Invertebrates

[danio1011]

Hi All - Not a totally Corona specific post, but I'm tasked with creating an interior view of a university laboratory\show room.  One of the walls holds a 2 storey display of invertebrates in glass mason jars suspended in solution.  I guess I just have some modeling ahead of me, but I also thought someone out there might have a cool idea of how to 'fake' showing something in a liquid solution inside a jar.  Perhaps I could do something with bitmaps and a falloff shader?  And for what it's worth, I don't know OSL :)

I always like to think up something more creative than just brute force modeling or mediocre photoshop, but this time I'm stumped!

Thanks for any inspiration,
Daniel

[maru]

If you need high detail, then you will probably need to end up with some kind of modelling.
If those are going to be just background objects, then you could try faking it somehow, for example by putting a cylinder with a bitmap inside the jar.

[sprayer]

reference image would be great of angle, distance etc. I believe you can use game method of fake 3d models. just flat image with alpha and lock rotation to target -  camera(Animation > Constraints > LookAt Constraint), insert this billboard in glass jar with liquid

[romullus]

Did you try to search sketchfab? Natural history museums puts their scanned collections there, sometimes available to download for free.

[ChrisMyatt]

I'd probably just render the jar / solution then post in the invertabrates in photoshop, do some level / colour adjusts to make it sit. Depends on what level of detail your project needs to be / speed you need to do it. Loads of modelling vs time you have could be an issue.

If modelling i'd use zbrush /sculptris feature for speed. Then either spotlight / paint the texture on from images.

Just looked at sketchfab from the previous post by romullus. Looks great also if you need detailed models.

[danio1011]

Wow, thank you all for the feedback!  I think SketchFab might end up to be a really good option.  Just taking a quick look it seems like I could supplment my cutout models with a fiew more convincing ones of these in the foreground...

Currently I've got a jar, a cylinder of liquid with alchohol's IOR, and then a slightly warped plane with a cutout map I made maped to it.  It's sorta convincing, but as you can see it'll be in the immediate foreground on the right of the image so I might want to work on it more.  I could try displacing the geometry I suppose...maybe with a gradient map.  The maps are driven by a random Material ID, I've got about 11 creatures mapped and I changed the seed number till I was happy with the randomness and spread.

Super early draft\crop attached.  I cropped the middle and left half because I'm under an NDA.

[sprayer]

maybe more translucency and a bit less saturation i think as in real life that looks more dull
https://scontent-arn2-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/2a325fd091aaf7a3b9fe0db6b604f862/5B2A5832/t51.2885-15/e35/28153726_405432713217089_1060467914039099392_n.jpg?se=7&ig_cache_key=MTcyNjU5NTYwOTY0NDIyNDAxMA%3D%3D.2

[ChrisMyatt]

At that angle you definitely get away with your current process i think, more variation definitely but i'd say stick with what your doing. More detail could go into the jar and lid

[mferster]

I think you can get away with using cutouts if you aren't making an animation. I would just set up some look at constraints on your cutouts so they always face towards the camera.