Failed Attempt at Dew

[kbartlez]

Hello all. As requested, I'm showing here my completely unsuccessful attempt at creating dewdrops in EI, using the Dew shader.

I spent days of my own time on time (because we didn't want to bill the client for my experimentation) and ultimately went with a fake I created using a photograph of actual dew. None of the 3D versions passed muster with the art directors citing that it wasn't natural enough.

I counted about 150 test renders I did over that time and spreadsheet with every tweak of the settings within the plugin as well as for transparency and reflectivity, etc settings for the material itself. The render you see has two sets of cartons with different dew settings to get both the small and larger drops.

I usually persevere in EI and produce something everyone is happy with but this time I had met my match. Among the many things I learned was that object scale matters a lot (for the displacement settings on this plugin, anyway)

I'm including one of the better renders, a render that's very spikey before I figured out the scaling issue but amusing nonetheless, and the eventual one I ended up using with fake dewdrops. I was still able to use the 3D minus any dew effect.

http://gallery.me.com/kenmurayama#100936/Drink_test2-13&bgcolor=black

http://gallery.me.com/kenmurayama#100936/Group_driptest_r58&bgcolor=black

http://gallery.me.com/kenmurayama#100936/Trio_Group_HR_r10simp&bgcolor=black

If anyone's got some magic formula or great tool to more easily arrive at the look I got in the faked version, I'm all ears (and eyes). Thanks for looking!

[Tomas Egger]

Ola,

“Hello all. As requested, I'm showing here my completely unsuccessful attempt at creating dewdrops in EI, using the Dew shader.”

Lets see if I can help :)

“I spent days of my own time on time (because we didn't want to bill the client for my experimentation) and ultimately went with a fake I created using a photograph of actual dew. None of the 3D versions passed muster with the art directors citing that it wasn't natural enough.”

Yeah, it happens all the day time these days :)

”I counted about 150 test renders I did over that time and spreadsheet with every tweak of the settings within the plugin as well as for transparency and reflectivity, etc settings for the material itself. The render you see has two sets of cartons with different dew settings to get both the small and larger drops.”

Ok, I just saw all the renders.

“I usually persevere in EI and produce something everyone is happy with but this time I had met my match. Among the many things I learned was that object scale matters a lot (for the displacement settings on this plugin, anyway)”

If I remember well, the sub-division of the model is important too.

“I'm including one of the better renders, a render that's very spikey before I figured out the scaling issue but amusing nonetheless, and the eventual one I ended up using with fake dewdrops. I was still able to use the 3D minus any dew effect.”

I will play with Dew again.. lets see what I can do.

“If anyone's got some magic formula or great tool to more easily arrive at the look I got in the faked version, I'm all ears (and eyes). Thanks for looking!”

Even using real drops in the 3D package, I loved the final result.!!

This is an old EIAS render, when I discovered How to “spike” the drops, I found a way to fake “ice” :)

Thanks

Tom

[kbartlez]

Thanks for looking at this, Tom.

I played around with settings with Dicer and in the end, I figured it was just more straightforward to increase the polygon count of the model from the modeler side (using VIACAD Pro 7).

I really like how your can turned out. Sigh. If mine had come out that way, I wouldn't have to be doing this mapping and doing refractions by hand that I now have to do with every flavor of this product.

I'm not licked yet, however, every now and then, I come back to this project to see if there's any permutation I may have overlooked in the settings. Short-term, if I need a Superman Fortress of Solitude to be made, I know the settings for that. :P