Is it at all possible to make a decent glass of water with the internal renderer? I know we can use Yafray but…
I made that one as a test. Suggestions welcome.
Shine a spotlight in the light area in the shadow to simulate caustics.
Why simulate them why not use real caustics?
You’re right.
Hehe 
Reminds me when Blender didn’t have raytracing, and some people said it should have it (remember Macke… he did go a bit overboard though :)), and then the reply of most Blender fans was “Oh we don’t need it, we can FAKE reflection and refraction!”. Now I’m pretty sure these same people are very happy that Blender’s renderer can do raytracing.
Next step seems to be caustics. History does have a way of repeating itself…
Zsolt
Why simulate them why not use real caustics?[/quote]
Well I think it has to do with the fact that the internal renderer doesn’t have caustics. (Correct me if I’m wrong)
Looks very nice JoOngle but I think the environment’s a bit sterile. That seems to be detracting from the realism because glass refracts and reflects. I see no visible refraction effects in the body of the water.
I see there is a hint of blue so maybe you have a sky somewhere but there’s too much beige. Another thing that is noticeable are the thick edges. I think that’s a problem with the renderer because all glass rendered internally has that sort of plastic look about it.
I almost didn’t notice the water on the table either - possibly make it stand out more by increasing the reflection.
Overall, a nice render and possibly the best I’ve seen from the internal renderer but not enough to convince me to use it as a substitute for yafray I’m afraid. The problem with the internal renderer is not so much that it can make ok looking glass but how much effort is needed to get there.
Why simulate them why not use real caustics?[/quote]
Well I think it has to do with the fact that the internal renderer doesn’t have caustics. (Correct me if I’m wrong)[/quote]
The internal renderer doesn’t have caustics, you could use Yafray for that but it doesn’t support all the shading features in Blender.
Looks okay, would like to see an update with what other people have said it needs.
Caustics definately. 
Why simulate them why not use real caustics?[/quote]
Well I think it has to do with the fact that the internal renderer doesn’t have caustics. (Correct me if I’m wrong)[/quote]
The internal renderer doesn’t have caustics, you could use Yafray for that but it doesn’t support all the shading features in Blender.[/quote]
He said he used yafray in the first post
Hi guys - and thanks for your comments.
First of all - I used the internal renderer of the “coming” version BF 2.35.
Thats why I asked if it’s at all possible to make a deceent glass of water with the internal renderer. I did not anywhere mention that I had used Yafray for the renderer. I just wrote that we CAN use Yafray.
It would be nice if we had caustics in the Blender Renderer - indeed.
Maybe that’ll come along …afaik there’s still space for more features
in Blender, that would be a neath addition as well as Real DOF.
There’s way too much beige and the scene itself are way too sterile.
But such a scene is a good test on how well you’ve done your material
works because nothing get’s hidden in shadows and enviroment maps,
so the better we can do it without help…the better it will look when
it get’s that.
In order to get rid of the internal antialiasing problems that are
STILL present in the Blender renderer even in the coming version
I’ve turned on ALL OSA everywhere…in the renderer…in the materials
but that wasn’t enough. The scene also have gaussing of 1.
I got a dumb question:
How do you fill a glass with a liquid? I cannot imagine how to realise that in blender.
I need help!
DOF won’t likely be added to the renderer as far as I can tell. The discussion has come up and the feature has been coded but left out intentionally because it is a post-process feature that can be added as a sequence plugin (at least I believe this was the reasoning).
In regards to caustics - faking them is fast and cheap, but very innacurate. However if you’re going for realism you might as well give it a shot. But keep in mind it might be better to leave it out than to have it there but looking awful. Not all lighting situations require caustics anyway… at least I don’t think so.
Your glass is very nice, but I think the top edge needs to be flatter. Right now it looks too rounded to me. And if you add an environment, you’ll probably be able to get rid of the ‘blackening’ of the glass which doesn’t look very realistic. keep at it! Liquid in a glass is tricky stuff. I’m wondering how you managed to achieve the appearance of liquid at all. I haven’t had much success with it.
What aliasing problems? There’s no aliasing in that picture at all; It’s perfeclty smooth and the guassian blur shouldn’t have been used. 
If there is infact aliasing problems please point them out to me so I can see.
I did water in glass by just making an enclosed volume inside. Just add extra faces across the inner surface of the glass at the height you want the liquid. Then use material indices for doing water and glass and make the inner edge of the glass up to the height of the water and water surface to have the water material.
The blobs you could do with meta objects.
For water, you just use the right refractive index, which is 1.1 and for glass is 1.5 according to:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Rendering_options.33.0.html
I can see some at the rim of the glass. I’ve had the same problem. I think I even had them with the new material OSA turned on. The trouble I have is I use an LCD display, which makes things look more aliased than they are.
Unfortunately the value given on the blender site is wrong. The index of refraction for water is 1.33, google it if you are still in doubt. Air is 1.0. Glass is 1.5 to 1.9, the higher values being for lead or crystal glass, and diamond is about 2.5.