Morning all,
EDITED
This was a completed project, but some of the replies has made me go back and visit it, and attempt to go outside of my comfort zone to create a better image.
This was the original image, that although I was not 100% happy with, was completed and rendered with Blender 2.69 and Cycles, based on a Kent Trammell Tutorial over on CG Cookie.
Well done, it looks nice
The “jelly” of the jellyfish could be a bit more transparent and/or subsurf scattering I’d say and take down the gloss a bit as it is, it looks very plastic like
http://www.lanzaroteoceanfilmfestival.eu/?portfolio=the-jellyfish
Thanks for the replies guys. I might spend a bit of time tonight just going over a few bits, and correcting anything. Not too long though, it is in the finished project section after all. 
EDIT : This is a quick (50%, 250 Samples, slight compositing) mix-up. What do people think of this? Better? Worse?
Hi Phoenix!,
I’ll try to help:
I would prefer the suggestion from Kuro in using a SSS material instead of transparent or translucent shader to give it more natural appearence. I’m not sure how it’s going to looks like, but I definitively would give it a try.
In the other hand, to make a more realistic inside water effect, maybe you should change parameters like turbidity, maybe some postpro deformation of background images considering that water is a fluid and its density is variable, so the light pass through it in diferent ways deforming what we see.
Probably some motion blur on tentacles could give some good feeling.
For the tentacles of the first plane jellyfish, I would smooth them (more subdivs) because I see them a bit “geometric”, I dont know if you know what I mean. There are sharp corners in some of them. Probably motion blur will reduce this sensation as well.
As a final recomendation, maybe you could use a plane with a voronoi texture and translucent to put in front of the light and make it pass through, getting some more realistic effects of spume and water surface on your jellyfishes. Probably, you can fake it also with some volumetric lighting from a spot light to simulate sun rays in Blender Render Engine and blend both images in composition.
Anyway, if I should have to choose between two renders (not counting postpro, particles, etc.) I would prefer the transparent one.
I sincerely hope this can be usefull for you and the community in some aspect.
Best regards,
maije
Thanks for the reply Maije! Although you have completely confused me, I thought I’d give SSS a shot.
I’ve never even attempted SSS before, so loaded up suzanne, and after an hour or so - this is what I came up with :
As you can see, the effect isn’t that great, but reading the other threads on SSS I was completely confused. Is this an acceptable way of creating it?
However, when I try and create it on a Jellyfish, the result is grainy, and doesn’t even appear to have any SSS? Any ideas?
This is a quick render (low samples, 50%, only a blur / mask in compositor added for effects)
The extra light needed for my cheap and nasty SSS to work has blown out the lappets of the other Jellyfish, and there seems to be no SSS at all in the “Bell”
This is currently my node setup for the failed SSS - I can’t figure it out. Maybe I’ll give it a rest for a few hours. I’ve probably made some horrendous mistakes!!!
I’m open to all help!!
Well, that’s another evening down. Wasted? I have no idea, I’m pretty video blind right now.
Well, here is tonights offering at SSS. I know the colours don’t help much, and it’s only the top bell right now…but maybe?
If there are any SSS wizards out there…HELP!!!
the first render had been already pretty nice! hopefully you’ll figure out how to setup the sss for this.
as i have no clue about the sss-issues, i can only tell the impressions i get from a modelling-point-of-view.
i think/feel like the artificial look of the jellyfish is more depending on the shape of the belly. looking at the references, the shape is finer espc. looking at the edges of the belly and while the jellyfish is moving it is usually not exactly symmetric. the tentacles are pretty much it, looking very realistic. the belly kind of breaks this due the shape of the edges and their artificial symmetry compared to the tentacles.
Dear Phoenix,
keep on working on SSS a bit more, I think this is going to give you good results. Here there are some tips in order to help you in your testing:
Try to play with the radius of the SSS. Depending of the scale of your mesh, you’ll have to use one values or others. We cannot figure out this scale, so it’s hard to write concrete numbers here. I’m so sorry 
Try to make the jelly layers thinner (jester’s idea). Maybe this could give you better results.
Try to render SSS in Blender Render Engine to reduce “fireflies” and noise of your image :-). Then you can mix render results in compositor.
I think that by adding some emission materials inside the jelly fish will give it some nice touch.
And the most important thing: I didn’t mean to drive you crazy :-P, so if you cannot achieve better results by using SSS, return to transparency materials. It was a suggestion. Any knowledge you have learned in SSS will be useful, maybe not in this project, but definitly in future ones, so never a waste of time 
Best regards and waiting to see more of this project,
maije
The “jelly” of the jellyfish could be thinner. But then there’s some species with “thick skin”.
SSS on blender has always been a pain for me. But here’s my idea with a snapshot of the nodes - if you’re using cycles. If internal render, you’ll have to play with it cause I haven’t used internal in a while.
I’m not sure how the jellyfish tutorial sets up the body / cap so I just did a sphere with a smaller one inside.
The demo is only at 100 passes so quite low.
The light is merely a sun lamp set at 5.
Nothing different, just the same nodes as above with a colored center to show how it works fully
[ATTACH=CONFIG]300024[/ATTACH]
Just adjust the setup as you want but that’s the general concept.
Thanks for the replies guys, definitely looking forward to smashing into it tonight!
thats really good, i like how you showed the tail - not sure whats the correct name of it- but with the curves and movement look looks really realistic.
Another quick progress update. Hopefully moving in the right direction. There are quite a few problems with the render - including some mesh issues, and the fact that I rendered it at 1080 / 100% / 700 passes by mistake when I went to work - only took my computer 5 hours 
Luckily I was at work so didn’t notice until I got home Still, it gave me a glimpse of what the finished render might look like.
No Composition, just raw Render. Following issues :
Apart from that, I believe the material / SSS issues are getting better. And a lot closer to what I think looks good. Hopefully I’ll get these issues squared away tomorrow night (work / Family dependent!).
Still, here it is : Any ideas? Critques / Issues / Improvements?
EDIT : Found the error with the missing lappets - turns out, if you have a mesh selected when you press Render, the particles aren’t rendered. So that’s one mistake down!!
In first place, congratulations for your work. I think this is getting really better. It has a much more natural feeling.
Now the tips if they can be usefull for you in some aspect:
Thinner tentacles in first plane jellyfish are less soft now. Maybe this can be caused by scaling the model. They also seems to be disconnected as you said, try to take them deeper into the bell (head??).
To make them more included into the image, probably you should make a color ramping between tentacle material (color) and head material where they get linked to. By this way you will get them more integrated. Yo can also give them some transparency 
I really love the colors you have used, but I should try some texture over them to give some variations or again a color ramp which modifies the head color from the very bottom to the highest point just by using a node with this information. You can check this tuto to see what I’m talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af6A1uvNhyM
It’s about 20th minute. The island change it’s materials depending the hight of the montain
Waiting to see final effects, composition and all this stuff (I recommend you to use a darker background with this set of colours, but do not forget light through water effects :-P). Maybe you can add some emission particles and blur them as they were krill swimming among jellyfishes.
Well, I hope this could be useful for you and community in some aspect.
Best regards from spain,
maije
Well, I finally got to have a play today with Blender, and this is what I’ve come up with. Only rendered at 100 Samples, so it’s very grainy, and the composition isn’t final. The blur / Defocus is pretty messed up at the moment, but I’ll get round to fixing them when I have some time
Apologies to Maije, I only just saw your reply. You’ve come up with some good tips, I’ll have a look at changing a few things when I get some more time!
Nevermind Phoenix, great work! ;-D
Keep on working hard.
Best regards,
maije
