube to the glass that will be burning in a blue flame. I also incressed the DoF, but I didn't have the focus or the F_stop right so the bottle is a little blurry.

Going to model a pipe and another small bottle next. then the blue flame.

Ryan

Looks fantastic. I especially love the effectiveness of the refraction in the glass with the candle being distorted.

looking great!
 

i love the scene u got this far . your candles are amazing, with every post they got better. the bottle reflections on the table are little "burned", on my monitor, anyway.
btw ... what is that label on the bottle ?
looking forward to see the new items and the blue flame.
:beer:

sandfish - thanks for the post, glad you like the scene, and thanks for info. As for the label that will be the reveiled in the end.

Ryan

Re: looking great!
 

Looks like a baby's pacifier.

More changes and tweaks, I add the pipe and change some surface prorties. The Flame and smoke was done in photoshop so I could get more of a idea were I'm going with the scene.

Crits welcome.

Ryan

lookin good man i like the fire effect on the top of the glass.

more little changes, I think this challenge is just as much about surfacing as it is lighting.

Ryan

because of the nature of glass, unless the glass is extremely thick and dense, when you have a liquid inside it, it looks like the liquid comes to the outer edge of the bottle, not the inside one.

the liquid inside the bottle needs some work.

did you make the glass polys double-sided, or add an 'air' layer?

I opt for air layers as these make for better refraction.

general alcohol has a refraction index of 1.392, and glass of 1.51714

I love scenes with glass and liquids because they are so effective.

btw....the caustics in the original pic look great.

~~CM!

CrazyMerlin- thanks for the crit, I have been work with the liqued more, I have got it looking much better but in the procces I lost my caustics. One step forward and two back.

Ryan

Man, what a bummer!!

I use air polys on my glass surfaces, but not on the liquid inside it, because I think you lose density doing that.

This image is like that.

I have air polys for the glass, but not for the liquid

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...th_Bourbon.jpg
(click to enlarge)

it took a little time to figure out how to get it looking best, but it's worth it, and now I'll use that technique in all my work.

~~CM!

I have been using air polys from the start. but i found out that alot of the noise iwas getting in pervious renders was cause by have my inside bottle, liquied and air polys over laping. I fixed that only to loose my nice caustics.:headbang:

BTW: your scene is looking very nice .

My last render. :headbang: :headbang:

I see what you mean about losing the caustics.

The scene does look great though, and I love the 'Dutch' camera angle.

Very nice.

~~CM!