I'm trying to once and for all find a good method for creating realistic droplets and "sweat" on glass bottles.
There several topic to be find online and lot's of techniques but I haven't found one yet that works for me.
What I'm after:
Very dense populated fine "sweat" drops, suited for close ups and some bigger droplets here and there -> see Heineken image example.
What I've tried so far:
- Maya paint brush with water droplets brush from the visor (Beck's image). Problems: it created drops that go inside each other which can't happen in real life. Only way around this is to delete all the drops that are sitting in each other but it's a painfull and inefficient process.
- Realfow with texture maps from this tutorial: https://www.digitaltutors.com/tutoria...ng-in-RealFlow . Problems: could not get enough detail (the texture maps I use are high resolution with lots and lots of small drops).
-Bump maps and displacements: Bump maps doesn't cut it for me with close-ups and the sides of the bottle. Displacements are better but take too long to render and I cant find a good way to create water displacements on the labels. Even only on the glass, for me it's noticeable if you just use the glass material for displacements instead of true water material (because of the different refractive index).
- I even tried to convert displacement to polygons in maya, then use that geometry with a opacity mask so only the drops would show. It's getting there but again with the labels I run into problems.
I believe the best way (in terms of realism and render speed) is having polygons for drops. But I'm all out of ideas to try :p. The becks image is done with maya paint brush but as you can see some drops sit in each other and is not acceptable for me.
If there's somebody with the magic method I'd love to hear it!
My best try:
Desired result:
Cheers
