Smirnoff Ice Material

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Hi,

I am working on replicating the drink Smirnoff Ice with Vray, but am having serious problems getting the liquid to look like that drink: foggy white but with slight orange refraction color.

How would I go on about making the liquid less see-through, more foggy but still smooth (leaving refraction glossiness at 1)?
Looking from an angle, one can see through the bottle and still see the objects behind (or the other side of the bottle itself) but they appear a little blurred. How do you achieve that with Vray?

Here are some reference photos that I took:


And here is my last render. Do you think I need primary and secondary GI to get a totally realistic result? My client is asking for photorealistic results (and beyond lol). Max. transp. level is set to 25.
To me it looks like there is no liquid in there at all...lighting related?


And my liquids Material settings (with or without interpolation, the result doesnt seem to make such a big difference):



Any help is appreciated as always. Thank you very much!

Manuel

[Vizioen]

Hi,

I am working on replicating the drink Smirnoff Ice with Vray, but am having serious problems getting the liquid to look like that drink: foggy white but with slight orange refraction color.

How would I go on about making the liquid less see-through, more foggy but still smooth (leaving refraction glossiness at 1)?
Looking from an angle, one can see through the bottle and still see the objects behind (or the other side of the bottle itself) but they appear a little blurred. How do you achieve that with Vray?

Here are some reference photos that I took:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]20048[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]20049[/ATTACH]

And here is my last render. Do you think I need primary and secondary GI to get a totally realistic result? My client is asking for photorealistic results (and beyond lol). Max. transp. level is set to 25.
To me it looks like there is no liquid in there at all...lighting related?
[ATTACH=CONFIG]20045[/ATTACH]

And my liquids Material settings (with or without interpolation, the result doesnt seem to make such a big difference):
[ATTACH=CONFIG]20050[/ATTACH]


Any help is appreciated as always. Thank you very much!

Manuel

I think your fog is all wrong. Why is your fog multiplier set so high? And your Bias too? I would try with a fog color close to that of your orange and set it low to something like 0.1. Start with your bias at default 0.0. and play with values either negative or positive but no bigger than 2 or 3 I think. And to get photoreal results GI is necessary.


You might want to read this to get a rough idea of where you're going:

http://www.aversis.be/tutorials/vray...-liquid-02.htm

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Thanks for the fast reply and the link, Vizioen!
The reason the multiplier and bias are so high is that they seemed to have little impact on the liquid, probably also because I chose very moderate colors, as you can see in the almost white falloff map in the fog color slot.

The problem I have though is not so much the overall color but this foggy appearance. Vrays fog color makes the material look more like one color (and also having an effect on the refraction color) but it doesnt make it so blurry foggy like the drink..

[Vizioen]

Thanks for the fast reply and the link, Vizioen!
The reason the multiplier and bias are so high is that they seemed to have little impact on the liquid, probably also because I chose very moderate colors, as you can see in the almost white falloff map in the fog color slot.

The problem I have though is not so much the overall color but this foggy appearance. Vrays fog color makes the material look more like one color (and also having an effect on the refraction color) but it doesnt make it so blurry foggy like the drink..

To have a blurry refraction you need to lower your refraction glossiness. I think it's just a matter of balancing your refraction glossy with your fog multiplier (and color) and bias. This should get you pretty close already. Don't forget to raise your subdivs of your refraction if you go lower.

http://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/V...ColorParameter

But to get more real I think you need to investigate Translucency (or VrayFastSSS2)

http://viscorbel.com/vray-materials-theory/

http://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY3/VRayFastSSS2

[windowlicker]

Actually, skip using fog for the liquid shader. I just made a little attempt at this, and it's looking pretty alright. I have one object for the glass, then one object for the clear liquid, then one object that isn't renderable, but it functions as a gizmo for a volume fog that just... fogs. The benefit of using volume fog, is that it also picks up shadows in a correct way... and that you can bounce GI within the fog, making it "light up".
See the render included. I'll attach the .max file too.

You might wanna take some time to adjust the fog settings, and the color of the glass to get it just the way you like. Shouldn't be too hard to get it right.

Edit: I wish Chaos group would include the vrayVolumeFog functionality in the shader itself, then giving us the option to use either the current refractive fog (for glass color etc) or have this more advanced fog without having to setup gizmos and all that jazz.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Thanks again, Vizioen! I was also just starting to realize that sss is probably the way to got and started playing around with it while you were writing your post!

Windowlicker: Wow! You even set up a scene for me! So kind! THANKS!
I never used vrayvolumefog. Do you think its possible to get the effect as in the photos I made? Your renderings look very thick. How would you go on making it more transparent and vivid?

[windowlicker]

Hey np. Had a few minutes to spare anyway.

