Render this: Disco ball
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This is a issue I've been fiddling with for a few days, it started on another forum and then continued to the Vue forum and now I bring it here.
Vue 8 can achieve great results but any version below it will not.
I initially thought that this could only be achieved with an unbiased engine but found out that there are a few biased engines that can do this, and even Miguel confirmed it via email.So what's so difficult about rendering a mirror-ball? you ask, well the trick is to aim one or more spots at the ball which is to be made out of mirror (naturally) and the light needs to reflect off the mirror onto the surrounding faces/walls.
Sounds simple right?
Here is a basic idea of setup.
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Well, I'll throw out the first image.
I used four lights, and didn't target the center of the ball, but somewhat off-axis. PM-FG rendering in Twilight (High+).
A tip for Twilight users: In order to capture the light bouncing off the ball, you need to have Caustics enabled. The Low, Low+, Medium, and Medium+ settings use pseudo-caustics, an approximation of caustics. That won't work for this scene. You'll need to use high or high+, or the Interior + progressive renders (the Exterior progressive doesn't use full caustics and Interior (no plus) doesn't produce caustics from spotlights or pointlights).
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The disco ball could be a great challenge for "model this" too. Remember, a classic disco ball has hundreds or thousands of facets, nearly all of approximately the same shape and size.
Scattering for a proper atmosphere is a must!
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Re-did the ball. The cylinders are there to represent where the spotlights are, there's one to the right off-screen. Had to get creative with texturing the ball, wanted to make "real mirrored glass"; created a sphere, copied it, on one I used the protrude plugin to make the "glass" thickness and then painted it blue for texture #1; on the copied sphere I painted it grey for texture #2. Sphere #2 was moved back into sphere #1 where it then becomes the "backface" or mirrored backing for the glass, all of the edges should line up perfectly, I used a centered construction point to do this. Export to Kerkythea, apply dielectric glass and a shiny backing to the appropriate textures and you get:
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EscapeArtist, looks pretty good. It looks like maybe the edges of the glass are mirrored based on the many thin strips of light all over the place. With your method is there an easy way to correct this so that the edges aren't reflecting light?
-Brodie
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Nice work Chris and EA...what would be really neat is a rendered SketchyPhysics animation of the disco ball rotating
...anyone up for that challenge? -
@ Brodie
They are not mirrored. The edges are reflecting and refracting the environment along with the spotlights. I'm not sure how to get rid of the small slices of light, the obtuse angle at which light strikes some of the panes alone would create them even if I did something to the edges.
@ d12dozr
It took 8 hours to do this one picture @ 1024x768. Maybe at 640x480 with a lot better computers it could be done in less than a month for 1 360 deg revolution of the ball!
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my try with modo and little PP:
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Is there a way to embed youtube videos?
[flash=500,300:1e9ot4b4]http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/bpaZjdIZEW4[/flash:1e9ot4b4]
Fixed by solo
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@chris_at_twilight said:
Is there a way to embed youtube videos?
Cool I get to practice something I learned recentlyhttp://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=198005#p198005
I asked the same question recently in the above thread. -
Base render made in "High" preset and a quick volumetrics render overlayed in PP. I should have added some geometry to represent the spotlights, duh!
I agree that we need a sphere with tinier mirrors; I used Notareal's for this one.
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That's great, Chris!
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Something... different
-and used notareal's disco ball (don't take it personally, solo! )
-And with pinkpanther1234's Cutting-Pasting style
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=22301&p=204098&#p187551
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miguel....how did you do a volumetrics render? is it from kerkythea?
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Create a cube with a material from this library:
http://www.twilightrender.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1008 -
thats amazing, i didn't realise you can do this! thanks for the link!
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Very clever animation!! now can you add a strobe light??
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This one I posted about two month ago over at Twilight - output of beginners exitement on testing reflective material...
(Mirror balls will always be a classic)
Love watching your "render this" threads Solo!
cheers
alex
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I think this picture belongs to this thread. But I am not happy with the reflection.
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