Wine bottle crits

[phix314]

What's wrong with the cheese? Right now its just a blinn with translucency, maybe switch over to SSS? Hmm...

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p104/roaphotosharing/Maya/wine1.jpg

[Ransom]

sss would be nice

[ShamKiR]

I thing your glass need some caustics on the floor
Cheese is like yellow cubes :-) Use real cheese textures

[phix314]

I think I got it here. I'll try caustics on the next render (one of the cubes is floating..oops).

[Rogier]

I would like to see some nice cheese textures on the little blocks.
Bottle looks nice. :thumbsup:

[tecsun]

hi phix314 -
your bottle looks nice but not the label on top, I think it will look better if you give it some texture and specular.

a render looks just nice if everything is well-balance in a scene, so you should put some effort on modeling as the cheese, cloth and liquid in the glass still need improvement. Do notice that the edge of liquid which contact the glass would have bevel effect (vary with different liquid), for this kind of close-up render it might help to model it out.

Just my 2 cents. ^^

[phix314]

Thanks Rog :)

hi phix314 -
your bottle looks nice but not the label on top, I think it will look better if you give it some texture and specular.

a render looks just nice if everything is well-balance in a scene, so you should put some effort on modeling as the cheese, cloth and liquid in the glass still need improvement. Do notice that the edge of liquid which contact the glass would have bevel effect (vary with different liquid), for this kind of close-up render it might help to model it out.

Just my 2 cents. ^^

Yea a friend of mine pointed out the top portion as well.. any ideas on specifics? I bumped the spec up, maybe I just need to go get another bottle to see what exactly I need to do. I'll do the bevel tomorrow... good observation.

And what do you mean by "cheese texture"? Shamkir said the same thing, but far as I've seen, cheese doesn't have much of a unique texture to it. Just yellowish. One note though- I think one reason for a lack of realism was the occlusion pass. Without it, the cheese cubes look better, but the rest lacks those contact shadows. Gonna play with that one.

Thanks for the input... I'm rendering out another as we speak with some mods, the biggest being to the neck and the shape of the blocks altered a bit. Also, I was getting some artifacting in the blurry reflections of the cheese, almost like a depth map shadow with too low a res/too much to shadow. I'm thinking it is the size of the lightmap, so we'll see if my theory holds true tomorrow when I check this.

Out for now, thanks again :)

Steve

[phix314]

Little update. No occlusion pass here which helped ground some of the items, so don't mind that for now.

Changed some of the lighting, added another gobo, translucified the wine, which i think is a bit strong here. Wine label is dark, but other than that, whatcha think?

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p104/roaphotosharing/Maya/exr_jpg.jpg

(linked due to size)

[tecsun]

Hi phix314,

Saw your update. You did some effort on the sliced cheese which has make the render looks better but I think the main problem happened on the big cheese and wine bottle.

I think the bottle looks worse than your previous one. Retro002 has found a very nice image (also a photography tuts) for wine bottle which might help you:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=218885

and for the big cheese... its surface should have some randomness, and some part of it might be slightly bend inward.. hmm... I dont' know how to express, I don't really have much cheese in my life :P so here will explain all (notice those details especially the specular point):
http://riversaredamp.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/cheese-wheels.jpg
http://www.formaggiokitchen.com/shop/images/Kasseri.jpg

Good luck!

[phix314]

Yea... I forgot to unhide the white back plane for the reflections on that last render. I took a look at it when it finished and something didn't ring true, then I opened the maya file and lo and behold, the plane wasn't there. So now that was fixed...

As for the cheese, yea, I made a dupe, smoothed it once, and randomized the vertices a bit to get some irregularities. I tried messing with cavities, but because it's a SSS shader, and I was using the maya procedurals, I got tired of playing, converting, rendering, replaying, reconverting, etc etc. Maybe when I've got a bit clearer view of what EXACTLY I need to make as a bump map. Those images you posted helped, so thanks :)

Everyone needs some cheese in their life... ;)

[phix314]

I think this could be the final with another minor tweak to the cheese. What a pain.

Text and other PS work not set in stone either, just seeing what it would look like.

Please crit away... this is very close to being done...

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p104/roaphotosharing/Maya/wine_final.jpg

[Ransom]

I still think the chese maybe too specular at the moment. What material are you using? Maybe try lowering the specularity?

Every thing else is great though.

[phix314]

It's the SSS Fast shader. Sucks though, even with the spec color at black there's still shine. Go negative? Hmm..

[kitec]

Not a shader coment but on thing that may help you is to randomize the placement of your cheese cubes a bit- maybe some lean some of those toothpicks over in different directions so it doesn't have that perfect CG look. other then that I like the bottle alot, I am not a shader wiz so I am sorry I couldn't help you in that department

[Ransom]

Just takes getting used too. Try increasing the back weight, I feel like the light is not pentrating as far as it should. Play with the back SSS options, and also the front. Hard to tell where the light is coming from in the scene. I think a specular map may help to tone down the high lights. And also just make sure shinyness is at 0, I mean I am sure it is already, just covering all the bases.

