Trying to make fluids more visible in a scene

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e

Okay, I'm running into a little snag.  I have some scenes where, in one small part of the picture, you are supposed to see something like water coming down, maybe splashing and splattering, and stuff.  Trouble is, when I add the water-streaming-down prop, it winds up mostly blending into the background, and I need it to be a lot more clearly visible in the scene.  What am I doing wrong?

nonesuch00

You need to zoom in and have a light source over the sink to shine through & highlight the water. It will also help visibility if the stream product you have was some sort of turbulence morph or shader preset setting

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e

Well, part of the issue is that the scenes I'm actually trying to do this in are a bit more complex than that render I placed up, and there are too many other things all right up close to where the water spray is, which I very specifically don't want lit up noticibly.  And yeah, I tried pointing a very narrowly constricted spotlot on the streaming liquid, and either parts of it (like some of the splatter droplets) got lit up way more brightly than the rest of it, or part of the place where the liquid was coming out of was also being lit up when I didn't want it to be, and after a couple hours or more of banging my head against a wall on this, I gave up, thinking "There's gotta be a better way than this!"

nonesuch00

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e said:

Well, part of the issue is that the scenes I'm actually trying to do this in are a bit more complex than that render I placed up, and there are too many other things all right up close to where the water spray is, which I very specifically don't want lit up noticibly.  And yeah, I tried pointing a very narrowly constricted spotlot on the streaming liquid, and either parts of it (like some of the splatter droplets) got lit up way more brightly than the rest of it, or part of the.... well, call it the tip of the spigot for discussion sake.... was also being lit up when I didn't want it to, and after a couple hours or more of banging my head against a wall on this, I gave up, thinking "There's gotta be a better way than this!"

Well without water turbulence and light being refracted, reflected, and so on with water, water is hard to see. It's like you don't see air unless there is dust in the air, OK so you really see the dust not the air but you know what I mean.

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e

Is there a way to add a slight bit of glow to the fluid prop, in a way that makes it look like a little more light is hitting it?

Dave McH

Maybe some slight color would do the trick, just a bit transparent bluish with high glossiness.

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e

Actually, the particular fluid prop I'm usually working witrh (which isn't the one in that render) is more of a yellow tint.  In any event, if I wanted to set a higher glossiness, how would I go about changing it?  And what level of glossiness would I use?  The particur prop was one originally made for Poser, so probably doesn't have an iRay shader. (I still see the appropriate texture pattern on the surface when loaded in DS, though.)  I did try replacing the shader with another, similar-purpose, iray one, but got more or less the same disappears-against-the-background issue, so it didn't really solve anything, while looking slightly less visually interesting than the original shader the prop came with.

Richard Haseltine

If there are items or patterns behind the water make sure it iss et to refract, with an IoR around 1.2 or so (I think, from memory).

MarcCCTx

Instead of a light above, how about a light in the source of the water pointing up? (maybe a slight color to the light as well)

kaotkbliss

Iray or 3DL?

if Iray, I believe if you mess with the glossy reflectivity you can make it more or less transparent

I believe that's the channel, but I could be wrong on that (trying to go from memory) If that's not it, it's one of the channels near it

gederix

Since its slow at work and Im bored Ill take a stab...

I do not use iray (or 3delight) but when I need to make water more visible in Reality I add a tint to the water, starting at say 230 (255-0 greyscale) and moving down until I get what Im looking for (generally just not take much but depends on hte desired level of 'murk'). Can of course slide sideways into rgb tints if desired but I usually stay with greycale and let the water pick up whatever colors from the lighting/environment.

One problem in your scene is the light source is (1) relatively dim, and (2) head on. So not much opportunity for shadows or lighting highlights to add depth, just a glimmer along the pipe under the sink and the plate going into the wall, not really where the eye should be drawn. The wall behind also looks very flat, the window looks painted on, the only detail with any dimension is down by the floor. Nothing really stands out to draw the eye.

Things I would try: move the light up toward the ceiling, to the right of center, and/or forward toward the sink so its shining more down at an angle, hopefully throwing some shadow down from the sink to the floor/wall. Also the light itself, I would use a small mesh light, say 4 inches across to start with, for nice sharp shadows, then increase its size to get the desired softness (if needed). And maybe add a snoot if available to focus the light on the sink area and let teh surrounding scene fall into more shadow/darkenss. A spotlight might work for this, not sure as its been a while since I last used any daz lighting. Also try bumping up the lighting and adjusting your camera exposure settings down to compensate, can sometimes help with low lighting scenes.

Maybe pop the gloss on the sink a little more. For teh walls maybe add some tint similar to what I described for the water (might help to add 'focus' to the scene if the walls were darker relative to the focal point, maybe not), and dial up any bump/normal maps to add some dimension, do something about the painted on window look if possible. If not adjust your lighting as previously desctribed to draw attention away from teh background.

As to the water itself, with the right light the water should be able to pick it up and look like actual water but I do not have any clue how iray handles water, in general though if your light is too soft/large you will not have sharp enough shadows and the thin stream of water coming from the faucet will be very hard to see, but with a small light casting tight sharp shadows you should be able to see what you are looking at, plus get the sink/faucet to pop more.

Maybe some of that will help, maybe none:) Good luck!

 

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e

Richard Haseltine said:

If there are items or patterns behind the water make sure it iss et to refract, with an IoR around 1.2 or so (I think, from memory).

Hmmmm.... the shader I added to this particular water prop has an Index of Refraction of 1.7.  Do lower IoRs refract more, or do higher IoRs?

In any event, the original scene had something a lot more NSFW, so I pulled everything out except the walls and added the sink, and a (different) water prop.  I had done that because I figured it was more important to show what light levels I was dealing with. The original scene had something a lot more brown and rust-covered where the sink is.  So, yeah, darker and very unevan pattern on that

edit: Anyway, here is a test render of the water set to an IoR of 1.2

edit2: On the other hand, the original prop has an IoR of 0, a Refraction Strength of 0, and a Reflection Strength of 0.

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e

Okay, I added a copy of the original prop into the scene, set IoR to 1.2, and Refraction Strength and Reflection Strength both to 7% and rendered it.  And... WOW!  A bit TOO visible now.  LOL

I then let DS save that out with a longer name ending in :O and... wound up with a single, 0 byte file with ALMOST that whole name in my Render Library, but with the :O part of the name gone, and I can't delete it and I can't remove it.  What the...!  oO  If an intended name is not something Windows will accept as a filename, shouldn't DS reject it, or remove the elements that Windoze won't take?   How the heck do I remove this 0 byte file now?  Oo

Anyway, I grabbed the file again out of the temp render folder in Roaming and manually placed it in my render library.

edit: Okay, solved the issue with the file-that-would-not-die by navigating into the folder via CMD.EXE and finding the ancient 8.3 style filename version (basically GRAND~#1) and deleting that.

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e

Well, I got to playing with the Refraction Strength and Reflection Strength, figuring there was some way I could dial them down to a just barely descernable lit-up-ness, and then tweek it up and down a hair or two until I had something that looked just-barely-there enough to be seen, yet where it was not past the point where it looked like it was actually glowing... but the glow effect seems to be either all-the-way-on or all-the-way-off, no in between.  **Makes frustrated noises**