Rendering a Liquid-filled Glass in LuxRender

by Jonathan Williamson

In this Blender 2.5 video tutorial I show you how to properly model and setup a liquid-filled glass for rendering in LuxRender. This includes how to model the glass and liquid for realistic reflections, how to create the materials and how to setup a basic scene for rendering.

For another look and more info on this topic check out Jason Clarke’s tutorial: http://vimeo.com/21139061

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Discussion

49 Responses to “Rendering a Liquid-filled Glass in LuxRender”
  1. Jeremy Burnett
    Posts: 7

    Sweet!!!!!

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    1
     May 4, 2011 at 9:06 am
    • Ruud Klijn
      Posts: 1

      Hi Jeremy,

      Please explain a little bit more about selecting things. I copied and past a poly group within the glass. But what is what now? I come from Modo. Blender sounds really nice. But modeling in Blender, for very simply tasks seems to be very difficult.

      Greetings Ruud.

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      1.1
       May 15, 2011 at 2:30 pm
      • Gary Parkin
        Posts: 109

        Hello Ruud
        I thought it was difficult too, because I came from 3ds max. Blender is a different world, but after you get used to how it works, you may not want to go back, although Modo is nice too.
        There is an excellent series, here on Blendercookie called Get Started with Blender.
        http://cgcookie.com/blender/get-started-with-blender/

        Good luck, and please give it a chance.

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        1.1.1
         Oct 25, 2011 at 11:39 am
  2. Tiago Nunes
    Posts: 46

    I wish I’d had this a couple of months ago, it would have saved me a lot of investigation :) Nice quick sum-up!

    Here’s an example of an application of this, by yours truly: http://faxonblender.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/still-the-first-still-luxrendered/

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    2
     May 4, 2011 at 9:50 am
  3. yondaime
    Posts: 5

    Great Tut , i saw other methods but this is the best :)
    best regards .

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    3
     May 4, 2011 at 10:27 am
  4. Tio Ilmo
    Posts: 23

    Congratulations!!!

    Just two questions:

    Is it possible do something similar using the internal Blender render?

    Do you think when Blender’s Cycles Project were finalized, we can do that more intuitively?

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    4
     May 4, 2011 at 11:41 am
  5. Carlos Fernandez
    Posts: 11

    how i can get the luxrender in networking? sorry for my english im venezuelan.. xD and thank you for the tutoruial….

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    5
     May 4, 2011 at 2:25 pm
  6. Bernard Hugueville
    Posts: 71

    Hi there, just couldn’t download the files. First time it happens though :-)

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    6
     May 4, 2011 at 3:25 pm
  7. Thomas
    Posts: 16

    These are all good — rendering subject, which I’ve been hoping to see focused by you guys. I haven’t checked these vids out due to low bandwidth allowance. I bought a one year citizen membership couple months ago. (I’m using a different email account here.) I’ve been hoping for extensive tutorials on the use of nodes, wherever they are needed — texturing, rendering, compositing, etc. I’m very confused about them. My mind just can’t focus on them. I’m able to follow the BI’s texturing system, but not the nodes. So seeing that this new Cycles rendering engine is based on the node system, I’d have to start with nodes. I hope you guys will tackle nodes in a very simplified but extensive fashion.

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    7
     May 4, 2011 at 4:18 pm
    • haqzaf
      Posts: 54

      Hi, Jonathan Williamson

      Thanks for this tutorial

      this is rendering result on first attempt

      No problem observed in following the tutorial.
      From GraphicAll.org site, I downloaded Blender 2.57 R36332 win 64 with Luxrender RC3
      Luxrender downloaded from Luxrender site with latest 0.8RC3 version (note non-open CL).It worked like charm in window 7, 64 bit.

      My result link

      http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=gallery%3Ahaqzaf%2F9410305#/d3flxok

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      7.1
       May 4, 2011 at 10:50 pm
  8. haqzaf
    Posts: 54

    Hi,Jonathan Williamson,

    In continuation of my previous post,this is my second render image link progress.

    http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=gallery%3Ahaqzaf%2F9410305#/d3flz73

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    8
     May 4, 2011 at 11:01 pm
  9. Lee
    Posts: 11

    Thanks for the tut! I find the final render on the video much nicer then the banner :)

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    9
     May 5, 2011 at 1:28 am
  10. Ron Boygott
    Posts: 105

