Good grief that looks like diamond right off a Zales diamond commercial!!!  You set the bar high!!!

I so concur.

This picture is off-topic, but the observation about Firefly being underated reminded me of this image I did in November. People think it can't do this stuff. It can. This scene was lit with one IBL (handmade drawing some blobs) and a single infinite light. Look how nice the chrome is, and the water looks just right to me. The water falling from the faucet is just a poser cylinder. The rings are poser torus times 2. All the shaping was done with procedural functions applied to displacement. The render time was just a few minutes.

(Be sure to click to see the details)

bagginsbill - Would you show a screenshot of the Material Room setting for the first diamond?

Quote - Becco_UK said: I agree Posers' render engine (and materials) are often underatedI so concur.
This picture is off-topic, but the observation about Firefly being underated reminded me of this image I did in November. People think it can't do this stuff. It can. This scene was lit with one IBL (handmade drawing some blobs) and a single infinite light. Look how nice the chrome is, and the water looks just right to me. The water falling from the faucet is just a poser cylinder. The rings are poser torus times 2. All the shaping was done with procedural functions applied to displacement. The render time was just a few minutes.
(Be sure to click to see the details)

What did you use for the water in the tub?  I was trying to make a bathtub render yesterday and I found a free water plane but it was huge and certainly didn't fit the tub. I ended up not use water at all and instead did post work  bubbles to hide the fact that there was no water.  LOL

What is a "poser torus"?

Could you also show your material room set up for that scene? The water looks very realistic.

A Torus is a Ring, in the Primitives folder, of your Props library...For example an Angel's Halo is a Torus.

But: I was able to recreate it, or at least get close.

Here is the material for the top facets of the gem. The image map file "facets" is that thing i posted above. Please realize that I did this to make it cheap and render fast. A proper shader would use real reflections, or both, as operaguy did.

To get the richer colors for internal reflections, just make the pale pink and blue more saturated.

bill, excellent work on the gem animations. I noticed in yer shaders, the sum of diffuse colour and transparency is 1, which is in accord with some theory of optics that I don't understand. but from which node is the transparency in yer gems derived?

Another (fun) word for torus is donut.

The water in the tub was actually part of that prop. I downloaded it from freestuff. Can't remember what the name is or who made it.

As usual, I deleted that water material a long time ago. See, when you make several hundred shaders a week, you just can't bother keeping them all. It takes less time to make them from scratch than to find them among thousands.

All you need to make good (clear) water is the fresnel node. Just hook it up to the Refraction_Color and set Refraction_Value to 1.

After that, you want to put some displacement on the water. I've used fractal_sum here to demonstrate.

Do I need to link you to that fresnel article again :)?

Miss Nancy

Actually on these shaders diffuse is 0. The sum of one amount is of reflected + refracted light. Thus I use an edgeblend to drive the reflect, and 1 - that to drive the refract.

If you stop to think about it, it's obvious why this should be so. You have a clear material. Light has a certain probability of getting reflected by it or passing through. If I shove 100 photons at a prop and 70 get reflected, then clearly 30 went on through. That's all there is to it. Most people ignore this simple rule and as a result they get crap for results.

For opaque materials, the photon either gets reflected immediately, or partially enters the surface, where it gets filtered and bounced back out in a different direction. This is called Diffuse reflection and again, if 70 photos directly reflect, then 30 must diffusely reflect.

The Fresnel effect is how we decide what fraction of the photons reflect immediately. The rest most either diffuse or refract. If we were to do a partially opaque material like vaseline, then the sum of reflect + refract + diffuse is 1. Has to be, otherwise you are simulating the duplication of photons and that won't look real.

Oh i didn't answer your question. These "transparency" as you say is from the refract node. But refraction is more than the light passing through - it gets bent too, depending on your viewing angle. The amount of bending is determined by the index of refraction (IOR). Becco_UK very kindly posted a bunch of IORs for real world materials. When you use the correct numbers, Poser simulates the bending accurately.

Thanks, bagginsbill!  THer ender is very nice, I would have suspeted you used a Sky DOme, until you mentioned the Reflection Map.  I was very curious to see how you set up the Reflection node, and what happened to the Diffuse Node, when you did.

I've found a need to reduce the Diffuse Value to 0, also, when using a Reflection Map; but I had'nt thought to try the Sphere Map need!

Thanks Again!

Quote - Acadia,

Another (fun) word for torus is donut.

The water in the tub was actually part of that prop. I downloaded it from freestuff. Can't remember what the name is or who made it.

As usual, I deleted that water material a long time ago. See, when you make several hundred shaders a week, you just can't bother keeping them all. It takes less time to make them from scratch than to find them among thousands.

All you need to make good (clear) water is the fresnel node. Just hook it up to the Refraction_Color and set Refraction_Value to 1.

