Juice in a Glass - Free C4D Scene

[mikenz]

Hi Guys

I have always used Advanced Render in C4D for my rendering and most of the time it's great - however I feel the SSS is unrealistic and I am looking for a better solution. I have attached my best effort using AR3 which is an image of juice in a cup with ice cubes. The second image is my first attempt at rendering with Corona.

The scene file is attached with the hope that someone knows the correct method for achieving photorealistic results - I would greatly appreciate any help with this before spending hours trying to blindly figure out the process.

Aside from the material properties, the second most important aspect to achieve realism is the geometry. I need clarification on this - I know in Maxwell and AR3 the following method creates realistic results, would this be the same in Corona?

Given the juice itself refracts and reflects and also needs SSS, would a blend material be the best way to achieve this? Please see the attached file.

I hope someone out there might be able to help me. Thanks in advance.

Mike

[romullus]

Have you seen this? https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000515618-how-to-model-a-liquid-in-glass-in-corona-

[Ricky Johnson]

In addition to the article Romullus has posted you might want to consider removing the liquid geometry from within the volume of the ice cubes.
i.e. treat the ice like another blue container object within the diagram shown on helpdesk.

It's a pain to model but I found in recent similar examples I made that it gave a much cleaner, brighter look to the ice cubes. I was trying to achieve a particularly foggy white ice on that occasion but it also technically seemed like the more correct real world approach to the modelling. I've no idea if it's the more correct approach within the render world.

[mikenz]

Okay much better now. Instead of using a blend material (which was wrong) I used a standard material and used the absorbtion settings within that. Now to experiment with some ice.

[mikenz]

I added ice, lime and some water droplets... It has taken a lot of experimentation to get this far however I am still not happy with it. Has anyone had experience creating droplets / condensation in C4D & Corona? This scene uses a bump map with alpha on a duplicate of the glass... I found creating meshes for the droplets didn't seem to work that well. Any advice would be great!

[Nejc Kilar]

I think geometry might be the best way to go about doing the droplets, at least thats what I think people do in general. Maybe if you'd play around with the lighting a bit to accentuate the SSS and the highlights you'd get different results...

Just thinking out loud here :)

[maru]

I think you should either put bump map on the original glass object, or model (capped!) water drops and have them slightly intersect with the underlying glass.

[mikenz]

Might be making a little headway with the droplets here. I have attached my settings, this displacement works best if water level is enabled where two refracting objects' geometry intersects

[burnin]

nice continuation... though be aware, when adding drops also take into consideration condensation (roughness)

[mikenz]

The more I play with Corona, the more I love it. No other renderer to date has been able to produce these results so quickly. I know I haven't got the droplets quite right just yet but the displacement method seems to be the best so far.

What I would like to know is, how can I stop my background reflection map (a hidden cylinder) from showing up on the floor? I did like in AR3 how you could exclude an object from reflecting in other objects that you specify. Can this be done using the reflection IOR? I guess a high value?

Once I have the scene as good as I can get I will post it up. Thanks in advance.

[mikenz]

This image has caustics set to on for the glass, juice and ice. I used the corona sky and a standard light to illuminate the scene and this is the result after 4 hours of rendering time.

Still got work to do..

[fellazb]

Why use a standard light and not a corona specific one? Too much noise, but seems inevitable since there's caustics all over the place. Light transport is very spot on though. Reminds me of early Maxwell renders :)

[mikenz]

Why use a standard light and not a corona specific one? Too much noise, but seems inevitable since there's caustics all over the place. Light transport is very spot on though. Reminds me of early Maxwell renders :)

I should have said 'standard corona light' :) I'm doing one now using the corona sun so we can compare the two. Might be another 4 hours or so.

[mikenz]

The hard shadows from the sun change the look a lot. I wasn't too worried about the over exposure, this was just intended as a test. I think I prefer the caustics from the corona light compared with corona sun.

[mikenz]

Okay - Found the correct method for objects which are half in the juice and half in the air. I have used this method in the rendering below. I have found it's best to have the smallest overlap possible between the interfaces.

I'm still struggling with lighting this scene - It's so hard to figure out which lights and environments are the best for a simple shot like this! The droplets are causing me a bit of a headache as well :S At least the modeling side of this has been sorted..