Bath Time! (Tutorial Linked and Sample .blend)

DerekWatts · April 10, 2011, 1:05pm

This is my latest work. It took my far too long imho, but that’s what happens when you play with new techniques and ideas. The bubbles were the most taxing part of this project, and more than once I had to get up and leave out of frustration. Overall, though, I’m happy with how they turned out.

I wish now that I had started this image with either motion blur or DoF in mind, because I might have liked a bit more dynamic feel to it, but again, I’m mostly satisfied.

Go HERE for the full res version.
I’d be grateful if I could get some feedback on color, composition, and the bubbles themselves if possible. Thanks for looking, everyone!

Edit

I should have mentioned this earlier, but I managed to forget in my excitement:
This was rendered in Blender internal. I tried to minimize the post pro outside of Blender in this project. The only things done in Photoshop were minor artifact removals, cropping and slight vignetting. Everything else was done with the compositor. The total render time for the piece was just under 15 hours and had to be broken up into 2 separate “main” renders and one b/w mask render. This was done to save render times… after 3 days my original render attempt wasn’t to the halfway point yet, so I killed it and optimized for a better render solution.

I also made a point to minimize image textures (octopus, shark, duck, eyes, shampoo, curtain). The only image which isn’t simple and vector based is the iris texture. Everything else is without gradient or detail. All other textures present, including textures used on the foam/bubbles, are procedural. It wasn’t a huge feat, but I feel like it got the job done without the need for spending time in an external ap.

Finally… some wires:

I guess you can only do 3 attachments per post… so updates will appear further in the thread… (?)

Edit 2

Greg Zaal has hosted the tutorial for the foam HERE.

I hope it’s easy enough to follow. Unfortunately I forgot to grab a copy of the sample .blend file this morning. So, I’ll have that up in roughly 4 hours. Thanks for the interest, guys!

Edit 3

Sample .blend can be found HERE. Sorry for the delay.

aermartin · April 10, 2011, 1:24pm

the material for the shark and octopuss, are spot on for those rubber-blow-up water toys you had when you where a kid. Nice work, I liked the foam material and the individual bubbles you see floating. maybe bigger?

nice lighting but yeah, maybe a bit shallower DoF and vignetting. And maybe different color on the shark he melts in with the colored plates behind him on the wall.

nice work!

tungee · April 10, 2011, 1:32pm

Wuaaaaa! Very nice!

funddevi · April 10, 2011, 1:38pm

Very cute. 5 star work.

B65ISP · April 10, 2011, 1:54pm

Very clean and realistic. Especially the foam. This is really something special and new. How did you make it?

mookie3d · April 10, 2011, 2:04pm

Cute project! How did you make foam? It looks really nice!

ofito · April 10, 2011, 2:20pm

Wow, this is nice! Do you made the foam with a texture and SSS?

I love this work.

aasm271jr · April 10, 2011, 6:46pm

that is amazing. how did you do bubbles? this is really great stuff. 10 stars from sir. very inspiring

mahbar · April 10, 2011, 8:17pm

Holy Cute!!! dlax, im requesting the:

Wireframe.
How do you the foam?

Clean

system · April 10, 2011, 9:31pm

The foam looks perfect and I’d also really like to know how it was done. Loads of particle objects?

DerekWatts · April 10, 2011, 11:54pm

Thanks for the responses, everyone! I’ve committed to making a tutorial for the foam bubbles, but it’ll take me a few days between work and school. I’ll tell you this right now, though:
The foam uses 4 different meshes. The first one is a closed mesh with a volume material assigned to it. The second is a modified version of the first, but it’s material is used for specular highlights and transparency. The third is half a sphere with a simple transparency material assigned and is parented to the fourth. And the fourth mesh, being a further modified copy of the second, has duplifaces turned on to distribute the third mesh.
Out of the many attempts I went through, this yielded my favorite results and was pretty modest in using system resources. HOWEVER, certain builds, including the latest on graphical, render this with artifacts. I’m trying to figure out why that would be, so I’m doing some tests right now.

aermartin: Thanks a lot for the feedback! That confirmed a few things I’d been thinking, but I do like the idea of a few larger bubbles, I’d like to update this soon with some of those. Thanks

tungee: Thank you! haha

funddevi: Thanks!

B65ISP: I appreciate you saying that. I was trying do something I had no idea how to do, haha.

rozmiarek: Thank you! Tut on the way

ofito: Thanks a lot!

aasm271jr: Thanks!

mahbar: Thanks! I’ll get on soon!

major4z: Thank you, I tried the particles (halos, dup’d objects, ect) but they were impractical and if using raytracing became really render intensive, also not very realistic looking.

B65ISP · April 11, 2011, 7:43am

I think that this method can be useful for texturing sponge, styrofoam, sea coral, river foam pollution, some fruit section (strawberries and watermelon). Very, very interesting method.

Magnush · April 11, 2011, 9:22am

Amazing!
The foam looks awesome, in fact everything looks awesome.
Looking at this makes me happy, it also makes me aware that I have a lot to learn about materials and texturing in Blender.

JoseConseco · April 11, 2011, 1:24pm

That looks sweet. Was is blender internal? My only small critique would be that wall looks bit plastic.

pop850 · April 11, 2011, 6:28pm

Beautiful bubbles!! The realism in this render is great too! What renderer did you use?

Phaser_Rave · April 14, 2011, 1:01am

Absolutely brilliantly done!

ristesekuloski · April 14, 2011, 1:29am

Great image, it made me smile!

Materials re nigh perfect, color scheme is bright and happy and composition works… no critiques here, except that I too would like to see the wireframes (especially foam stuff - it looks like photogaph to me, so you have something to explain, sir )

Gallery stuff!

DerekWatts · April 14, 2011, 10:09am

Thanks again everyone. I’m working on the basic bubble tutorial right now. Unfortunately this has been complicated a tad by the latest release. I was using bump mapping to give a certain effect. However, in all versions since the beta which I was using for the project the method for bump mapping has changed and so has the result. I’ve figured out a good solution now, so I should be recording the tutorial tonight or tomorrow.

B65ISP: That is a fantastic idea! I’d be really interested to see what could be done with that!

Magnush: Thanks very much, and don’t we all… ;D

JoseConseco: Thank you, and yes this was Blender internal. I originally had a reflection map set up, but it made everything just a bit too busy. As a result most of those tiles have nothing to reflect but the sky color, and I agree it makes them look plastic.

pop850: I’m glad you like them! It was Blender Internal.

Phaser Rave: Thanks!

ristesekuloski: Thank you my friend! Hopefully how the foam/bubbles work will become apparent soon. I’m putting up some wires to hold you over. ;D

Evil_Moon_MOose · April 14, 2011, 10:23am

where to find these tutorials?

larmannjan · April 14, 2011, 11:47am

@dlax would you also post a link in this thread not just the tutorials one because i am subscribed to this one.