I'm working up a quick simple scene for an aquarium project I'm planning...but I'm having a little bit of an issue with some of my materials, and of course my lights.

For my test scene, I have my general use simple color IBL, with a spotlight for general room lightbulb, and a point light inside the aquarium hood. (it's a fiddler crab setup, so just the light on the one side of the tank). My materials probably aren't as bad as I have in my tired little brain right now, but I know my point light is messed up...So any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Lighting

Water & Glass materials

End of week bumpage....anyone?

(doesn't normally do bump and whine....honest)

I'm no experts, but seeing as no one else is answering , I'll give it a shot.
For your glass and water you might want to plug in the refract node instead of using transparency.
Set all your transparency setting to zero if you do, these interfere with the refract node.
If you use the refract node, set your diffuse color and specular color to black.
These also interfere with the refract and reflect nodes. You will want to put a different index
of refraction for the glass and for the water so they don't blend together.
And the sum of the reflection value and refraction value should equal one.
Say if you have 10% reflection (0.1) you should have 90% refraction (0.9).
To see the lights shining on the glass and water, add a glossy node to
your alternate specular input and set Ks to a low value. say 0.2 or .03.
As you are already using the reflect node, I'm assuming you have ray tracing
enabled in your render settings.

What don't you like about the lights? 

I would suggest using Mapp's glass material as a reference for your glass. As for your water, what type of effect are you trying to get?

That is one of Mapps glass materials actually....and the water was just enough to show there's something there to distinguish from the empty space in the rest of the tank.

What I'm not liking with the lighting is how it's giving the grainy look to where it hits the wall and floor on the right side of the image. The whole tank isn't full of water, so it shouldn't give the grainy light cast on the wall at least because it's only going through the glass there. That and the light going through the back of the tank on the wall feels too "square" I guess. (I know the glass is square...but the side is glass too...)

But I've never done much with point lights so I have no idea what settings would be good or not.

Quote -
What I'm not liking with the lighting is how it's giving the grainy look to where it hits the wall and floor on the right side of the image. The whole tank isn't full of water, so it shouldn't give the grainy light cast on the wall at least because it's only going through the glass there. That and the light going through the back of the tank on the wall feels too "square" I guess. (I know the glass is square...but the side is glass too...)

But I've never done much with point lights so I have no idea what settings would be good or not.

Ah, got it, hadn't even noticed.  You know what it looks like? That the wall has a bumpy surface
and the light is at an angle such that it is highlighting the bumps so what you are seeing
is the peaks and valleys of the surface, with the raised areas being brighter than the low
areas.  So I don't think it's a problem with the light, the light seems to be doing what it
is supposed to.  Could you show a material setting for the wall?  Is the wall supposed
to have a bumpy texture or is the wall supposed to be smooth? Because I am seeing
the same effect to a lesser extent on the entire surface of the wall. It's just the angle
of the other lights aren't as sharp as that of the point light so it isn't as obvious.

Also with the Ray Trace Shadows setting, you might want to play around
with the Shadow Blur Radius and the Shadow Min Bias and see if that helps.

I normally don't use points of lights, unless it is a large room scene and the light fills the room.

Quote - I normally don't use points of lights, unless it is a large room scene and the light fills the room.

They are good if you want just a small area illuminated such as simulating
the glow of a candle or a light bulb.  You just need to adjust the Distance Start
and Distance End accordingly.  With a spot light it is too directional and an
infinite light just lights up everything, no control of falloff over distance.

Doh! Gimme my dunce cap and call me an idiot.... :blushing:

Yes, the wall has a small amount of bumpiness to it with the texture I made. (me = dork) Didn't even think about that.

Alrighty, will futz with the point light some more....now that my idiot moment has been cleared up.

(click on image for a bigger picture)

I find if tends to wrk best to apply a tint or texture to the liquid to make it stand out from the glass. Also it helps if the water is 3D and not 2D it looks like the water exists as only a flat plane, that is fine if shooting from above but from the sides it works best if the water has sides :-)

Soften the light too can help. don't use it at 100% but rather use a soft spot light at about 75% and a distand light set to 25% with shadows turned off on the distance light.

This gives a better soft room style lighting like there is day light comming in the window and the rest of teh light is reflected light.

The water prop has sides...I think on the lower side of the slope it's harder to tell it though due to the lighting (can see it along the "beach" part of the sand, but just barely). Tinted slightly, just didn't want toilet cleaner blue water. ^_~

Will do some experiments...just behind on Poser things cause we're remodeling the kitchen right now. (so much easier to remodel things on the computer...less mess)

lol I know how that feels. I would double check the water as it looks to me like a single plane, I could be wrong though :-) The reason for checking is because no mater what you do if it doesn't have "sides" it will never get the watery effect you are looking for :-)

The water does have sides, I modeled it that way...think it just needs a better shader for the water than what I threw together real quick. That and getting the lighting adjusted should make things a little better....hopefully. =)

that's odd teh side planes should be almost as visible as the surface. Must be the lighting :-)

May also be because I modeled everything to a nice snug fit on the inside of the tank....hopefully will have some time this weenend to futz with things.

Husband still thinks I'm crazy...his first question what "Where are you going to put it?" followed by "Don't we have enough aquariums already?". Never! =P

 LOL sounds "fishy" to me :-)

 and yes the water may need to be a split hair smaller than the inside of the tank :-)