Strawberry

http://imgur.com/Lk7a1

I submitted this to the reddit food contest (http://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/vk64f/vote_now_june_contest_food_drink/, go upvote me). I am considering fixing it up a bit and submitting it to the blenderguru realism contest.

Some comments I have for myself/about the process (what I already know I can fix):

  • I was not really finished texturing the stem, I ran out of time. I probably could have done a better job modelling it too.

  • The seeds are not quite the right shape or texture either. I really couldn’t be bothered to UV unwrap them, so anything other than procedural textures is out of the question, and well, you really can’t expect a perfect job out of procedural textures.

  • The tiny “hairs”, while being a detail many might have missed, are not quite right either. In reality, there are two different types: thick stocky stems that conglomerate around the seeds under the flesh, and long stringy things that are all over the flesh like hairs in a sink after shaving.

  • I was pretty satisfied with the strawberry material. The stem material was pretty good if it had been textured properly.

  • The stem at the top has tiny hairs all over it IRL. I didn’t have enough time to models them and such. I wish cycles had a strand render.

  • Texturing the strawberry flesh might have been a good next step too, to give it a tiny bit of color variation. Also a very very weak displacement map for it might not have been a bad idea. But no time for either of those.

    What do you think? Anything else I’m missing?

Looks good to me. Maybe roughen the edges of the leaves/leafs? a bit to make them more organic. Some water droplets would be cool too.

I think that you’ve done a pretty nice job overall.

My main criticism is that, to me, the strawberry looks very flat. If you try messing with the lighting to give it a little more shadow on one side, I think it will really help make the berry pop out of the background a bit more. You may also want to shrink the sepals (I think that’s the right name for those little leaf-like things) because if you look at images of strawberries, they’re generally not quite that big.

For a slightly higher degree of realism, I would suggest making the color at the top under the sepals paler, since that’s often how strawberries are, and also adding some imperfections to the shape and surface of the berry.

Nice job on the whole though. I think you really got the look of the materials down especially nicely. Good luck in your contests.

That strawberry makes my mouth water. Great job, especially as food is notoriously hard to get right. Since you are basically faking macro photography, you might want to add some DOF. Also, I think the seeds should be a little more yellowish.