help with making wine glass look real
 

hi

I am just starting out in maya as my previous dog model shows haha. I have been playing around with modeling and am getting the hang of the different parts to it so I thought I would like to try and make something that looked a bit more realistic so I modeled this very simple wine glass.

Now comes the question. Can any help me with out exactly to texture and render it so that it looks realistic? rendering/lighting/texturing is still a bit of a mystery.

all help welcome

cheers robin

The key will be setting up refractions and caustics properly. You can look up the actual refractive index of liquids, or just play with the refraction until you get the look you want. For the caustics, you will need to set your light source up to cast photons, and render using Mental Ray with caustics settings turned on.

There is a nice glass bottle tutorial here:
http://www.deathfall.com/tutorials.p...wcontent&id=83

It uses the l_glass plugin which you can find here:
http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downlo...misc/3192.html

forgot attachment....

thanks. how do i get the I_glass download into the right place in maya? Also I don't seem to have metal ray under my "render using" tab where i thought it should be?

On a side note, the l_glass shader is a bit hard to set up. You must make a separate object for the glass, the volume of liquid, and the meniscus (the curvature of the liquids surface due to surface tension). Then these objects must have their normals facing the right way for the shader to know what part is the glass, and what part is liquid. I could never get it to work just right, honestly.

hmmmm might give the i_glass shader a miss for now then. need something a little easier. Im still worried that I cant find any mention of metal ray anywhere in maya??? in the global render options i only have maya software and hardware in the "render using" drop down tab?

If Mental Ray isn't loaded, go to Window>Settings/Preferences>Plug-in Manager and check the Loaded box next to Mayatomr.mll.

You can also check the Auto load box to have it always load, though sometimes I have to manually load it anyway.

right ok i have loaded the metal ray plug in. dam there is so much to this software! so how would i go about starting to get a glass effect? cheers for the help guys

A very basic start would be to assign a Blinn material, set the transparancy really high, and set the refraction index to about 1.5

The easiest would be to make a Blinn material. Make its color white. Turn its Transparency setting up to almost full white.

Now to give it a certain glassy shine, turn the Eccentricity down a tad and bump the Specular Roll Off and Color settings up a bit. You can tone the reflectivity down a tad as well.

For refractions (bending of light in glass/liquids), go to the Raytrace Options and turn on the Refractions checkbox and change the Refractive Index to 1.5 (glass).

If you click the checkered box next to Reflected Color you can create a reflected environment such as Chrome which will give your glass interesting reflections. Or you can choose an image such as a room to reflect in the glass. Or you could actually model the room and place the glass in it, then you would see the actual room reflected in the glass.

ok made my first attempt at rendering etc of this wine glass. Its dont like the over all effect but I think the bottom of the glass looks quite good against the floor. Need a way of making the glass seem clearer against the background.

well as always input is a great help guys.

You need to turn Raytracing on in the render options so that the glass actually bends light. Right now the glass looks like its thin plastic because there is no refraction occurring. You should have already set your glass materials Refractive Index to 1.5 right?

Also, you seem to have set the Chrome Environment as your backdrop rather than your reflected color. An easy way to do this is to go into your Hypershade panel and
1. Click on your Blinn material you made for the glass.
2. Click the Input Output Connections button to show the material down in the Work Area
3. Click on the Env Chrome button under Env Textures to drop a new Env Chrome node into your work area. (If you want you can highlite all the stuff in the work area and press the Input/Output Button again to clean it up a bit)
4. MMB (middle-mouse button) Drag teh envChrome node onto the Blinn and choose Reflected Color from the dropdown that comes up
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/6...exampleje0.jpg

This will make the chrome texture appear in the glasses reflection. I also remove the grid lines from the chrome texture by going into its attributes and turning the Grid Width and Grid Depth to 0 (under Grid Placement).

Other than that, I would make a better surface for it to sit on. Maybe a black glass surface, or an infinitely large white plain.

ok iv followed all the things so far but it still looks like plastic? Also hows best to light the scene as at the moment it looks nothing like glass or remotely real! haha lighting and rendering very new to me!

sorry for keeping asking for help

much appreciated

robin

OR....

You will need to make sure that Raytracing is turned on for the glass to look real. Raytracing is the only way to achieve the looks you want such as refractions.

Also, don't forget that you also need to set your glass materials Refractive Index to 1.5. Once you have done all that, the glass should bend the light behind it.

Also, your wineglass needs more depth. You should have also included the inside line of the wineglass in your curve like the one on the right:

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/4...louetteco5.jpg