SU + KT + Xara Xtreme...
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Here's something I did quite a while ago that I'm proud of. I think I posted it before at the Kerkythea forums. I like how the caustics turned out. I was trying to get a china look but instead it reminds me very much of those tough plastic 'melmac' drinking tumblers that were common in the 1970's. The cups were modelled in SketchUp. After the Kerkythea rendering was done I gave it some post-processing in Xara Xtreme.
Regards, Ross
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Ross - yeah bring it on. That looks great. A couple questions for you though - by caustics - do you perhaps mean the reflections, highlights, "radiosity ground burn" or luminosity of the materials? I'm just not too sure, I'm used to "caustics" being used as a term for the refraction of light from the material or perhaps the pushing or projecting those rays through a clear object - or perhaps a noticable distortion (such as you'd get with waves undersea) It does look like some ray collection on the middle cup in the back, and the one in the front inside a little too.
Do you remember how long it took to render this? - if you went longer - in your experience, would the ground clean up a bit? Overall quite a cool effect though - thanks for posting it - nice to have objects to work a bit sometimes..
P: Shaun Tennant
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Shaun -- if I remember correctly I had the tumblers both emitting & receiving photons although, in keeping with the ceramic type material, the levels were very low. To me the caustic effects are most noticeable on the tumbler you can see inside. The scene was lit with a HDR probe.
The original Kerkythea render had a much more uniform background -- the 'ground' surface with a fairly straightforward glossy reflection. I didn't want it to look quite so clinical. My post-processing attempted to give more central focus to the image and introduce a bit more depth of field. So in other words -- the ground was clean - but then I messed it up in post-work.
Regards, Ross
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I wonder if mel-mac was a very Canadian thing. As you know in the 70's virtually every Canadian middle-class home with kids had mel-mac dishes for everyday use. I don't know if that was the case other places, or just a unique Canadian culture thing. You ask what happened to it all -- I think it's all been replaced with, the just as ubiquitous, "Corell Living Ware". In the 80's I'd suggest much of the mel-mac ended up as family camping dishes or perhaps donated to the church hall. The last time I saw mel-mac was at a church hall.
Eventually it will turn up at the Antiques Roadshow.
Regards, Ross
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Ross - better watch out because the last couple of months melamine has been showing up in the food supply. Being a pet owner, you likely took notice of the huge story about a month ago where tonnes of pet food had been recalled, and was killing off dogs (mostly, I understand) and cats. The reason was that the wheat gluten that was supplied from China had melamine in it. This is a little worrysome, as wheat gluten is in many products, and I wonder how long a form of your cups will end up in my food?
<I don't remember hearing that your dog(s?) had any health problems, and I would almost guess that you buy organic for them anyways?>
cheers
(oh and thanks for the response. For some reason, I wasn't thinking that you meant the inside of the glass closest - but yeah, that's caustics as I understand 'em. About the ground, I thought it actually looked quite good, the splotches on the right side looked like K artifacts to me though - but perhaps X was the "culprit" I had a quick question as to what a High Dynamic Range Probe is? I don't really understand how VUE (my renderer of choice) handles HDRI's - I just know it works, but I would generally insert an image for VUE to get the sense of lighting direction and brightness from - I wonder what a "probe" is?P: Shaun Tennant
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