    Finally now I know what those interior and exterior buttons mean. Do you think you could make a tut on mapping using the usual bump,normal, specular and texture maps. The settings in luxrender are very different and I can’t figure out how to use them, great tutorial as always. I’ve learned more from this tutorial about setting up materials, you saved me hours from tearing my hair out,and I don’t mean particle hairs. Speaking of which, particles are giving me a problem too in luxrender, oh well…. thanks Johnathan

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    10
     May 5, 2011 at 4:54 am
  11. guigui
    Posts: 2

    thanx a lot jonathan! do as many luxrender tutorial as you want !! :-) . because as a beginner, I feel like driving a Ferrari without knowing how to turn wheels :-D . And I’m sure I’m not the only one…

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    11
     May 5, 2011 at 5:50 am
  12. haqzaf
    Posts: 54

    Hi,
    quick update

    My previous red wine render image,the liquid normals failed to flip.Result not satisfactory.
    This is my fresh render after flipping the liquid mesh normals.28 minutes rendering time.
    Link
    http://haqzaf.deviantart.com/art/Liquid-filled-glass-Luxrender-207652023

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    12
     May 5, 2011 at 9:00 am
  13. zanyman
    Posts: 11

    Lovely tutorial Jonathan, loved the result. However, do have one small issue with the tutorial – the part where you set the texture of the floor plane and change the scale of uv mapping. I had a very useful discussion with one of the members on the luxrender forum and he very strongly advised me to never touch those controls and instead just use the uv mapping editor to make changes. The forum post I refer to is over here:

    http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4911#p51268

    According to him, the right way would be to use the uv editor only since that would be the only way to keep it consistent with blender internal.

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    13
     May 5, 2011 at 9:46 am
  14. Alex
    Posts: 1

    Jonathan, thanks for this wonderful tutorial… :)

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    14
     May 5, 2011 at 12:34 pm
  15. Ryszard Grodzicki
    Posts: 3

    Thanks for tutorial, it really explained many things about LuxRender which I’m not much into.
    Though I screwed sth up and I don’t know what. I know that all the material settings are the same. http://img718.imageshack.us/i/glassandwater2.png/
    http://img842.imageshack.us/i/glassandwater.png/
    I’m getting to much shadow in few places, like on the bottom, the top of liquid and on the edges of a glass. (sorry for my English ;) )

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    15
     May 5, 2011 at 6:06 pm
  16. Ricardo Moreno
    Posts: 1

    Im a Blender, beginner, but crazy about it I am spending at least 4 to 6 hrs daily learning, but my goal is to design water features, is it possible to make animations with flowing water, fountains (water jets), cascades,water paths, etc.with Blender as it is? I been trying with Particles Systems, (no acceptable results) maybe somebody know the Seettings?. I will keep trying. Thank you very much…..

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    16
     May 5, 2011 at 7:53 pm
  17. Robert
    Posts: 1

    Excellent tutorial! Think I definatly want to experiment with luxrender some more after this :)

    Here is one of my renders

    http://bilder.sommarbo.net/#0.3

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    17
     May 5, 2011 at 10:57 pm
  18. Gary Parkin
    Posts: 109

    Thank you for the tutorial.
    Jonathan, where did you add/get the keystroke display? I’d like to do some basic, beginner tutorials with Camtasia, and this would help a lot.
    Thanks

    ~G

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    18
     May 6, 2011 at 12:38 pm
  19. wert
    Posts: 3

    the luxrender window will not pop up, please help!

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    19
     May 6, 2011 at 5:22 pm
  20. Daniel Witzel
    Posts: 4

    Awesome tutorial on luxrender. My roommate who thought blender was a ‘novelty’ tool saw this tutorial and has started to change his view on it. Very easy to follow and understand. Thanks!

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    20
     May 7, 2011 at 6:50 am
  21. Sven Summers
    Posts: 4

    The LuxRender window wont pop up. I have it set to render in a GUI and the executible path is set to the LuxRender.exe
    What do I need to fix?

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    21
     May 7, 2011 at 5:22 pm
    • Sven Summers
      Posts: 4

      never mind, fixed it :P srry!

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      21.1
       May 7, 2011 at 5:46 pm
      • Caleb Gray
        Posts: 2

        I’m having the same issue. How’d you fix it? Thanks in advance.

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        21.1.1
         Sep 14, 2011 at 5:15 am
  22. Kevin Foster
    Posts: 14

    Thanks!!!!

    First time using Yafa-Ray … I decided to do a bottle instead of a glass.

    Please disregard the bottle cap, it’s just a placeholder until I model a better one..

