Messages

1

[Max] I need help! / Re: transparent plastic bottle material

« on: 2016-07-14, 15:00:27 »

Hello again,

Yes, I couldn't have done it without your help here, that's for sure.

Now I'm waiting for the guy to write back to me, but I can see he's taking his time for some reason.

Also,  thanks a lot for the tutorial, it looks amazing and quite ambitious, although I might start with some basic scenes of interiors or exteriors until I get the hang of everything.

I'll definitely return to the forum if I have anything to clarify.

2

[Max] I need help! / Re: transparent plastic bottle material

« on: 2016-07-12, 15:34:22 »

Worked like a charm, thank you!
I was aware, of the method of adding the AO map into a CTex element, I watched it in a very short Corona tutorial on YouTube, however, it's only now after you've explained it better that it crossed my mind there might be settings to adjust and make it better.

I don't really intend to add an AO pass over the final result of the bottle, I was only asking for my future endeavors.

I'm very grateful for all the help I got on this forum, I will upload the final results that I sent to the client here, so you can see how the shots look after all.

One more final question though. Since I'm a complete beginner to Corona, I would like to ask where I could find some comprehensive video tutorials, preferably ones that work on example scenes, like interior/exterior lighting, still lives, our something automotive. I checked YouTube for once, however, there aren't that many and I could see that a large portion of them where in Russian, if I'm not mistaken.

Thanks a bunch!

3

[Max] I need help! / Re: transparent plastic bottle material

« on: 2016-07-10, 14:22:13 »

Hello,

Thank you for the scene, I'm going to play around a little more with the hdr map offsetting, and I'll send the result to the client, I'm really curios what he's going to think about it.

One more thing though, I was thinking of adding a very faint ao pass over the shot. Is there any way to produce a more explicit ao pass, meaning without the actual shading that gets involved ( like under the kangaroo's chin and arm )

Thanks!

4

[Max] I need help! / Re: transparent plastic bottle material

« on: 2016-07-07, 23:21:20 »

Looks nothing less than awesome now!
I'd really like to check the scene out, however, I can't seemingly open it with max 2016, it says it needs an actually newer version ( 2017 I guess ?)

As for the earlier comments:
- I also firstly tried to take the bottle to Zbrush and use the tools there to get some better geometry. I tried with Zremesher, it didn't really give me an adequate result, however, I didn't insist too much.
- afterwards I tried the method with the various modifiers in Max ( ProOptimizer, Quadrify Mesh, etc), and, althought it looked somewhat better, the smoothing groups were still rather off in some places
- finally, I went for a more simple approach. I removed all modifiers and made a copy of the bottle. Then I used the Push modifier on the bottle and the copy, to practically create the exterior and interior of the bottle. In the end I collapsed everything, I flipped the faces of the interior bottle so they were actually facing the interior, towards the water, and I attached the two pieces together.

Now, looking at the bottle, I'm pretty satisfied with it but there are the following things I still want to work on:
- it is true that I need to play more with the hdr images, the cloudy one is an excellent idea
- I might try to move the lights around to push the highlights to the sides a little
- I sent this result to my client and he mentioned that, although the bottle seemed to work, the contents of the bottle didn't really look like water. The shot with the bottle in the cloudy environment above comes a lot closer to a water look.
- I also changed the water material with one that is a little darker and has some sort of noise ( I can't seem to detect it anywhere though )

Uploading the scene again with the new adjustments would be awesome as I'd like to try and play around with it.
You can see how the bottle looks right now in my scene.

So, the question right now would be: is it possible to improve on the look of the water? ( although the version that I can see with the cloudy hdr looks really nice )

Thank you!

5

[Max] I need help! / Re: transparent plastic bottle material

« on: 2016-07-07, 02:15:21 »

Hello!

Ah, here we go, there was indeed something wrong with the material I selected in the max environment. I removed it and placed the hdr in a CoronaBitmap again and now it's working the way it should. I can confirm that "Spherical" was the option selected, however, I think you're right concerning the material/environment bit, there was something weird about that.

You've asked about thickness, the "thin" option is indeed checked. I unchecked it, and now it produces a new problem I will describe below:
- now the bottle looks like there's a smoothing group or normals issue. The actual bottle mesh is from an .STL file, taken directly from autocad from what I know. I had a lot of trouble with it, mainly the fact that when I add modifiers that change the mesh structure, like Push or Shell, it loses its' smoothing and becomes jagged. I tried smoothing it, I tried checking the normals, resetting them, resetting the xform, STL checks, nothing worked. Every time I add a shell modifier it messes up the mesh. You can see it in my upload if you look closely. Interesting though that the effect cannot be perceived if "Thin" is checked.

Regarding the instancing bit, I'm not sure, to be honest, it just seemed to work this way, but I don't think I actually get what you're asking me, without an example.

