Playing around with materials

[DrStrik9]

I'm still barely scratching the surface of nodes, but IFW2 node presets help me understand a few more things. I really have come to appreciate the dielectric material. I've never seen glass in LW look this good.

I only wish there were more controls, particularly specular and reflections, since material nodes make the individual channels inaccessible.

[oobievision]

could you share your setup?

[DrStrik9]

could you share your setup?

Regarding the dielectric material, there's hardly anything to tell. I used a different color and absorption for the liquid than the glass (the higher the absorption, the darker the material, and its effectiveness is apparently based on the object size, so I just played around until I liked the look), and the glass has a refractive index of 1.5, while the "whiskey" has a refractive index of something around 1.33 (alcohol). I had to look up the list of refraction settings for various materials in the LW 8,5 docs, not being able to find it in the 9.0-9.6 docs.

The only node for both glass and liquid is the dielectric material node, pointing to the "material" input of the surface. With the settings mentioned above, the material node takes care of just about everything else. -- Oh, I did put an image map in the texture's surface environment for reflection ... that's about all there is to it.

The tabletop texture is a stock IFW2 nodal texture, with a few texture size tweaks, to bring it more to scale with these particular objects.

By far, the most work was the modeling. But it's just a container object, and a liquid object for each. Both glass objects (cup and carafe) are sub-d.

Two opposing area lights, one kind of yellow and one kind of blue. Pretty simple.

[DrStrik9]

I added a stopper, and found the refraction setting for crystal, which is 2.0, and applied it to the "glass" material. I actually think I like the glass refraction of 1.5 better.

[DrStrik9]

I reworked just about everything, made adjustments to the reflections, and got the stopper texture where I wanted it.

This has been a good learning exercise for nodes, and I don't think I'll take it any farther than this.

[oobievision]

awsome job, for the bottle did u just use twist to achieve that effect?

[oobievision]

Regarding the dielectric material, there's hardly anything to tell. I used a different color and absorption for the liquid than the glass (the higher the absorption, the darker the material, and its effectiveness is apparently based on the object size, so I just played around until I liked the look), and the glass has a refractive index of 1.5, while the "whiskey" has a refractive index of something around 1.33 (alcohol). I had to look up the list of refraction settings for various materials in the LW 8,5 docs, not being able to find it in the 9.0-9.6 docs.



in Dan Ablans Inside lightwave 3D 9 book has a whole list of Refraction indexes from all sorts of materials.

[DrStrik9]

awsome job, for the bottle did u just use twist to achieve that effect?

Yup, good old twist. The real challenge was the "scalloped" shape prior to twisting. I've found that the dielectric material doesn't show its best stuff with smooth objects. It produces far more interesting effects when there are some curves to refract and reflect.

[oobievision]

ahhh thanks for the tip ill have to try that out

[borkus]

Indeed, thank you for sharing your parameters. I have been playing with the dialectric node lately and it's hit or miss for me as to whether it produces something pleasing to the eye. But, like you said, it's all in how you use it.

[dx394b]

It's a beautifully made bottle, the light comes off especially well around the top of the neck.

[Aquilon]

Hi,

it's indeed a nicely modeled object, although I'd like to see the 'ear' of the glass a bit shorter. And your tabletop makes me crazy if I look at it for more then 5 seconds :-) Also I think the 'whisky' looks a bit pale, it just looks like tea.
And I got one last question: where does this strange reflection/refraction comes from? It just looks odd.
Keep it up and keep refinening your project and it will all work out fine. I'd like to give you some more help, but since I haven't tried nodal surfacing at all I guess I only would make it worse :-)

[DrStrik9]

Thanks for your comments. The little reflection you arrowed is nothing but the liquid's surface tension at the edge of where it touches the glass. Through the dielectric material, with the refraction coefficients of crystal and watered-down alcohol, that's just how it looks from this camera angle.

I agree about the table surface, and some of the other shape and reflection refinements needed. But for me this was a "proof of concept" and "learning" project, not a piece of art, per se. And I've since moved on to more interesting projects. :-)

I have a little French glass exactly like the one in this render (carefully modeled with a micrometer for exact measurements) and each evening when I pour a little brandy into it, it looks EXACTLY like the settings used here for the liquid - startlingly so. So I guess your mileage may vary. :-) BTW, they use tea as a prop for whiskey in the movies.

Cheers