A Warm Cup of Coffee

Trying to make this have a photo-realistic appearance but put out a happier feeling than just looking at a cup of joe sitting on a table in real life.

Post processed image done in Paint.NET:


“Naked” (no post processing) image:


I used Oliver Villar’s tutorial on how to make a cup of coffee, but I’m trying to change as much as possible to make it more original. I’d like to make the steam look better somehow. Also I might try to add a newspaper sitting under the cup to hide some of the seams in the background.

Okay quick render with a newspaper in the scene, how does it look?


Here’s the image I found on google for the texture:


Hey, I can always appreciate a nice coffee scene. You really want to size the newpaper down, as right now it looks much too large when comparing it to a coffee cup. Tutorials are a great resource and it’s good that you’re trying to add your own thing to this. It’s a really funny choice of article for your newspaper. You might try the smoke simulator for steam, or your might try looking for a tutorial in some other graphics program and add it to the image. Keep us updated.

Wow really helpful reply, thank you! I actually sized the newspaper up but yeah, I might size it back down. Do you know what settings to use for smoke sim? I already sorta understand how it works, I played around with it a bit.

I feel like I haven’t made much improvement… Anyhoo, update!


Looking good,just feel that the coffee is not so realistic now.

Yeah I dont know what happened to it.