Candleholder [update, scroll down]

Artwork Works in Progress
1

My wife got this for Christmas, and I am trying to make it in Blender. First Project, so be nice :wink:

There are supposed to be three blue balls, I hope that makes sense.

Also, how do I get rid of the little checkerboard looking artifacts on the top of the blue glass ball? I already smoothed it, should I insert more vertices?

Suggestions welcome!

Thank you!

[image removed, scroll down for update]

EDIT: changed a few things, more glass balls and some caustics(?); looks more like render errorsā€¦:wink:

2

try rendering in yafray - the glass needs caustics! nice starter though! :wink:

3

Well, it is in yafray. Full GI and Best Quality :wink: Depth and Cdepth is like 20.

I just canā€™t get good caustics. If you look really hard, below the bottom ball shadow you can see some white spotsā€¦cool huh :wink:

Any ideas how I can get good caustics?

4

use photon lights, that causes things like glass to generate nice see through shadows, which can be coloured,

you need blender 2.34, and yafray 0.7,

5

I am :frowning:
I have a sunlight and a photon light on the same spot.
Dist 50
Energy 1
No color
Angle 75 (Just hits the object)
No QMC
600000 photons
search 100
depth 20
blur .01

What am I doing wrong?

EDIT: upped energy to like 6 or 7, now I get that (1st post)

6

i just learned this so this so here is the disappointment! -

no caustics alowed if reflections are implimented! turn of raymir and voila caustics! with your setup you can cheat by rendering with raymir then using the texture over the plane then rendering again without raymir! it should work - show me the results! :wink:

7

Is that true?
Doesnā€™t seem to make a difference to me.
I have the .blend of the pic that you are using as your avatar, I think it was a new feature test for caustics, and looking at the material, it has raymir turned onā€¦

EDIT: I read your other thread about that, and I understood that only the plane your stuff is on (the ā€œFloorā€) canā€™t have mirrors on.
If I look in my CMD window it says that it stored quite a few photons, and you do see some caustics I thinkā€¦

8

UPDATE:
Here is the updated version, with some caustics and all :wink:

9

alright it is very nice but you donā€™t have any mirror anymore?!

i just posted a question on this so i am awaiting a response but you can use the sequencer supposedly to combine the mirror without caustics render with the non mirrior with caustics version (abit confusing) and create a caustic and mirror version - iā€™ll link you to it when i get a response!

keep up the good work! i didnā€™t get what you meant by having my avatar image!??! :wink:

10

oh and my avatar is my own image! i didnā€™t use a blend and i havenā€™t posted a blend of it so you could have my blend - you may have @ners blend but mine is different and alittle more complex although his is equally capable!

11

i didnā€™t get a reply but i figured it out on my own - make an image of the reflections and make an image of the caustics then:

  1. new blend
  2. keep only the camera
  3. press do sequence in the animation buttons
  4. go to the sequenc editor
  5. add both images placing them on the same frames
  6. select both images and then add an effect (youā€™ll have to experiment)
  7. press F12
  8. if you like the result press F3 and save it!

hope that helps!

12

Thanks, but I never used reflection on the planeā€¦:smiley:

And I am not planning on that, but that might come in handy later.

Itā€™s still not done yet, candles are missing, and some details, and some material tweaking for bumps and all.

I am pretty happy with that now though.

More suggestion please!

I am also looking at how to do some enviroment mapping or whatever, make the glass reflect the ā€œsurroundingsā€ from a panorama photo or something like that.

13

oh i thought the caustics in the first on were reflections - my bad! :expressionless:

I am also looking at how to do some enviroment mapping or whatever, make the glass reflect the ā€œsurroundingsā€ from a panorama photo or something like that.

put the candle on a box then put the box in a room with realistic colored walls, add a window that allows the world texture of a sky through. Then add some softer lights, match the spotlight or sunlight up with the photon light and youā€™ll have a pretty good setup! keep it up! :wink:

14

Thanks!
What about the whole ā€œwrap a picture around the whole sceneā€ kind of thing, with a HDRI? How do I do that? I think Blender doesnā€™t support HDRIā€™s yet, but I thought there was a way.

15

the cube idea yeilds a better return but you can load a high defintion image in the world texture and hope it lines up well alternatively you could create a sphere and do the same to that! (make a uv shpere and map the uv faces from the poles and that would alow for a sky texture and a ground texture so as to create a horizon and sky cieling! keep it up! :wink: