service tea

[Mocki010]

Very nice images - The sugar looks fantatstic - mind sharing the textures ???????

[alvydas]

Hi Mock. That I was not trying to make sugar realistic. noise texture is like a bump and template lamp shade (play with the shininess value to 100)

[derei]

I guess it would need normal mapping(not yet available in TW), but I guess it coud be ok with a sharp bumpmap and subsurface scattering to make a good sugar cube representation.
See this photo. Maybe somebody gives it a try. Unfortunately I will not have time until next week.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... rcubes.jpg

I did not embed the image because is BIG

[Fletch]

I could be wrong here, so please feel free to correct any mistakes I make in my rather verbose response below:

1. Sugar cubes are not a material.
   
   They are made of tiny crystals of sugar. This could be done in SU with Twilight, but I imagine with great difficulty. A distant-nice-rendering sugar is fairly easy, but a super high-res closeup of crystalline sugar cubes will be a very nice challenge even for Alvydas, Frymoro, or Massimo (all of whom I would consider experts) (I'm confident they would find a way, but I'm saying it will not be a simple material issue).
2. Chris would probably find making this scene quite simple. But he is in a class by himself.
3. I am an architect, and do not deal with such objects. But would find a photo-realistic sugar cube in SketchUp and Twilight challenging.
   
   However, all that said, what I would do is:
4. create a good model of the shape of a sugar cube (which, is obviously, NOT a precise cube) and start by using the realistic glass template - possibly diamond material from gems library or diamond from realistic glass templates. Then I would use the make fur plugin to scattered hundreds and hundreds of tiny crystals everywhere onto the surface of the sugar cube.
   
   Best approach with that technique would be to build the model at about 100x actual size in SketchUp, and when the model is ready to render, scale it down to actual size and render. SketchUp doesn't work in small dimensions like the width of a cube of sugar crystal well. Twilight needs things to be close to actual scale in order to render properly. So work large, and scale down to render.
5. The other "cheap" approach would be to use the clipping technique used here.
6. A normal map could possibly help, if you knew how to create a proper normal map for such a material. But it would not be a "silver bullet" solving the problem.
7. The "Frosted Glass" Template could also be pretty cool, if you just want a middle - to - distant from camera looking-something-like a sugar cube... use a properly shaped model.

[pdwyer]

Just a comment about the shape,
Doing a quick image search on google and looking at different cubes, the edges are not rounded by quite square but tend to have some divets along the edges as bits broke off.

not sure if that is of any help

[massimo]

Ok just a quick try. All within SU and twilight. Only 5 passes.
Could be a starting point?
Hope you don't mind Alvydas btw.

[alvydas]

How I can object to such a professional like you . This is an excellent result . Quite real. The real challenge for me, furniture makers but I also try to

[Fletch]

Pretty good, Massimo, but they do not have the overall semi-translucent feeling of a real sugar cube.

[Ecuadorian]

How about this?
http://twilightrender.com/phpBB3/viewto ... hilit=+ice

[massimo]

Well Fletch I know, it was only a possible starting point...
Ecuadorian, I've indeed used a tweaked SSS rubber ball mat for that render, but perhaps it needs a bit of more work.