Expresso (12/08 -> Wire+Tex)

[enricoceric]

Hi,

This is a project I started several months ago and I already posted a rendering based on this scene last year with a different camera angle. I've never been happy with the result and from time to time I get it back to try to improve it but without success. Last week I decided to work on it once more and after a stage in the "Focused Critique" part of this forum and thanks to the very useful crits and comments, I finally got a satisfying result I would like to share with you. The name should be "Espresso" but here in Belgium we use to call it "Expresso" and to serve it in huge cups compared to the tiny one you get in Italy.

Modelled with Blender
Rendered with Yafray
Some postroprocessing
Foam is made with UV texture
After several tries I finally made the sugar with a subdivision of a cube and by applying a last fractal subdivision to generate some random chaos reproducing the crystals, this involved a huge rendering time.

Hope you like.

http://users.skynet.be/myline/3D/160.jpg

Here are the wire and texture for the foam:

http://users.skynet.be/myline/3D/tasse_wire.jpg

http://users.skynet.be/myline/3D/tasse_tex.jpg

[The M.h.p.e.]

Soo much better overall color! Great!

I would've liked a bit softer post-processing (soft focus effect). But it defidently
looks great without it anyhow!

I still can't take my eyes of the marvelous foam! Wow!!
**Begging to see the texture!**
//The M.h.p.e.

[IanC]

Excellent pic, looks really nice!

[3D-DuDe]

Amazingly realistic!

My sister walked over right as the picture loaded and she thought it was real!

The only two problems I have with this is:
1. The inside of the foil cover for the cream should be "foil" colored. Not yellow.
2. In the reflection of the cup you can see that the receipt only touches the coins and goes no further... It seems to me the receipt should be longer.

Other than that, great job! I really like the little bubbles. ...So realistic.

[3D-DuDe]

One more thing, there are several shadows for each object...

I don't know if that is intentional or not.

[The M.h.p.e.]

2. In the reflection of the cup you can see that the receipt only touches the coins and goes no further... It seems to me the receipt should be longer.
If you just order an expresso, I guess it would be that short.

You don't always get mile-long reciepts. :)
//The M.h.p.e.

[Pork]

only one crit, and thats the sugar cubes look kinda like those polistyine lumps things come packed in, other than that i love it.

[lubrio]

enrico you have done it again... great work!

[Ace Dragon]

only one crit, and thats the sugar cubes look kinda like those polistyine lumps things come packed in, other than that i love it.

Yes it does look like syrofoam. Looks to me you should try reducing grain size.

[DeaDEnD]

mmmm, espresso, my kind of coffee :)
and the work is just outstanding (apart from the sugar pieces as said)
also the patterns in those euro coins look a little noisy...

[Alvaro]

Nice work indeed. In my opinion the key to fill ratio must be a bit higher, to get a bit darker cup's shadow, but overall the work is very good.

[gunnarstahl]

This is excellent. Some minor glitches like the sugar cubes looking a bit like styrofoam or the spoon looking a bit like plastic.

The foam is really fantastic. Didn't knwo you could get this via uv textures.

Thing that bothers me most is the question how you managed to make these marvelous cobblestones in the background. Did you model them?

Yt,

Gunnar

[Hippie]

Very realistic looking cup o' expresso, if I may say so. Anything better would be a real cup in my hands right now.

[enricoceric]

Thanks to all,

I know for the sugar, not easy to get a nice result without SSS, I'll try to improve it.

@Gunnarstahl : The cobblestones are simply made with photos I took and joined together.

@Alvaro : Do you mean I should increase the light intensity to get darker shadows ?

@3D-DuDe : There is one light casting shadows, I think that what you see are the mirror reflections.
The inside of the foil cover for the cream should be "foil" colored. Not yellow : It is now :)
Receipt has just the right size to me, it contains the price for a coffee, sugar, milk, spoon and table are not charged ;)

I will try to post a Wire and the texture for the foam.

[Lord of the Rings Junkie]

Superb! Only gripes are the sugar cubes, and the texture on the money looks a bit flat to me.

[Saxofoner]

Once again, you show your mastery of rendering and texturing.

[Alvaro]

@Alvaro : Do you mean I should increase the light intensity to get darker shadows ?

Yes, I think cup shadow should be a bit more evident. Besides, a sun light always tends to produce sharp shadows if the object casting the shadow and the shadow itself are close each other. The further, the less sharp.

I've seen that your are quite interested in that kind of scenes. A good trick is composing first the scene with real objects, and then observing what the lighting looks like, and taking pics that will do as references when your are working in blender/yaf

[enricoceric]

Yes, I think cup shadow should be a bit more evident. Besides, a sun light always tends to produce sharp shadows if the object casting the shadow and the shadow itself are close each other. The further, the less sharp.

I've seen that your are quite interested in that kind of scenes. A good trick is composing first the scene with real objects, and then observing what the lighting looks like, and taking pics that will do as references when your are working in blender/yaf

Thanks Alvaro,

I agree, the problem with Yafray is that if you use sun, spot, lamp or area lights without using photons (for lamp and area) to illuminate the scene the shadows are well contrasted but too sharp, if you use lamp or arealight with photons you get soft shadows but you loose a lot of contrast, I have always problems to well tune light with Yafray.

[cooler_inc]

cool, give me some coffee pls. :)

[garphik]

Hey there,
thats a good pic, nice to see the marble tex changed ;)
but the suga cubes look a bit wierd, dont know

cheers

[enricoceric]

Thanks again to all,

For those interested, I added the wire and the texture for the foam (See top of that thread).

The sugar near the cup is still a bit wierd, as soon as I find good settings for the sugar rendering I will post an update.

Enrico

[nitrofreak06]

Every thing looks good to me, just like others said the foil, and the suguar cubes, other that that looks fantastic! great work and keep it up.

[The M.h.p.e.]

Great work! Like the texture, and the wires are also wonderful!

//Mathias

[Anthony]

I'm pretty sure it's Espresso : P

But thats a nice looking cup o' coffee

[86point5]

Very nice work.

Apart from the sugar cubes which have been mentioned, one thing that makes this look staged is that the cream is opened and apparently used, the foam pattern on the coffee makes it look stirred ... but the spoon hasn't been used (it's perfectly clean). :)

[BleedForMe]

You guys REALLY want to make me quit blender don't ya? :P It's really annoying how great you guys are with blender :P... nah, Great job :D