This idea came to mind while I was doing my 2nd-year college work experience at Mullion Secondary School. I was allowed to download Blender on one of the school PCs; I thought that while I was there, I wanted to allow students to see what game development could look like if they were to ever get into it so i decided that starting a very short project was a good way of doing it so if they were interested in what i was doing they could ask rather than telling a class full of students that might not really care. I couldn't come up with an idea of what to do for the next few days until someone suggested making a teapot. I did toy with this idea for a little while, but then I thought about other ceramics, which brought me to the idea of making a vase. I went online and found a few reference images for the vase I wanted to make. I made a start on the vase itself, and then, while looking at one of my reference images, the full idea came to me. This image will be attached below.
This was the image I saw, which I decided I would go for when making this vase. I had originally thought of ceramic vases, but then I saw this and decided I wanted to make a glass one instead.
I found this image on IKEA through the link for the first image. At first, it only made me want to make a flower for it, but then I decided I wanted to actually make a full scene for a render, which is what led to this final product.
This is the vase I modelled for this little scene; I think it came out quite nicely, so I'm very happy with it, as I also learnt how to make glass textures.
I wanted to use this chance as well to make more than just the usual thing I do, which is making just one prop and then never touching it again, so I'm glad I made a full scene for this instead
This is the finished model of the vase, which only took about 20 minutes, which was nice and easy for getting on with the rest of this project in the 2 days I had.
To get this vase shape how I wanted, which I'm actually quite happy with, I started off with a circle and then extruded up and scaled on X and Y to get it roughly to the right shape of my reference(1). After finishing my basic shape with the inflation, deflation and then outward opening, I looked at where it missed some of the shape due to it not being overly curved yet. I put loop cuts in the gaps and then scaled them to all sit perfectly to the reference; it was obviously still quite basic and not curved really, so I then added a bevel modifier to give it the nice shape it now has.
Now that my shape was complete, I switched to X-ray mode and added a solidify modifier to give it thickness, matching the reference. I realised that it was still open at the bottom, so I filled it in and then put an extra bevel on the top and bottom edges to give it that extra curve.
This is a very basic node setup for the glass, but it gave me a good understanding of how to replicate it. I will start with the principled BSDF node because that's kind of where everything ends up in these node trees. First, I went to the base colour and set it to pure white (#FFFFFF). The reason I did this is that if it were a different colour, it wouldn't be clear and would look tinted or like smoked glass, so white was absolutely the best choice for this texture. Next, I brought the roughness down substantially; I didn't go for 0 because I didn't want it to be completely smooth, but by keeping this value incredibly low, we ensure the glass surface stays highly reflective and polished, capturing sharp, crisp highlights. The IOR(Index of refraction) I left at 1.5 because that is the value for glass; other transparent surfaces will be different, though (Air = 1.000, Glass=1.500, water=1.333, diamond=2.417). The IOR value is used to dictate how light bends when it enters a material. Finally, the transmission weight was the last value I changed for this texture, and that is the part that really gives it the glassy look I achieved. This value being at 1 tells Blender that light shouldn't bounce off the surface but pass straight through it instead, giving it this transparency.
The next section was the noise and mapping nodes. First, I will talk about the texture coordinate and mapping nodes. I added the noise texture and then used "Ctrl+T", this added the first 2 nodes to this setup but by default the texture coordinate node connects to the mapping node through the generated output but i changed it to the object output because this then makes it so the noise texture will wrap evenly around the object based on its physical size, this is done to prvent stretching and warping of the texture. I then moved on to the mapping node, which has its original value everywhere other than the Z scaling value, which I lowered to 0.100. This makes it so it's squished down on the Z axis(top to bottom) and makes it stretch horizontally on the X and Y, which created a nice streaked or rolled glass look.
Next, I edited the noise texture node, which is what I think made this really look its best. Instead of it giving its usual jagged, grainy noise, this node generates a smooth, random, cloud-like gradient due to it being stretched out by the mapping node, which then makes this noise stretch out into long, horizontal bands. By itself, the noise texture is just an invisible collection of mathematical data, but it's exactly what I needed to drive the physical surface displacement of my vase.
Finally, I had to actually turn these 2D noise gradients into physical ripples on the surface of this vase, so I knew exactly what node I needed to really top this off: the bump node. The noise texture plugs straight into the height input of my bump node. The bump node evaluates the light and dark pixels of the texture, interpreting them as peaks and valleys on the surface of the material. It then outputs this data through the normal output of the bump node into the normal input of the principled BSDF. The one value I changed that I think perfected this setup is when I lowered the strength to 0.050. This is incredibly low but ensures the ripples of the noise texture are microscopic to give it the elegance of good glass work; this value is just enough to warp reflections without making the vase look like a rough rock.
Next, I decided that I wanted to make this seem realistic and obviously, a flower would not survive in a vase with no water. The thing that made me think of this ost was when i was reading about IOR values and saw that water had a slightly lower IOR than glass.
To make this water I just took some of the inner faces of the vase and then duplicated them, after duplicatinjg i scaled it up enough so that it sits with the edges inside of the vase's edges and filled in the top.
This setup is very veyr similar to the previous one but there are a couple changes I made to make this look like water. First, i started off witht he Principlerd BSDF, I lowered the IOR to 1.333 rather than 1.500 which changes the physical maths to match pure water. Light passing through this object will bend slightly less sharply than the glass, giving it that distinct liquid depth of the water i was aiming for. The roughness i put down to a complete 0 rather than the 0.050 the glass had because unlike glass which can have tiny scuffs and roughness, the calm body of water will be perfectly still. setting this value to 0 ensure mirror-like and super sharp reflections on the surface. Finally, i had the same transmission value of 1 which makes you transparent just like the glass.
Unlike the glass texture the noise node of this setup doesnt have a texture coordinate or mapping node so it is evenly stretched in all directions. However, i raised the scale to 25 which is much higher than the previous one meaning the texture is broken down into much smaller, more frequent frequency waves. Instead of large rolling waves this hgiehr scale generates much tigher and compact ripples to mimic a pool or lake.
Finally, i added in the bump node to give it this tiny little bump it has. Since water is a heavy liquid, gravity pulls it down and makes the saurface of it flat, this means that the ripples of water will be very small and almost invisible to the eye. This time i decided to make the bump strength even smaller at a tiny 0.100. I plugged the factor of the noise texture into the height of this bump node so that with the tiny strength value, the ripples are whisper-quiet on the surface of this water.