my first posted image

[futagoza]

Beautiful, looks like a real photo!

[marcel-eias]

hi Jim,

Nice picture!!, very nice.

i notice somthing on the top of the bottle..
i mean the label of the cap.. it looks like the lable is inside the bottle and not on arround the outside... or is it printer on the cork?

i dont drink .. so i had to lookup a photo of the bottle... :)
" http://www.suntory.com/about/news/2004/8775.html " do you see what i mean at the top.

i am intressed how much is electric image and how much illustrator/photoshop.. :)

Marcel Verschuren
(The Netherlands)

[arketype]

Very nice image James! :)

[jimjam]

Thanks for the compliments, guys.

Good question, Marcel. I believe you mean the upper gold area, which I assume was on the outside like the rest of the upper label. I couldn't find an actual example of the product with that "wrapper" because the design of Hokuto often changes and the magazine was a couple of years old. But the original photo includes a few more wrinkles suggestive of an outer wrapper.

In EI, I used the same focal length and field of view as the photographer. The magazine listed these figures and illustrated what the studio setup was like.

The background is a hexagon-textured deformed plane and a floor plane that reflects it.
I initially played around with a clip-mapped deformed plane and lighting behind it, but ended up just using different sized hexagon (and other) textures at full luminance and blurring them, etc. in Photoshop.

The bottle was created in EI Modeler, based on photos of Hokuto I found on the Net (as you did). I lined it up in EI and adjusted the model here and there until it closely matched the magazine bottle. Then I rendered out all specs separately. I projected label parts created in Photoshop and Illustrator with a straight-on camera and rendered out each part separately with the main camera. I created a model of just the bottom of the bottle and had to play around with thickness and lighting and the little marks until a few renders were helpful. The rest of the base area was faked in Photoshop. The top of the bottle was created in EI. The transparent whiskey areas were created with a combination of EI and Photoshop. For example, the yellowish shoulders were rendered using the aRIM shader.

I used to be a purist, trying to get everything done in EI. But I prefer combining tools now.

By the way, I'd be interested in challenges on the forum in which participants would try to determine the best way to reproduce a beatiful photo.

JM

[MagicEgger]

Hey,

Fantastique image since you are starting in EIAS!
Pay attention to specular in your render and in the real bottle.
The label in the real bottle almost dont have specular.. and in the 3d bottle need to be more diffuse like in Real Bottle advertising.
3d to be real need to be more imperfect.

Congrats

Thanks

Tomas

[jimjam]

Thanks Tomas,

I'm a big fan of your work and especially love your "Rappa" video, which I've shown to several friends who were all extremely impressed. Great song, too.

Thanks for your advice on specs. You're totally right, of course, and I feel a little silly. But I was trying to match the magazine image. By the way, I'm not exactly a newbie. I created EI animations as a hobby for a few years then quit for awhile and started again with this image.

One of the most interesting things about this project was noting how the photographer touched up his photo in Photoshop. Much of his touchup work is sloppy and unrealistic, but it feels good. And I decided that approach is worth emulating to a certain degree.

For the most part, I tried to match his photo. But there are areas where I didn't -- such as in the gold wrapper we discussed. Anyway, rather than talk about it, here's a scan of the magazine photo next to my work.

JM

[Reuben5150]

Very nice work, hope it tastes as good ;-)

[jimjam]

Thanks Reuben. It was delicious.

JM

[PaulS2]

Good job! You really got the look of the photo....very accurately!

[jimjam]

Thanks Paul,

I'll probably do a few more studies like this (maybe jewelry next) until I can create something decent that's original.

Your work is what got me interested in product shots, by the way. Thanks for the inspiration.

JM

[atdesign]

Very nice job.

Maybe add (or pump up) a Specular map to just the gold part of the middle label.

[jimjam]

Ooooh. Advice from another one of my heroes who makes impeccable style look easy.

Thanks Allan. I'll be taking a month's vacation in San Diego starting tomorrow, so will be giving this project a rest. But when/if I return to it, I will definitely pump up those specs you speak of.

JM

[halfworld]

Totally off topic, but Allan, did you win a 3D competition at MacRumors a while back?

....
Ian :)

[richardjoly]

He did. With a beautiful iPod touch screen.
Allan won "Bragging rights"... I believe that is something he won a very long time ago with the constant excellency in all his work.
http://images.macrumors.com/im/contest200611/atd.html

[atdesign]

Totally off topic, but Allan, did you win a 3D competition at MacRumors a while back?
Yes, I had a quick idea so I entered for the hell of it.

Thanks jimjam and Rick, it's always good to hear that after a long day. :)

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