Glass Objects

About glassess

Hi to all! 

I will share my observations about glasses. Let's split glass objects to two groups by thicknes!

- thin

- thick

The thick glass objects usually have noise and big imperfections on its surface. Which is more easy to represent in 3D because of big detail that is easy to see. In another case thin glass obects are more straight with less detail and noise on its surface. They offen looks fake in 3D projects then thick glasses.

Ofcourse it is verry important in what kind of environment is rendered the object, becouse it is verry reflective and refractive.

When we want to represent good looking glass first we need to understand what kind is this glass. It is important to find a lot of refferences about object. If is it possible in real enviroment not studio or edited photos. After that take a look cerefully finded photos. Try to understand what kind is that glass, is it thin or thick?  Is there any curvatures or imperfections, where are they, what size ? Is it colour glass or not ?! How transperant is that glass? After we studie all about it we start how to make it on 3D. I gues there can be two steps to make glass object-modeling and put material on that model.

Geometry

It is verry important to model good geometry to get nice result at the end. Try to model all curves corectly, bottom of the object must be thick enough as refference. Make those curvitures that gives crooked refractions. Pay attention to corners and edges they are verry important . Must be same as real model.  At all lets make as more we can on modeling stage. This give us enough detail and easy to render glass obect without errors on rendering time. 

After that if it is neccessery make UV coordinates of model and go to next step-material.

Material

After we have suitable geometry we apply to it glass material. Here we set up needed glass properties. Diffuse, Reflection, Refraction, R Glossines, Exit colour, Fog colour etc. You can play with Max Depth parameters of Reflection and refraction to get nice black details on the edges. Please check examples.

    At all try to learn world around you. Look at all this things studie how they are build in what kind of shapes are they. From what material are they. Compare two obects with same material...find differences between them. Understand why they have differences. All this thing will help you to be better in represent glass and any kind materials. 

It is important to make tests....renders invest time in this it will help you a lot and it is fun, after all we are 3D artists we love that :) 

Thanks!