[simmsimaging]

Hey all -

Had a request for some info on my last beer pour render, so here is a quick overview and some screens:

Final image:



These are the two main renders (second one for bottle only) and the two versions I pulled out of the bottle shot with ML:



Here are some screens of the setup in Max:



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The lighting rig is actually pretty simple, but positioning of the elements does take a fair bit of time. It is hard to position things accurately for reflections, so I spend a lot of time test rendering to get things locked down. The background is a simple plane and a chopped off sphere. Nothing is square to each other so it looks a bit odd, but it allowed me to create fall-off of light without getting tricky with emitters. I used one mxi emitter for the top plane emitter. It's just a simple square of white with darkened corners to create a softbox sort of look - nothing tricky.

The background is lit with a plane (marked as #2 in the first screen grab). It shares an emitter material with the strip light emitter on the camera-left side of the bottle. It's just an RGB coloured emitter (190/106/51). There is a thin plane emitter at the end of the bottle which is lighting the label a bit with a slight reflection. It's just a plain white emitter.

The background material is just a default MW material, with a REF0 colour of 208/161/111. The last thing is an HDRI environment map which is actually the interior orf a car wash (off a stock HDRI disc I own). It's only turned on for reflections, and set very low in the main render. It just adds a few reflections and highlights to add some realism cues.

So, the real trick is fine-tuning positions of things. It is really, really key to first lock down your camera position. I'm not sure how much you all know about photography, but with subjects like glass you *must* lock your camera down and light for that very specific view. If you move the camera or subject even slightly it can mean major re-lighting work. So - pick that first and light to it.

Couple of tips for glass: you have to remember that the glass and contents take on the colour of your background. If you want nice warm beer tones, for example, you have to have a nice warm tone behind the bottle. In this case it is the whole background, but it is often just a card cut into the shape of the bottle and hidden behind it. If you use a full background try to avoid having it extend beyond the crop edges. This allows you to fill the glass but also keep some edges that can be toned differently to bring out the shape. They can be darker or lighter, just different to show the cylindrical shape/curvature. The main thing though is to think about *backlighting* for glass. When you have to also light a label it gets trickier to control your reflectons/highlights, but it's sooooooo much easier with ML

As you can see, I comped a few versions together and did some postwork for colour/contrast (and rotated the whole she-bang).

If there are any specific questions beyond this pls just let me know. Happy to help.

b

[jespi]

Thanks a lot master of light!

[lsega77]

This should be moved to the tutorials section please. AND looks like good !Think site material as well!

Thanks for the insights Brett

Luis

[4 HeRo]

Nice one Brett thx very much

[misterasset]

Thanks, and couldn't have come at a better time. My boss just got a request to render out a booth for a convention. Definately put some studio tricks to use there.

[simmsimaging]

Glad it helps - I get a lot of help on the forum, I am happy to return the favour.

Luis - I didn't think it was enough of a 'tutorial' to justify putting it in that section. If NL wants to move it I'll leave that to the powers that be.


b

[Mihai]

Yes, it's a great tutorial and setup, the proof are the awesome images

[lsega77]

Luis - I didn't think it was enough of a 'tutorial' to justify putting it in that section.


b

[JCAddy]

Fantastic. Thanks again for another helpful thread Brett.

[simmsimaging]

[Eric Lagman]

Nice tutorial and nice renders. I know what you mean about doing test renders to get the emitters to reflect the way you want properly.

I put in a request in the wish list to be able to see in the open gl where the reflection of an emitter will be. If its not possible in the open gl just seeing directional arrows of where the light from a plane will hit the object and go off to would be helpful in positioning them properly so that they go to the camera. It becomes even harder the further you move the emitters from the object to figure out where the reflections will show up. I have spent hours trying to get a highlight on a small lcd screen, but ended up just having to do it in post because it took too long to figure out. Thanks again for the great tutorial though.

[simmsimaging]

I have spent hours trying to get a highlight on a small lcd screen, but ended up just having to do it in post because it took too long to figure out.

I sooooo know your pain. I have been trying like crazy to figure out a way to do this better. One way I did think of works well in Max - not sure if you use that package, but you could adapt it somehow I'm sure:

Add an edit normal modifier. This adds a blue line off the face to indicate normal direction. In the modifier you can set the length of that line - just stretch it right out and it becomes exactly like what you described. I use those to orient and it helps a lot, but it's not the same as seeing it.

Another alternative would be to just add a bit of geometry at right angles to your emitter plane, group it together, and make it non-renderable - just a long spline or skinny plane etc. Just thought of that one now though - have to give it a go!
b

[sandykoufax]

Really nice tutorial.

Thank you very much, Brett.

[devista]

thxs
saludos
luis

[simmsimaging]

Welcome - it's really not much of a tutorial, but there you have it.
b