I'll upload the scene here, if you'd care to play around with it, I'm fine and there is no hurry, I just want to learn something solid out of this.
The scene itself is really simple, just two lights, the bottle elements and the hdr map. I will add the hdr map too, so it can look the same, but I have no problem in anyone changing it.

Here is the scene in a wetrasnfer link ( I'm not sure I'm allowed to add links here actually, haha ). I saved it for max 2014, I use 2016 right now, and Corona 1.4:

https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/35f7f649ac2b519302294a5a21af9d7420160707001103/4ce049b2de0fd3af2e7271d4d1b1c71420160707001103/a612d1

Thank you!

6

[Max] I need help! / Re: transparent plastic bottle material

« on: 2016-07-07, 00:51:25 »

Ok, thanks a bunch again for the replies, it really helped!

Now, to get this out of the way, the bottle had a very very thin shell, it wasn't actually noticeable. After making it a tad thicker, the refraction results are actually better, it's more of a subtle result, but it affects the entire surface of the mesh. I also relaxed the mesh just a little, because it tended to warp the details in and out, making them look nasty.

Regarding the actual scene setup, the guy that asked me to do this only needs the bottle itself, presented as a .png file, so he can use it wherever he needs. So, there's actually no need for anything else in the scene I guess, except strictly the elements to make it look convincing.

TomG, I took your advice again, and played around with all the scene elements. The conclusion is that I only need the bottle elements itself, the lights and the max hdr environment to produce a convincing look. Who would have guessed, at first I thought I would need some elaborate scene for this, but it's definitely not the case.

As you can see in shot "hdr_1", it looks a lot better now, it's not perfect yet, however it's come along way from how it looked in the beginning.

For this, I only used an hdr environment map and the two lights in the scene, you can see them reflecting in the bottle, to give it some highlight. I used a free hdr map from the hdrlabs site, which I blurred in photoshop using Field Blur.

However, right now I'm stuck again. I was playing around with the settings and it came to me that I try some other materials on the bottle, which I had in another scene. The problem appeared after I messed around with the scenes and materials. The hdr environment suddenly went crazy. Practically, when I look at the hdr map in the render window ( I added the hdr map into the Direct visibility override as an instance to be able to see the background ), it just shows a flat colour and the look of the bottle has completely changed from the nice result I had earlier. You can see what I mean in the other shot "hdr_trolling_me", it's different altogether.

It was looking so nice, and now it's messed up, any ideas how to fix this issue?

PS, I'll leave the AO part for when I get this hdr issue out of the way.

Thanks!

7

[Max] I need help! / Re: transparent plastic bottle material

« on: 2016-07-06, 02:10:26 »

Yes, it does, and I won't stop now, with a little patience I'll produce the desired look.

Firstly, I want to mention that I took note of all your comments regarding the renderer settings, I appreciate that, now I've got a better grasp of them.

At first, I thought I wouldn't fuss too much with this scene, as it was only one simple object to produce. However, from what you're telling me, it's a little tricky to get proper results when it comes to rendering objects of this sort, with reflection, refraction and translucency.

Regarding the prerequisites of my client, it's that situation where the client doesn't have much vision over the final product, so I guess anything goes, as long as I make it look believable. There's no actual "must" for the background or any other scene object, except the bottle elements themselves, so if you have any advice on setting the scene better in any other way, fire away, I'll be happy to try it!( however, I'm not sure how the bottle would look with no background to refract through it, maybe too black? )

You're right, the right side of the bottle is actually getting there, it's only the left side where the magic isn't happening yet, I'll play around with the cards and upload another shot, maybe with better placed refraction.

Also, I think that this bottle, having such a specific look ( kangaroos all over ), should have these details stand out somehow. I was pondering on how to do that, as there is no actual fine shadow in the scene, like an ambient occlusion pass, going over the plastic of the bottle. That would make the details stand out, I added an AO pass ( a Corona AO material added to the CTexmap Render Element texture slot - at least this is how I saw it being done on Youtube ) to the render elements but it looks weird in my opinion (AO_pass), I mean, it's not that usual subtle result you get with render to texture in max or rendering an ao in xNormal or TopoGun. In other words, it looks like I'm rendering the object with some gray material on top and nothing more. To contrast this, I'll also upload an ao pass that I produced with mental ray (mr_AO)It looks very thick and noisy. Do you happen to have any ideas on how to achieve such details?

Thanks again for your patience!

8

[Max] I need help! / Re: transparent plastic bottle material

« on: 2016-07-05, 23:31:57 »

Hello again,
Thanks a lot for the scene! I tried to put it to good use today, I'm still getting weird results, but I feel like I'm closing in on something.

