dark meniscus

[pierrelemaux]

Hi,
I'm trying to make a nice meniscus between a bottle and a liquid, like this one:
http://c7.alamy.com/comp/BEXF60/water-bottle-BEXF60.jpg

I usually manage to meet the demands of my customers by first creating the meniscus in max (I let the liquid geometry intersect the glass of the bottle with a push) and then retouching it in photoshop. But in this particular project, I can't do any post production.
Do you have a tips to achieve this kind of dark and nice meniscus ?
Thank you for your help,
Pierre

[Vizioen]

I would do it by playing with the refraction fog. Try to map it with a gradiant ramp or something.

[joconnell]

It's all based on what the refractions of the surface can "see". You've to place a dark object in a position by the bottle so that you get that line. A very sneaky idea I've seen to make this quicker is to make an image in photoshop where you have a square image, you make a black to white gradient going vertically in the red channel, a black to white horizontal gradient in the green channel. You'll end up with a multicoloured image. If you then put a sphere around your glass object and put the image into a vray light material and render a frame, you'll be able to see what colour value ends up being refracted in that portion of the water, then if you make the map visible in your viewport and find the same colour value on your sphere - you'll get a good indication where to start placing black objects to refract in those areas.

[Vizioen]

It's all based on what the refractions of the surface can "see". You've to place a dark object in a position by the bottle so that you get that line. A very sneaky idea I've seen to make this quicker is to make an image in photoshop where you have a square image, you make a black to white gradient going vertically in the red channel, a black to white horizontal gradient in the green channel. You'll end up with a multicoloured image. If you then put a sphere around your glass object and put the image into a vray light material and render a frame, you'll be able to see what colour value ends up being refracted in that portion of the water, then if you make the map visible in your viewport and find the same colour value on your sphere - you'll get a good indication where to start placing black objects to refract in those areas.

That is a quite nice trick. "Complex" but well thought out.

[pierrelemaux]

Thank you for your help. I had already a black object to fake the dark refraction. Your method help me to place it more precisely !

[rikou]

It's all based on what the refractions of the surface can "see". You've to place a dark object in a position by the bottle so that you get that line. A very sneaky idea I've seen to make this quicker is to make an image in photoshop where you have a square image, you make a black to white gradient going vertically in the red channel, a black to white horizontal gradient in the green channel. You'll end up with a multicoloured image. If you then put a sphere around your glass object and put the image into a vray light material and render a frame, you'll be able to see what colour value ends up being refracted in that portion of the water, then if you make the map visible in your viewport and find the same colour value on your sphere - you'll get a good indication where to start placing black objects to refract in those areas.

Awesome !! Thanks for that trick !