Foam Shading

[fingerindustries]

Hi again,

Currently I'm rendering my foam as a separate pass that we're going to use as a Screen Layer on top of the water render. While this looks good with some fiddling, I feel like the overall mass of foam lacks depth and shade.

Often I would render a greyscale pass of a character or scene to use the shadows as a multiply to boost the shading. Is there any way I can do this with the foam?

Ideally I'd like to render each bubble simply as a grey sphere with lighting on it. Is this possible at all?

Thanks,

Chris.

[Ivaylo Katev]

it's not possible to render it the foam bubbles as gray sphere, can you attach some images to see what you are trying to improve?

[ivaylo.ivanov]

It's possible in Maya if you have it.

[fingerindustries]

This is a really quick low quality render. Basically what you're looking at is the straight render of liquid, and then a screen layer of my foam rendered on black with the water as a MtlWrapper.

It looks ok, and when moving with motion blur it looks pretty cool. But it would just be great if the was some way to enhance the shading of the foam.

It may not be physically correct to do this kind of thing but as a stylistic choice it would be useful.

Oh and we're using max btw.

[Ivaylo Katev]

i see. in my experience, when the foam looks too flat, i'm trying to find lighting that makes it semi shadowed by itself. perhaps we must ask our 3d team, they are much more experienced in the production rendering.

[fingerindustries]

Thanks for the reply. I did what you said and revised the lighting and have come up with something that I think looks a lot better, with more volume and density.

This method also doesn't go over the top as a screen layer, but just a straight cut out with the alpha channel.