[Nasok]

Hello, one of my recent projects. Just went public, so I'm allowed to publish it



The challenge was to come out with the creative packshot for 007 fragrances.
The idea was to place 007 chrome bottle into the chrome liquid plus add some red reflections to give the presence of some sort of danger or "fast reaction" environment. That something is happening right here and right now.
So we modeled the Bottle and and took it to RealFlow to simulate the ripples, afterwards we brought it back into Maya and created multi light setup rig - and rendered everything with Maxwell Render.
Our multi light set up gave us possibility to control lights on postproduction, which is turned out very handy in defining the final look and feel.

Your professional comments and suggestions are very very welcome.

[tom]

The liquid chrome looks rough, is it? And, its mesh fidelity looks insufficient.

[Nasok]

uh .. yeah .. ideally - yup .. it should be more rough, probably less shiny and with higher (I mean really higher viscosity) .. however the client insisted to have "liquid chrome / mercury" without actually having the real melted metal surface .. as in their perception it doesn't look luxury )
so honestly it was fairly tough to match the both sides of one stick (brief - expectations) but really thanks to multi light ..as after rendering it was brought into photoshop and our photoshop artist tweaked it as desired.

P.S. - oh and the displacement in Maxwell is just awesome, really saved me a lot of time.

[tom]

IMHO liquid metal surface has nearly zero roughness. Do you have a reference image showing a rough example? Because, yours look like a melted silver plastic... well, if this is what your client insists, you can show my post to them What a pity, a fragrance producer puts their nose into visualization...

[mverta]

I concur this reads as dull plastic, and not as chrome/metallic.

[Nasok]

Hey Tom, Mike - you guys are right.
I guess I used the wrong word for roughness. I mean reducing sleekness, like in your example there is a lot of stuff going on, on the surface of the melted metal (or probably aluminum in this case) See these toni specs, maybe some dust, maybe some micro bubbles (as it probably still have temperature or stacked air in some areas) and see the highlight and reflections are not really share .. the are a bit diffused .. I guess I mean that by saying reducing shininess and making it more rough .. for sure not rough like concrete or anything like that.
And originally bottle is not metal it's like a mverta said - kind of dull plastic with some sort of metallic paint on top - so it's a bit less reflective as the real chrome … but also quite glossy … in my opinion looks quite cheap .. so the didn't want to go for "strong chrome" because it would not look like real bottle, therefore would not be recognizable in the store .. and at the same time they didn't really want to have a very realistic render as it would show the plastic finish ..so I had to stick in somewhere between. It's like a chrome .. but no like a real chrome .. a bit tough ..

and in the beginning I made a liquid a bit thicker … 'can't publish it due to NDA, they still own all the materials even those which were never used .. I've also made some splashes .. very thick ones .. to show the thickness and high viscosity of the liquid, but .. well .I guess as you said it's not really great when client goes into visualization .. but it is as it is .. in my case it was like fairly long chain .. I was confirming my visuals with our company's creative director .. and he was presenting them to P&G Prestige … (the guys who actually produce it) and they were confirming every thing with the Licensor .. and to make it simply with Barbara Broccoli as she holds the license for all 007 franchise .. so it was like a pinball game and thanks god that FIRE is as it is. In some cases I was just doing fire preview to confirm the look, the feel, the angle .. anything

And actually on the photo is it a special glass ? as I know that the temperature for melting the glass should be lower than the metals one. Usually people use metal mold to produce glass bottles, etc. So I assume metal should have higher temperature limit than the glass. However it could be a special lab glass .. probably

I was thinking about having this kind of look but I guess it's to rough for a fragrances .. especially if these fragrances produced by P&G

Thank you guys for your thoughts I'm really looking forward to improve my rendering.

[Polyxo]

And actually on the photo is it a special glass ? as I know that the temperature for melting the glass should be lower than the metals one. Usually people use metal mold to produce glass bottles, etc. So I assume metal should have higher temperature limit than the glass. However it could be a special lab glass .. probably

That's darn likely mercury, otherwise the guy also had troubles holding that beaker in his hands...

[hatts]

There's plenty of metals that have low melting points, like pot metal & wood's metal. But mercury might also be my guess in this case.

[Nasok]

2Polyxo - well it looks like mercury .. but I assume it also might be aluminum in a special LAB glass . .or something like that .. not sure..

2hatts - yeah .. but .. do they all have kinda same look and feel when they are melted ?

I'm really thankful for your comments as I'm really looking forward in improving my skills.

Thanks a lot

Tim.

[Polyxo]

I think it was best to create a stunning and plausibly looking image instead of trying to be crazy physically correct.
A lot of stuff happening in James Bond movies also has nothing to do with the world we live in.

Looking at your image and wireframe I would suggest not to use displacement at all but to rather freeze all Hires details
on the fragrance bottle and the liquid metal. By carefully sculpting the boundary between bottle and metal bath inside
a digital sculpting app like Zbrush or 3DCoat one should get closer to the effect you're after.
That way you could get rid of the artifacts in the "waves" too. At some point, depending on the specific look you are after
one might even merge the two meshes to just one item, that way one should be able to control the delicate transition between
liquid and solid even better (Dynamesh in Zbrush, Voxels in 3DCoat). You might check Simmsimaging's work with liquids - this stuff
was all sculpted in Zbrush, if I recall correctly.

[Nasok]

2Polyxo - yeah .. there were a lot of options … some of them even with some heavy splashes and drops .. they picked this one .. and as you probably know . .clients prefer to stay on a "safe side" so couldn't change much from original "fire preview" )

I was thinking about merging it and sculpting a bit .. but for this project we didn't had zbrush in our pipeline .. and sculpting in Maya .. well you probably know it's a bit tough so .. well .. at that time it was my best try

for sure now I would do it in a better manner
Anyway, thanks for suggestion, definitely very useful.