After that, you want to put some displacement on the water. I've used fractal_sum here to demonstrate.

Do I need to link you to that fresnel article again :)?

Ahhh, donut or "ring", hehe  I'm going to ask for a dozen "torus" the next time I go to Tim Horten's,  LOL

I searched for bath tubs the other day and I did see the one you used, but for some reason I couldn't find it on Gerald's site. Today I looked and there it is!!! 

I'm going to try this this evening.  I have the Fresnel node threads bookmarked. I'll post my results :)

FYI When you go to Horten's, you want to ask for a dozen "tori" as that is the plural of torus. :)

The light is an IBL light found in the Poser 6 lighting library. 

My render

Acadia, several things are wrong:

1. Looks like you forgot to turn on raytracing and set ray trace bounces to at least 3 or 4. That's why the faucet water is black. You're not getting any reflection or refraction, and that is all there is to water.

2. The material on your tub water has Diffuse_Value greater than 0. It must be 0. And do not turn on transparency . That will ruin the effect. The Fresnel node handles the transparency through refraction, which will work if you turn on ray tracing.

3. The faucet and claw feet should have no diffuse reflection either. The material for those should be chrome or brass, so all you want is a reflect node, with the Reflection_Value at or close to 1, say .9.

4. Also, you'll want some displacement in the tub water material, too. Otherwise it will be rendered perfectly flat.

5. I wouldn't use a blue light from above. Think about what the lighting is really like in your bathroom. Imagine that behind the camera is a vanity mirror with lights above it, shining into the room. Or an overhead white light. The rest of the room then bounces that light around a lot, so you want an IBL to simulate that.

6. Put in a floor, walls, ceiling, maybe a couple cabinets out of sight. These are needed so that your objects, particularly the chrome things, have something to reflect. Make the walls be some soft pastel color, instead of white, or use tiles. That will bring out the crisp beauty of the variation in reflections between the white tub and the walls, and will anchor the tub better in the scene.

Pasadena, CA
6:20 AM local time

Good morning all, I'm sitting here watching my 'Poser rig" rendering out frames of my 'Daffodils with diamond" animation. I can tell by the frames it's going to be good-looking. I'm as impressed with Poser's handling of the glass table-top as the diamond!  

I'm on frame 88 of 120. It'll be done in later this AM.

My next step in this diamond quest will be stud earings and an animation with V4 moving her head to get sparkles. I'm already set up in my mind I may need a point light next to the stud animated and parented. Or inside it. We'll see. I'd love to see her showing off "across a crowded room."

::::: Opera :::::

operaguy: I'm looking forward to seeing the completed animation.

Thanks for the reply :)

I always have raytracing on. I have it set to 4.   Here is a shot of my final render settings.

I'll try the rest of your suggestions and see what I can do and will post my results.

Acadia,

If raytracing is on then I'm really confused. However, there are occasionally problems with depth-mapped shadows and ray-traced effects. Try turning shadows off. Or - try enabling shadow reuse (caching) and do two renders in a row, where the second one reuses the shadow. If that doesn't work I have no idea.

I hope you get this worked out, as I'm not going to be able to help you much longer. I'm leaving for Hawaii in a couple hours. I'll be gone for a week.

If any of you reading this see people looking for me, please tell them I'm not ignoring them - I'm on vacation.

bill, have fun on holiday. there may be some discrepancies with the use of yer technique in P6 and earlier.

Quote - Acadia,

If raytracing is on then I'm really confused. However, there are occasionally problems with depth-mapped shadows and ray-traced effects. Try turning shadows off. Or - try enabling shadow reuse (caching) and do two renders in a row, where the second one reuses the shadow. If that doesn't work I have no idea.

I hope you get this worked out, as I'm not going to be able to help you much longer. I'm leaving for Hawaii in a couple hours. I'll be gone for a week.

If any of you reading this see people looking for me, please tell them I'm not ignoring them - I'm on vacation.

Oh have fun on your vacation!!!! 

No worries. I'll keep plodding along and if I don't have it sorted out by the time you leave I'll put it on the back burner until you return.  I don't need this for any particular project at the moment. I just want to learn how to do it.

I think the floor reflection looks pretty good if I do say so myself :)

Lights are my own.  3 infinite lights, all in white.

Acadia,

nice job, i love it when persistence pays off in a new big thing learned. The water in the tub and reflections on the floor look terrific. I've never attmepted water.

my animation not quite done  yet, i couild not resist adding 56 more frames!

::: Og :::

Thanks :)  I don't know where bagginsbill gets all of the patience to fiddle in the material room! But he's darn good!!!

The only way I can learn in that room is to mimic what someone does which is why I was bound and determined to get this worked out because it has huge potential for future projects.  Once I had it all set up and I was getting really  spikey water, I played around with settings and discovered the problem was the displacement settings. After trying several different ones I found one that seemed to look ok.