    In any case, here is my result. Can anyone give me some tips to improve my yafaray render? There are a lot of artifacts and oddities… I rendered this for 5 hours!!! thanks!!

    http://i.imgur.com/OlVEW.jpg

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    22
     May 8, 2011 at 9:24 am
  23. Pip Sricharoen
    Posts: 3

    Thanks, Jonathan, for another great tutorial.

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    23
     May 8, 2011 at 12:53 pm
  24. Dype
    Posts: 4

    Thanks, going over to Vimeo for the watch. Could we get one on modeling the liquid & container too? I don’t seem to get it right when I try

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    24
     May 8, 2011 at 3:26 pm
    • Dype
      Posts: 4

      Sorry, my crappy internet didn’t load everything when I made the previous comment. Thanks for the tutorial!

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      24.1
       May 14, 2011 at 9:33 am
  25. Greg
    Posts: 2

    Thanks Jonathan, would love to see liquids for octane tut as well:)

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    25
     May 13, 2011 at 11:53 am
  26. Julian
    Posts: 2

    No offense to the Jonathon Williamson’s render(thumbnail), but it doesn’t give due credit to Lux’s incredible features/abilities. tbh the “liquid” doesn’t look like liquid (try adding some absorption for starters) and the glass should have some sort of “bottom” –> like this fex: http://jvillella.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/art_isu.png (notice the base of the glass)

    Nice tutorial though

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    26
     May 14, 2011 at 6:29 pm
  27. Michael Kubinyi
    Posts: 1

    Hello blendercookie-team!
    I appreciate very much your tutorials open for the whole blender-community.
    I just noticed on my system (ubuntu 10.10, firefox) that this video from your website stays black, on vimeo itself it is visible and your voice is clearly hearable! I hope this helps..

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    27
     May 16, 2011 at 11:45 am
  28. Ross Franks
    Posts: 2

    Excellent tutorial!

    I too would be keen to know if this could be used with animated liquid (eg pouring from one vase to another).

    Is this difficult since you need a top surface for the liquid?

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    28
     May 16, 2011 at 7:36 pm
    • Jim
      Posts: 1

      Key to rendering a liquid with Lux is to have one separate mesh for the area where the liquid and the solid are touching each other (the wetted part of the solid surface). For complex shaped fluids which drop out of a sim this is quite cumbersome to set up.

      Fortunately there is a blender contrib add-on which eases setting up these meshes significantly:
      http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.5/Py/Scripts/Mesh/Wetted_Mesh

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      28.1
       May 17, 2011 at 8:52 am
  29. Caleb Gray
    Posts: 2

    I was attempting to follow this tutorial, and everything went smoothly up until I tried to render it for the first time before adding the material to the plane. When I try to render it via LuxBlender (LuxRender)nothing happens. The image editor comes up just like a normal Blender render, but Lux doesn’t pop up. I don’t get any error messages, and I have the ‘Run Renderer’ box checked. The only thing I myself could think of was the path wasn’t correct, but anything else I’ve tried produces the same result. Anyway, the path I have for it (in case that’s the issue) is: C:\Program Files\LuxRender\ Thanks in advance.

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    29
     Sep 14, 2011 at 8:24 pm
  31. Chase Dobbs
    Posts: 1

    I was following this tutorial to the letter but when it came time to seperate the body of liquid from the glass it would delete the body every time i tried to seperate by selection, I’m using blender 2.53, anyone know what might be causing this?

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    31
     Sep 26, 2011 at 11:39 am
    • Jonathan Williamson
      Posts: 2971

      Hi Chase,

      The first thing I would recommend is to upgrade to Blender 2.59. A lot of things have changed and been fixed since 2.53 and so this will at least show whether or not you’re experiencing a major bug that has since been fixed. You can download 2.59 here: http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

      -Jonathan

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      31.1
       Sep 26, 2011 at 11:45 am
  32. Israel Raizer Cruvinel
    Posts: 3

    Hi, I wonder where I can get that add-on that you used.
    I activated all my add-ons and did not find any engine that starts with the letter “L”.
    Please, if you know, tell me where to get it.
    If the text is a little weird, give a discount because I’m from Brazil and I’m using Google Translate ®.
    See you later (I hope).
    Bye!

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    32
     Nov 30, 2011 at 9:05 pm
  33. Nicholas Tindall
    Posts: 96

    Anyone able to use the Hybrid Render (CPU and GPU)?

    Anyone that has, a quick how-to would be great. :D

    Nicholas.

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    33
     Dec 13, 2011 at 7:03 pm

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