I noticed that there were some differences between my render settings on yours I'll list them below( mine are the latter), also maybe you can shed some more light on what they do more specifically:
- pass limit: 10 vs pass limit:0 ( is there an optimum pass number that I should take into account? )
- render selected: disabled vs render selected: Object GBuffer ID ( is this something that actually influences the look or the rendering, or just regions of the render )
- GI vs AA balance 32 vs 16
- Max ray depth 50 vs 25
- Image filter Width [px] 1.5 vs 2.0

Also, when I opened the scene you sent me, I was notified that there where two HDR images missing. One was placed into the Max environment map, which makes sense, but I can't figure out what the second one is for (conference_room mod.exr), so I can replace it with some properly similar image.

As you can see from my upload, now it's got a more convincing look, however, from what I can guess, I probably need to move the dark cards around to make them refract better.
I think it might be the shape of this naive bottle that is difficult to work with in order to produce a proper result.

I'll try to experiment more with light and object positioning, and thanks again!

9

[Max] I need help! / Re: transparent plastic bottle material

« on: 2016-07-05, 01:32:16 »

Hello again, thank you, TomG and PROH, for the replies!

I've been at it for a while, trying to emulate what you told me regarding the "simulated" studio look.
Right now I think it actually looks worse and further from reality than before. TomG, the way you render it is exactly what I'm looking for, however, I can't seem to work out what I'm doing wrong, although I followed in our footsteps exactly. It might be the fact that I'm lacking the experience with Corona, I might be thick or something and missing out the obvious, so I apologize if it's taking so long for me to figure everything out.

After following your example with the Rayswitcher materials, you can see how it looks in my uploaded shot, "result_1" ( please don't mind the background )
I understand what you're saying about setting up those boxes for the refraction, also, I used the three lights I had in the scene for reflection, however I'm not sure about the softbox bit but I did it anyways.

You can see the two boxes refracting, there are the usual reflections, however, everything looks "wrong"

I'm kinda lost now, this is why I want to ask, would you be willing to share the scene you built from your last post?  So I can import my own bottle in it and try to experiment a little with it. I use Max 2016 - Corona 1.4. I will still try and work on the scene regardless.

Secondly, PROH, it makes perfect sense what you're telling me regarding the various looks by changing thickness, I'll definitely apply what you're telling me, once I obtain a more believable look.

Thanks!

10

[Max] I need help! / Re: transparent plastic bottle material

« on: 2016-07-04, 18:15:59 »

Hi TomG, thank you for such an elaborate reply!

I tried to apply the things you mentioned, however it still doesn't come close to the example you uploaded. The look you achieved for your render is pretty close to what I want, it actually looks like a plastic water bottle.

Practically, I added an HDR map into the background environment tab in Max. Next, I made a water and bottle material with the options from your shot. The result with these options can be seen in "bottle_1" I didn't touch the absorption or scattering either.
Afterwards, I tinkered with the refraction/reflection options inside the materials. I added the environment map as an instance into the refraction slot, reflection slot, into both materials. I tried every combination, the result was similar and unconvincing. ("bottle_2")
The reflections you mentioned I was able to use in my render are possibly triggered by the materials I downloaded from the Corona Material Library, for these new renders I didn't use those.

I'm aware that the problem here is related to how the reflection and refraction are employed in the respective materials but I can't seem to figure out what else to do.
I must also mention that the objects are of course separate into a water mesh and a bottle mesh. The bottle doesn't have thickness, nor is it double sided or something.

There's no problem if the reflections are over the top, I just want to achieve the specific look somehow. The guy that asked me to render this also provided some images for reference, like the "example" shot I uploaded.

The background or lighting is not that important as long as I can produce that plastic bottle look.

Sorry for the noisiness of the images, I just make quick renders so you can check out the reflections/refraction and look.

11

[Max] I need help! / transparent plastic bottle material

« on: 2016-07-03, 17:15:48 »

Hello all!

This is my first post to the Corona forum, I need a little help with a basic scene.

I am a complete beginner to Corona Renderer, so any advice is appreciated. I must mention I read the Index before writing this post, but I couldn't really piece together what I needed.

I am trying to render a believable transparent plastic material for a mineral water bottle, but I have yet to figure out a good method.  I tried using a couple from the Corona Materials Library site: Translucent Plastic ( by zzubnik ) and Transparent Plastic G ( by Douglas Cav. ), with similar bogus results.

I'm also not very sure about the water material either.

The scene setup is very basic, just a couple of corona lights, I also added a corona sun to the scene, just because it seemed that the light setup wasn't strong enough.

I use 3ds Max for building the scene, and I can upload it, should anybody want to take a better look at it. Of course, I can provide more info on the Corona material settings that I used in max, if it helps.

I only want it to look as similar as possible to a clear plastic mineral bottle, nothing more.

I've attached a shot of how it looks right now, any comments are welcome!

Thank you,
Alex