Which wine glass looks more realistic?

As an experiment to create realistic wine glasses, I modeled 3 wine glasses, 3 different ways.

Models, from left to right:
(A) modeled with bezier curves. Modifiers: Screw + Solidify + Edge
(B) copied (A), then converted to mesh & manually tweaked
© modeled by extruding mesh circles. Modifiers: sub-surface

I noticed on (A) that where the stem meets the glass looks wrong. Also, Bezier curves + the modifiers left the stem hollow, where it should be solid

So on (B) I added depth to the stem connection, top and bottom. That looked better. then I deleted the inner mesh from inside the stem. I’m happier with this one.

On ©, I tried to make a white wine glass (narrower) but something feels off about it. Maybe the cup part feels too thick. Where the cup meets the stem doesn’t look right either to me and adding more edge loops didn’t help. not sure how to solve that.

What do you think? Any ideas on how to improve this?

thanks!
/sb

Rendered at 32 samples (updated )




Wireframe

Setup


In your ‘Setup’ image the middle one has inverted normals.

oops! thanks @organic for noticing that. I had no idea why one of the glasses was blue…maybe I accidentally mashed a keyboard shortcut . I’ve rendered a new version and glass © looks normal now. I’ll update the rendered image

any comments?

what nodes set up did you use ?

many ways to do it

only one thing missing - Caustics !

happy cl

here is my node setup


I found a site, Chocofurs, with really nice renders and used that node setup. I will google caustics and see how it can improve the image.

Yes, many ways to do it! In my experiment i found that using Bezier curves offered really quick and easy manipulation of the glass type. it only took a click or two to turn it into a margarita glass. Unfortunately I don’t think the end result was as convincing.

thanks for looking!

if you want high res realist glass C/W caustic then you better go with Lux render or Yafaray
cycles is not really realist for caustic anyway and very slow!

good luck
happy cl

IMO the best is the third one “basis” of this glass is not so dark like other ones :wink: and also neck of this looks most realistic

OK i’ll check them out. i was hoping for 1 rendering engine, but i’m not against layering/compositing if i have to send glass to another renderer. I googled around and found corona and pixar’s renderman for blender. i’ll see if i can get them all working and installed too.

you’re sure right about the slow part… those 3 glasses at 32 samples were 20min on my nvidia gforce gtx 950. at 50 samples it took 3hrs. i can only imagine how long it will take one they are inserted into a scene

edited: wow i just googled caustics and you’re very right. that would really add something to the render. first google result is amazing!

after re-rendering, i agree with you. it must have something to do with the number and positioning of the loop cuts because the stems of (B) and © are both solid

after re-rendering, i agree with you. it must have something to do with the number and positioning of the loop cuts because the stems of (B) and (C) are both solid

depends how realist you want it !

there is some little caustic in cycles but not the best one around and never was

so if you really need strong caustics for more realism then check out Yafray and Lux they are free and do some amazing colored Caustics.

have fun with glass

happy cl