Quick over view:

Unscatered first layer, is like the surface of the skin, light will hit this and pentrate this to reveal.

1.) Front SSS color which will be revealed if light is hitting it from the front.

or

2.) Back SSS color which will be revealed if light is coming from the back.

or

1. and 2.) which could happend if you have multiple lights or if you are lighting it from the side.


PS: The coment of "Hard to tell where the light is coming from" that is not a bad thing just it makes it hard to see which needs to be bumped up more, the back SSS, or the front SSS. It was not a "your lighting is bad", comment, I happen to like the lighting.

[phix314]

Word homes.

I'm gonna go ahead and leave it as is. Maybe play with the diffuse, heck, I dunno, maybe I will mess with the SSS...

10-4 there kitec, noted and done.

Unfortunately, my comp chokes when rendering any higher than this really, I let it run for almost 24 hours for a 3k render but it never finished. Closed the batch render. Any ideas on optimizing this? I tweaked the bsp so thats fine, maybe just my system. Just thought I'd point it out.

[phix314]

Turns out it chokes when I go to batch render it, but I can render it from the render view just fine. Wack.

Those changes were done, and those here at home who've been prodding as well agree with me that it's entirely done and ready to go.

Now we wait ;)

[phix314]

3 days later....

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p104/roaphotosharing/Maya/wine6_800_flat_jpg-1.jpg


I think the BG needs some work now, but I kinda like it the way it is. Nothing's really ever done, but would anyone say something is in dire need of fixing?

Hopefully not. I'm sick of waiting for this thing to render. ;)

[blacknoise]

i really do know nothing ;) but will drop my 2 cents anyway, just in case you mind find them worth something.

top label looks very fake to me just because of the hard edges it has (top part of it). nothing in reality has edges like that. maybe razor blade does, but then it's very flat.

displacement on the top of the cheese doesnt look naturally either, it's too big.
there is plenty of different kinds of cheese but try to find some reference pictures.
http://www.lighthousecheese.com/images/page_photos/home_cheese.jpg
http://www.kontrastblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/nanos_cheese_product2.jpg
some texture on it would be nice too, both the big piece and small cheese cubes.

if i was picky i'd say the napkin under the cheese looks like a rubber... not like a piece of nice fabric.

that's it, if you wanted to know my opinion :) if not... well... delete my post hehe :)

it's coming up very well. really great progress! keep up the good work!

[noouch]

What bothers me the most is the cheese, the way there seems to be no distinction between the outer layer of wax and the actual cheese where it's cut. Also, I think it looked better in the old rendering, the way it was less saturated.

[phix314]

I hate cheese.........


*sigh*



Yea. Ok.

[phix314]

Ok. Break time. Gonna see if I can't find some cheese wheels this weekend at a farmers market or something.

[phix314]

Besides the lighting..

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p104/roaphotosharing/Maya/render10_phys_jpg2.jpg

Shape? Color? Selling-effect?

[phix314]

Having taken a step back for a few hours... few things I think I need to fix:

- Take out the physical light node from the lights. It's adds too much, doesn't make it look any better.
- Adjust the shape of the wheel.
- Re-add the napkin.
- Readjust the lighting on the backdrop- it's too clean right now.
- Change the Merlot to a Gewurtraminer, apparently the two go together, and I dont want some wine nut correcting me ;)
- Find a new solution to the table top, take some highres wood photos and make the table have some life.

I think I'm also going to increase the focal length, bring the camera down a smidge, and play with DOF.

[phix314]

In doing more tweaks, I'm going to redo the lighting and environment... it's just not doing it for me.

Breaktime..

[tecsun]

hi, good to see some progress but the cap of the bottle still bothering me, way too sharp. and the cheese.. if I were to choose, i would prefer the last one than the latest one. However, I think you need more effort to get it right, maybe simply model & texture sth out of a photo.

Anyway, looking forward to see how the final result turn out to be. Good luck~!

[phix314]

hi, good to see some progress but the cap of the bottle still bothering me, way too sharp. and the cheese.. if I were to choose, i would prefer the last one than the latest one. However, I think you need more effort to get it right, maybe simply model & texture sth out of a photo.

Anyway, looking forward to see how the final result turn out to be. Good luck~!

Yea... there's a few changes I'd like to make on the bottle and glass, but I'm trying to focus my energy on the frizznackin cheese. Takin a break on it. Don't want to burn out.

[InfernalDarkness]

...that it's looking amazing, but for the few tweaks you're still focusing on. It's much better than my attempts previously to recreate this wonderful beverage! But yes, the top of the bottle (where the glass protrudes) is far too sharp in my opinion. Sometimes these scenes can take weeks or months of perfectionism, so be patient with yourself, and in the process you're obviously learning enough to help lessen the development time/curve for your next project! This one's looking great, keep at it...

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