I have this scene safely tucked away for future reference. I'm running out of hair to pull, hehe

Looking forward to seeing your animation.

Hi - I haven't left yet - checked in one more time. Congratulations! Very nice scene. The water looks perfect and so does the chrome.

Regarding the displacement amount, I have to say again, for perhaps the 300th time ;-), that Poser screen shots are showing displacements in the user's chosen Poser display units. I'm using inches. Clearly you are using feet or meters or something. So if you copy my value (in inches) and put those numbers in yours, they get effectively multiplied by 12 (inches per feet) or 39 (inches per meter) or 103.2 (inches per Poser Native Unit). Personally, I can't imagine why you haven't changed your chosen units yet, since I find it incredibly non-intuitive to think of shader bump and displacement in feet or meters. I mean, what makes more sense to you, a number like .0003424 PNU, or .1 inches?

So, everybody pay attention - I AM IN INCHES, ALWAYS, EVERYWHERE, EVERY SHADER DISPLACEMENT OR BUMP I'VE EVER POSTED IS IN INCHES.

Ok.

Here's some tips to refine it:

1. The floor isn't following our Fresnel rule - which is that Diffuse_Value + Refraction_Value + Reflection_Value = 1. As a result - it's somewhat overlit. Since you're using .5 for reflection, try .5 for Diffuse_Value. Frankly, though, the floor would best be done by setting up the EdgeBlend node as I showed in my tutorial on the Fresnel effect. See, as you look down at a part of the floor close to you, the angle is higher and should reflect less. As you look across the room to the farthest corner of the floor, your viewing angle is much lower and it should reflect more. This is the Fresnel effect and our brains are very sensitive to it. A constant amount of reflection never quite looks right. The reflections look far more correct and believable when you take that into account. Plus the beauty of it is you don't have to think about what value to set as you more the camera around. The shader will take care of it. But if that is too much for you to try just now, then I'd probably lower the reflection_Value. Given that viewing angle I'd go to betweem .2 and .3 and set the Diffuse_Value to .8 or .7 (so rv + dv = 1).

2. The lights are a bit too high. See how there is that hot bloom on the right side of the tub. If we were taking a photo, the camera auto exposure setting would have noticed that and darkened the whole scene to compensate. So lower all your lights until there is no bloom. You'll be surprised how much more contrast is created. The scene will look a lot more 3d.

3. Need shadows badly. You've got the overall quality of the other elements to the point where that is the most obvious departure from photo-realism. You don't have to make the shadows 100%, but you need some. Under the props should be darker, under the shelves, etc.

The floor material has Reflection_Light_Mult checked. TURN THAT OFF. Never turn that one on or the other one, Reflection_Kd_Mult.

They are included for very special reasons and do not produce realism. They will make the amount of reflections depend on how strong the light is hitting the floor and that is bull crap for realism. Think about it. When you look in a mirror, what makes your face brighter, a light shining on the mirror or a light shining on your face? Answer: your face - shining a light on the mirror will have nothing to do with how bright your reflection should be.

Quote - Hi - I haven't left yet - checked in one more time. Congratulations! Very nice scene. The water looks perfect and so does the chrome.

Regarding the displacement amount, I have to say again, for perhaps the 300th time ;-), that Poser screen shots are showing displacements in the user's chosen Poser display units. I'm using inches. Clearly you are using feet or meters or something. So if you copy my value (in inches) and put those numbers in yours, they get effectively multiplied by 12 (inches per feet) or 39 (inches per meter) or 103.2 (inches per Poser Native Unit). Personally, I can't imagine why you haven't changed your chosen units yet, since I find it incredibly non-intuitive to think of shader bump and displacement in feet or meters. I mean, what makes more sense to you, a number like .0003424 PNU, or .1 inches?

So, everybody pay attention - I AM IN INCHES, ALWAYS, EVERYWHERE, EVERY SHADER DISPLACEMENT OR BUMP I'VE EVER POSTED IS IN INCHES.

Ok.

Here's some tips to refine it:

1. The floor isn't following our Fresnel rule - which is that Diffuse_Value + Refraction_Value + Reflection_Value = 1. As a result - it's somewhat overlit. Since you're using .5 for reflection, try .5 for Diffuse_Value. Frankly, though, the floor would best be done by setting up the EdgeBlend node as I showed in my tutorial on the Fresnel effect. See, as you look down at a part of the floor close to you, the angle is higher and should reflect less. As you look across the room to the farthest corner of the floor, your viewing angle is much lower and it should reflect more. This is the Fresnel effect and our brains are very sensitive to it. A constant amount of reflection never quite looks right. The reflections look far more correct and believable when you take that into account. Plus the beauty of it is you don't have to think about what value to set as you more the camera around. The shader will take care of it. But if that is too much for you to try just now, then I'd probably lower the reflection_Value. Given that viewing angle I'd go to betweem .2 and .3 and set the Diffuse_Value to .8 or .7 (so rv + dv = 1).