The "fog distance" is the best way to set the thickness of the fog. You can also try changing the fog color - trying it out right now with 128 gray, and it's looking pretty good - but I think you will have to tweak it to the lighting conditions of your scene for the final renders. You can also try using maps to create falloff or uneven fog... or you can try to change the gizmo falloff. However, I'd wait to tweak all of this until you have your scene (with reflecting environment and lighting) set up. It'll save you a bunch of time, I think.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

So I am playing around with VrayFastSSS2, but I am having trouble getting the result with my liquid inside the bottle.
When compared with the standard teapot the same material on the liquid looks so much darker and browner. The teapots color and appearance is much closer to Smirnoff Ice..


Even when I am upping the scale just for the liquid, it is still quite a huge difference. Also: the highter the scale value, the more the objects behind the liquid is becoming clearly visible, which I am not trying to achieve.

I want - as in reality - a blurry refraction concerning objects that are farer away and a less blurry refraction with objects very close to the liquid (like the bottle itself). How would I achieve that?



The teapots scale value is 50 BTW.
Upping the scale value to 800 results in crazy grain and still not the same look as the teapot..whats going wrong here?

mmmh..making a test with a simple cylinder turned out better..somethings wrong with my model I guess...


Also: I cannot seem to find any documentation on the SSS2 color modes: sub-surface color+raytrace or scatter coefficient + fog color. Any insights?

[Vizioen]

So I am playing around with VrayFastSSS2, but I am having trouble getting the result with my liquid inside the bottle.
When compared with the standard teapot the same material on the liquid looks so much darker and browner. The teapots color and appearance is much closer to Smirnoff Ice..
[ATTACH=CONFIG]20056[/ATTACH]

Even when I am upping the scale just for the liquid, it is still quite a huge difference. Also: the highter the scale value, the more the objects behind the liquid is becoming clearly visible, which I am not trying to achieve.

I want - as in reality - a blurry refraction concerning objects that are farer away and a less blurry refraction with objects very close to the liquid (like the bottle itself). How would I achieve that?


[ATTACH=CONFIG]20054[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]20055[/ATTACH]
The teapots scale value is 50 BTW.
Upping the scale value to 800 results in crazy grain and still not the same look as the teapot..whats going wrong here?
[ATTACH=CONFIG]20057[/ATTACH]
mmmh..making a test with a simple cylinder turned out better..somethings wrong with my model I guess...
[ATTACH=CONFIG]20058[/ATTACH]

Also: I cannot seem to find any documentation on the SSS2 color modes: sub-surface color+raytrace or scatter coefficient + fog color. Any insights?

As for your model, check normals and overlapping faces. Don't know if you looked at the links I gave you but Viscorbel explains a little about SSS2 in his tutorial here: http://viscorbel.com/vray-materials-theory/

[Vizioen]

Grain = noise = not enough samples. Check your renderelements ( light, refraction, reflection, sss2, GI, ...) to see where the noise comes from and up those values.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Yep, sorry for trashing my own thread while working on stuff I found my model to have open faces and overlapping too. Trying to do a retopology now.

As for the links, I looked at everything - I will take a look again and find a way to make it more blurry. I read something about a prepass and lower values, but looking at the examples in the official Vray help documents, it didnt seem to be a good idea to lower the values too much.

But nowhere is the color mode being explained...

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Now we are getting somewhere!
I remodeled the liquid to a solid model - no leaking, no normal problems.
And the sss mat looks beautiful!


Maybe some more tweaking also in working together with the glass bottle itself...
Now, what I would like to achieve is a blurrier refraction. is that possible with the sss2 mat or do I have to do a blend of a normal material and a sss material?

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

And here is a quick render with the liquid inside the bottle and some "proper" lighting. getting rid of the noise within a good render time at print resolution will be a different task altogether...

I dont like the bright orange color yet..not really sure if smirnoff ice would really react to that backlight like that..although it could actually!

anyway, what I was trying to do the whole time is to get the refractions to be a little bit blurrier. Look at that emboss of the bottle that is being refracted! for my taste it is way to clear - looks very CGI-clear to me.

anybody any idea on how to achieve a more subtle result?

[Vizioen]

I don't think there's orange in smirnoff ice, only drank it once but it appeared white to me. Even a little blueish at times. The reason why it looks like that in your reference images is because the light is yellow (look at the window sill). I have no experience with SSS materials but seems to me u need to make it scatter more.

[Mokiki]

I gave it a quick go. I'm still missing the shadows inside the volume but at least I got the white color to work. Using a standard vray material with translucency (hybrid mode) enabled.




*edit*

Tweaked it some more in the right(ish) direction sadly render times went up by quite a bit.



*edit2*
Okay last one for today. Noticed that I didn't check for refractions so I put a quick sky in (ofc wrong color compared to the reference photos... oh well) tweaked some more values. Liquid still too bright and I'm still missing the darker parts from the reference photo (to be honest no clue how they come to be) and interesting that in the original even though light is coming from the left the right side is brighter.