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capnhack — Ice Cube
Published: 2007-04-10 23:47:36 +0000 UTC; Views: 8062; Favourites: 11; Downloads: 5740
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Description
The obligatory ice cube render.Edited to remove caustics (they just didnt look good) and changed the puddle and droplet. Also realigned the image, it was way too close to the top edge.
Modelled & rendered in C4D, post work in Photoshop.
Full size 1920x1200, available via download link.
Edit: Redid the whole thing to make the cube more realistic and did away with the puddle, so now the entire floor is liquid. With thanks to [link] for the add the sea plugin.
Render times are 31 mins for this size and 9 hours 47 mins for the print size.
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Comments: 26
I kept this deviation in my inbox so I could come back and comment. Pleased to see that you changed the drop to a spherical one!! Looks much better!! I still think that the ripples need a bit of work, but it's looking better!! Keep it up, because I really like this and want to see it come to its full potential!
<3
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thanks, i will keep workin on it. the puddle must bend to my will!
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Hahaha! Good luck!! Can't wait to see the result!
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Hmm, a good improvement! If it were me I would still like one without the ripples (maybe the droplet hasn't reached the water yet, or maybe it's not even water down there).
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thanks, ill crank out a variant for you at some point.
the puddle just refuses to look like liquid without the ripples in it, so i reckon ill have to change the camera angle to get it to pick up some reflections or a better looking specular highlight. pain in the arse, but im sure ill get it after 250 or so more tests
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Tests are great aren't they!
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especially when each one takes half an hour
thankfully, this pic is very quick to render so i should get it within a week. i just remembered i could use an environment map, so that might let me cheat a bit. tests and cheating, i thought id left all that behind..
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Cheating is what it's all about in 3D graphics, didn't you know?
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i dislike cutting corners on stuff. somehow a 30 hour render demands more respect than a 30 minute one with a few cheats applied, and it keeps my mac busy so it doesnt stagnate and get fat like i do
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Wow 
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thanks
yea, im slowly building myself up a little library of shaders for glass, ice, water, etc. takes hours to get them to look right but i think its worth it, cos then you have them for anything you want in the future too. here are the parameters for this material, you might be able to recreate it in 3ds:
transparency: 100% strength, refraction 1.3, fresnel on, fresnel reflectivity 70%, additive on.
reflection: 21%, no dispersion.
specular: width 57%, height 89%, falloff 0%, inner width 0%.
displacement: just pick a random noise or turbulence type preset and slap it in the displacement to get the wavy surface.
i also stuck the cube in a hypernurbs object to round the edges and get over an annoying bug with the filleting that makes the corners look like theyre separate from the main cube, and then stuck that into a melt deformer to give it a more uneven surface on the 'top' edge. its got two omni lights, one behind the camera for the specular highlights and one directly above the model to give it the backlit effect. thats about it really, the droplet just has the same material but without the displacement map and the puddle has the same as that with a circular gradient in the bump map to create the ripples. the puddle itself is a sphere in a melt deformer and the droplet is a sphere in a taper deformer.
i dont think c4d is any easier or harder to use for the most part, but i do find it more powerful. i dunno how 3ds handles the editor view these days, but in c4d is really easy to get fine control over the details to show before the final render which makes it possible to do some very complex stuff with deformers and enables the use of very high poly objects without slowing everything down. the nice effects you get with the extra modules are good to have too. hair is surprisingly versatile and pyrocluster (tho it really slows down renders when done properly) is outstanding for smoke, steam, and the like. maxon do offer a demo so you can give c4d a go if youre curious as to how it works. it should look fairly similar to 3ds, so you should be able to get into it almost right away: [link]
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Wow!! 
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no problem. im here to help, so im be glad to answer any questions you have
dont worry about the late reply, i lost my sense of time.. many.. no, i dunno when i lost that
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Nice cube and watery effect on it, but I agree with thedjin and yourself that the rest needs tweaking. Plus I don't think you need the reflection of the cube (or light that has passed through it) hitting the water, it spoils the style and cleanliness.
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thanks
do you mean the little bright highlights directly below the cube and droplet? i dont think i can turn those off or itll lose the look of water, but i might be able to exclude the puddle from the main light and put another one in just off to the side.. ill see what i can do. a flatter puddle should make it easier to adjust the lighting.
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Hmm, I almost think it would look good without the water ripples, you could keep the droplet or not (but make it spherical).
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i messed with it a bit here and just cant get it to look right without the ripples. the other option is to make it look like its soaked into the floor but then itd end up looking like a weird shadow. might do a few others with ice cubes and come back to this one.
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haha looks cool 
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thanks, nice to see a long comment
i wanted to keep it drop shaped and it was originally closer to the corner, but i then moved it down because there was too much detail in that one area otherwise. this is just meant to be a normal icecube so the space between the corner and floor would only be an inch perhaps, is that enough time for the droplet to spherise itself?
the puddle is a little weird. the ripples on there are just done with a bump map now which should be fine if i just lower the bump height a bit. i think i might remove the splashback in the middle tho, and sort out that nasty flat look on the edges. i generally like to stay away from too much post processing cos it becomes very difficult when youre working at 12000x9000 pixels (plugins and filters dont have a strong enough effect), but out of curiosity which plugin do you use for waves? i have flood by flaming pear which is pretty good, but i dont think thatd work for this task.
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hehe I don't know in numbers how quick, but I'd say yeah, it's got time to spherize [but that's just my opinion, so don't take it as a fact] and the plugin I use is Redfield "Water Ripples" [tell me if u want it, dunno how I got it but I THINK my cousin gave it to me]
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well its spherical now and ive not had any complaints, so ill keep it this way
found the plugin, but unfortunately theres no mac version so i cant use it. never mind tho, ill just have to work on some better bump and displacement maps myself. heres the link, incase youre interested [link]
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hehehe I always inferred you were on a PC, sorry
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nah, having to use a pc would drive me to madness
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