Trying (and failing) to make a bottle beauty shot

[thomas]

Hi!

I'm trying to make a beauty shot of a bottle of Crodino, but no matter what I try it looks wrong or bad. I've tried rendering with LW, i've tried rendering with Kray, I've tried single sided, double sided, dielectric nodes, "math and curves" nodes, no nodes... No matter what I do I am VERY far from what I would love to achieve.

Here is what I would LOVE to get out of Kray, but I'm not sure if it is even possible - lately it seems like all of these really beautiful renders are cinema or max with v-ray. Janusz and Gregor, I'm counting on you to prove me wrong!

Unfortunately, this is what I've been able to do with LW and Kray:

For those who are interested here are the model and scene files:

Crodino Bottles Upload.zip

(123.22 KiB) Downloaded 210 times

And here is a picture of the bottle in real life:

One of the things that is already very obviously wrong in my render, but I can't seem to get it right, is that in real life, and in the beauty shot of the San Pellegrino bottle above, the liquid colour goes all the way up to the contour of the bottle. In my render, it stops and leave like 2mm of glass wall thickness visible - no matter how I set my index of refraction. If I set my material to double-sided the liquid goes up to the bottle contour, but then I lose the definition in the interal glass reflections and refractions.

It's frustrating. After all these years and so many options in LW I still don't know what the sure-fire way is to get a good bottle beauty shot!

[thomas]

By the way, that San Pellegrino render is by Matteo Salvador:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/20804361/3D-CGI-Bottles

[Janusz Biela]

1. No glass shader = no effect
2. That renders needs special trick in studio render - for example Unseen by Camera polygon with gradient behind glass.
3. You need good Caustic.
4. You need blur refraction.

Only number 3 you can do in Lightwave now

[thomas]

Damn! Let me guess: wait for Kray 3, right?

Well, I did manage to get some improvement - more tests tomorrow...

I have some questions about your answer, because I'm confused:
1) You mean a glass shader that is better than Dielectric?
2) This trick can be done in Lightwave, no?
3) I though that caustics in LW was not that good!
4) Blurring refraction is possible in Lightwave, no?

Latest render:

[thomas]

One more with some blurry refraction. Looking better, but I don't like the dark black that's appearing on the right and left edges of top half of the bottle, and in the bottom of the glass.

[Janusz Biela]

Damn! Let me guess: wait for Kray 3, right?

Exactly, no way to make good glass (and fast) in Lightwave in reasonable time.

I have some questions about your answer, because I'm confused:
1) You mean a glass shader that is better than Dielectric?

I mean real glass shader which allow to render scene very fast with physics. Real glass shader contain special engine which dynamically reduce raytracing recurse, blurring fast refraction effect, adds color spectrum, is made special for engine render (include engine code) not like Dielectric, third part plugin.

2) This trick can be done in Lightwave, no?

Yes I saw this with glass bottle perfume. But I think this was trick to vivid color of liquid. I do not think so is necessary.

3) I though that caustics in LW was not that good!

Is good, but time render again....Caustic is horrible hungry for huge amount of photons.

4) Blurring refraction is possible in Lightwave, no?

Yes but good luck with time render

[khan973]

Same as Janusz plus the resul you try to achieve has been photoshopped, so you can't get the smae result without any photoshop work.

[thomas]

It's getting better, but I really need to get rid of the black edges! By the way: I would remove the white glow card in post-production of course. But Oh great Master Janusz, do you have any idea where the black areas in the glass come from? My whole scene is surrounded by white, so it is not a refraction of the surroundings. Is it a ray recursion limit problem perhaps???

[Janusz Biela]

If is dark refraction then are two solution to check:

- you have something dark in scene (background?)
- more probably: too less recurse (glass needs a lot recurse, at least 6-8) in other way recurse will fail and you will get black colour effect. check please Node glass or Kray setting recurse option or LW recurse.

[thomas]

Here's another update: tweaking the Kray recurse; and LW ray recursion limit seems to help - although now I have oversaturated edges

Oh well, I'm learning. Any ideas on how to easily "wrap" the bottle label (with a strange shape - see my first post) on to the cone-shaped bottle?