Oops, I dropped the chocolate..

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Did you ever spend a day tweaking one material?
I am finally at a point where I am beginning to like my SSS chocolate material, that I need for my chocolate explosion animation (early WIP)
The dropped chocolate render is just a test to see it in a "real" situation.
What do you guys think?

Right now there are only imperfections at the fragmented faces, achieved through bump.
I wonder what I shall do to the general surface, as right now it is a tad too perfect for my taste.

I also have a problem with the fragmented faces and their edges. With Rayfire the edge length is too long, real chocolate has a rougher edge. Edgetex makes the edges too round. I tried to use vray edgetex and combine it with noise to bump up the roughness of the edges, but edgetex doesnt like to be combined - neither in a vraycomptex nor a 3dsmax composite map. Any advice how to achieve this?

[zero-13]

Explosion, particles, chocolate fragments and material look amazing!

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Hey, thanks for the kind words. I was expecting to be ripped apart though lol
no critique?

[zero-13]

My apologies I did not give any constructive criticism earlier as I have not studied the particulars of chocolate in any great detail beyond eating too much of it. My initial impression as a "chocolate simulation civilian" is that these two still shots look great. I hope at least that should give an impression of how maybe a regular consumer might react to the work.

The edges don't seem off to me or at least I would have never noticed without you mentioning it, and if this is to be in motion then any slight variance in the roughness of real chocolate will be hidden in the motion. It looks to me like delicious chocolate and some nice style frames from and advertisement for the wonderful treat.

Another thing I might add and perhaps this is exactly what you are trying to avoid, is that many of the CG chocolate commercials I've seen over the years tend to illustrate the chocolate in flawless smoothness whether in liquid or solid form. So being more flawless than the actual roughness or imperfections of the real deal I think is okay especially where advertising is concerned.

I'm thinking of how a cheeseburger is shown in a commercial in an immaculate way but when you go to buy one at the restaurant it looks as though it were ran over by a train lol

I'm not sure how much help if any this is, I think anything can always be pushed further and the realism pushed further as well, but the perception of that effort and level of detail can swing wildly based on the perceiver. This not a reason to not continue pushing further always but just an acknowledgement that the flaws we see in our own work are often imperceptible to the vast majority.

I know there are so many pros here who can help with more intimate material and simulation knowledge and details to push this further, but from a perpetual student of all things CG, this work is fantastic so far, enough so to make me crave a small tactical nuke worth of chocolate.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Haha, thanks for the write up, zero!
sounds great that it makes you craving chocolate .

But yeah, the imperfections of realism. I think in CGI, especially for advertisement (and this is produced to look like a tabletop commercial) there is a fine line between making it real with imperfections and making it 100% perfect. So some very subtle bump or changes in reflection would probably make this even better .
I guess I have to buy more chocolate and study the surface!