2. The lights are a bit too high. See how there is that hot bloom on the right side of the tub. If we were taking a photo, the camera auto exposure setting would have noticed that and darkened the whole scene to compensate. So lower all your lights until there is no bloom. You'll be surprised how much more contrast is created. The scene will look a lot more 3d.

3. Need shadows badly. You've got the overall quality of the other elements to the point where that is the most obvious departure from photo-realism. You don't have to make the shadows 100%, but you need some. Under the props should be darker, under the shelves, etc.

I thought you left!  hehe  Don't forget the swimsuit and sunscreen!

I've never figured out what to have my settings at so I've always left it as "poser native units". I figured Poser was smart enough to figure the rest out,  lol  I'll go and change it to inches :)

Thanks for the additional tips.  I need to go and make dinner but I'll work on it a bit more later this evening. I'll keep posting my results even though you aren't here to see them. Maybe you can check back in when you get back.

Have a safe and fun holiday. I've always wanted to go to Hawaii. I don't think I'd ever come home if I went though. 

Attached Link: Click here to download, 3.8 MB Quicktime

176 frames @ 30 fps, 700x800 pixels

Daffodils from Transpond
Set is "The Pad" included with Poser 7
Diamond model by John Austin (Becco_UK)
Shader advice and scatter pattern jpg from bagginsbill
Thank you both for you contributions to the Poser community.

This is only a 'study' animation, not intended to be evaluated on composition, smoothness of movement, details (such as parts of flowers intersecting others) etc. The point is to show of f this model of a brilliant-cut diamond and of the materials nodes of Poser for reflection and refraction.

The frames were rendered NOT at highest settings for pixel sample and min shade rate in the interest of time (this is not a finished piece). Actual settings can be studied above. The settings used on this animation (Pixel samples = 2, min shade rate = 2.09, raytrace bounces = 4) generated render times of aprox 8 min. per frame.

Pretty impressive for our little Poser, don't you think?

::::: Opera :::::

That is mighty impressive!!  

Wow operaguy, that turned out really a lot better then I explected!  Great to see!

"explected" - what the hell?  Damn stubby fingers...

The last four or five frames ballooned to over 20 min to render, each. Why? Poser figured out that the daffodil leaves were not fully opaque and had to compute the translucence on 4 raytrace bounces; notice the light coming of the edge of the diamond right thru the yellow petal in the last frame!

That 'edge' of a brilliant-cut round diamond is called "the girdle" by the way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_cut

I am going to post a link to this animation in the forum, plus at CP and RDNA, with a link to this thread. By all means keep commenting on all things diamond, reflection and refraction here, if desired.

::::: Opera :::::

Great animation - it shows off the reflective diamond facets very well. Thank you for the effort you put into this.

The method I was using previously was far from ideal.

For anyone that is worried this may be all too complicated for them, bear in mind I'm a complete texture NOOB. If I can do it, anyone can!

This is a test render obviously as the room isn't enclosed, hence nothing relfecting beyond the bath.

Thanks again BagginsBill.

hehe, it turns out diamond reflection is refraction and reflection the same as water...so it's all good :)

I agree it is all good. Claw that is really a fine example!
:: og ::

P.S. now how do i let V4 jump in there naked and have the water behave like a natural spash?

Just 'paint by numbers' really.

Seriously I don't think there's anything you could do short of witchcraft that would get Poser to have a body of water interact realistically with a figure.

Unless you were being sarcastic, in which case just push the 'Make Art' button and all your Poser dreams will come true.

I don't know what you mean by 'paint by numbers."

And...giving you the benefit of the doubt that your 'make art' comment was not a rude insult, I'll say this...

I was being "ironic" in that I am greatful to BB for new knowlege about water, and naturally I want more. Plus....other suble levels of humor too exquisite for forums.

and....I am far from ready to try witchcraft as of yet.

My first attack would be to 'clothify' something and then turn loose a wave deformer or wind deformer. If you could get the "water" to deform, that might be a start.

Another approach would be to search for various products I have seen from time to time for particles in poser.

You could also create thousands of props and apply PoserPhysics to them.

Many ideas.

::::: Opera :::::

What I meant by "paint by numbers" is that I simply followed the instructions posted by BagginsBill.

Don't worry, my "Make Art" comment was not intended as an insult. The witchcraft bit, same deal. Just trying to keep things light.

Fascinated by your ideas. I hadn't thought of using the Cloth Room. And even if that approach didn't yield perfect results, it'd certainly lead to something interesting.