Cineversity

Thanks for your kindness, Doc.  As a teacher of Photoshop for nearly 20 years, it’s my goal to be as supportive, encouraging, and inspiring with students as possible.  After all, we all have to start somewhere.  And, like you, I always try to remember how difficult it is for me to learn something new.  Remembering helps me with compassion and patience.  Thank you for being such a supportive teacher.  Cinema 4D seems to throw me for a loop almost every time I use it (which isn’t often enough).

Now on to the business at hand.  When I have time tomorrow or Friday, I’ll work more with the Compositing tag to see if I can accomplish what I’m after.  I’m also in the process of trying to fake the reflections by adding the particles to a proxy half cylinder in C4D.  I’m positioning the cylinder outside and facing toward each jar.  Then, I’m hiding the cylinder from the camera’s view using the Compositing tag.  I’ll let you know if either of these approaches works.

Mark

You’re welcome Mark!

Good to know that you teach photography, this might helps from time to time to explain things in a much easier way. I always think of photography as the base skill to know before one starts with 3D.

My photography education was mostly auto-didactically, until I joint for six years at the HdK (now University of the Arts, Berlin, founded in 1696), where (besides other things) I took six semester Photography and six semester Cinematography, and other film related stuff. But starting with my dark-chamber around four decades ago and now shooting RED Epic Dragon, showcases easily a constant update as well. It never stops and I love it.

So, I guess you have the Chrome-pot light set up as a teaching subject. The classic drill to have no place to hide the camera nor the light. Having said that, the cylinder around the bottles with texture projection Flat or as Camera projection will result in a kind of congruent refection of the texture where the texture is parallel to the surface and a distorted one on the opposite side. And if both sided (front and back) will have the texture to be reflected, than you have four reflection. Please explore it, but this is my prediction. IF it is not inside and the camera moves, it will look wrong, how much will be determined by the camera move. If that is all you want, create an equirectangluar of each Bottle Content and apply in into the Environment channel. Not in any way correct either, but perhaps more forgiving when it comes to camera movements, having tested it. Note that any outside reflection will have less only from the back refraction, and then twice, whereby the front has only zero refraction.

Anyway, please find below a file that I had prepared for the Compositing Tag questions. Please note that I have pushed the reflection to 400% to demo it, not suggested for realistic renderings. There are also three separators to showcase the interaction among the bottle or not (lower part).

Scene file
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/DFmrUORBff8PXjAJYIPmh8CXjvEbqkOtDWwF27cLWrz

ENJOY

P.S.: I was too curious, so I wanted to see the Cylinder idea.

Have a look to the left set up, it has very mixed edge quality, from nearly straight to distorted. The front part delivers nearly no, but from the back you get it twice. Anyway, you need to do your own of course.

Scene file
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/rxC3pAtZXcowqYI241kxtcHoBdbXjSE1dME5k5XI7c8

Screen shot
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/5oVxpSWWczEhKX8VWrpXpcdLTCT99lZlQ4WF0zdbaBQ

Hi Doc. 

I hope you had a wonderful Labor Day weekend! 

I finally finished my Apothecary Bottles animation (thanks to you!).  I’m uploading it to our private link right now.  As with every project, I learned a lot and realized just how much more I have to learn.  Thanks so much for all your help.

See you soon, I’m sure!

Mark

Hi Mark,

Thanks a lot for asking, well, google “La Tuna Fire”, and think of our home a good mile in distance to it (while the first day had a speed of: one mile per eight hour), that was my weekend. All is fine now, containment 70%.
I assume your weekend was great, finishing a challenging project feels always good!

I’m happy for you that you made it and yes, there is always something else to learn, same here. But that is the beauty of our field, isn’t it? New skills are so satisfying, at least that how it feels to me. It is certainly very similar to the RedGiant example.

I see what route you went. Kind of different what we have discussed here. I hope that is what you were looking for, because that is all what counts!

My best wishes and I hope you start already on the next project.

So glad to hear that you (your family?) and your home are safe and sound, Doc.  That must have been quite scary to go through.  We were hit pretty hard by the flooding in Boulder a few years ago.  I remember how intense that was.

Next project: install R19.  Woohoo!

Mark

Thanks for asking, Mark. Were fine, but a little bit exhausted, checking every hour during the night…

Flooding in Boulder [2013?], horrible. Water is as damaging as fire is. I hope it is only a bad memory by now.

Hey you have R19! Tons to explore and so many new options! I find that always exciting, some older projects can be done now with more ease and some new things to integrate in the options for new project. Exciting times.

My best wishes