Glass of coffee I've been working on in my free time, but there are some unsightly hotspots circled in red. Looking for feedback and suggestions from the community; any tips to adjust the lighting or composition would be wonderful. Thanks!
Nice materials!
To me this doesn't look like a problem with hot pixels, but rather a challenge with strong light sources (causing the burnouts you have circled), most likely from the HDRI. Are you using a custom HDR with the HDR-editor?
I don't think it looks too bad, but you can try to turn down the contrast/brightness on the HDRI, or add a black pin (with blend mode) in the HDRI editor to block out some of the worst burnout.
I'm with Magnus on this. Scene looks great. Light looks real. Does great things with your materials. Magnus' suggestions are what we'd try. If that messes up the light on the other materials then you could render the scene twice and blend in PS. We'd probably tweak the material and the light to tone down the part of the spoon that you object to. We'd do the same with the spectral highlight on the wood. Then blend using the clown pass. I sure think the spoon is good to go now. The hot spot on the wood is a bit distracting. Another thought would be to rotate your light in a second render or raise it. Then blend in your surface. Hopefully this makes sense.
Thanks guys, I really appreciate all of your comments. I will try to post a follow up with a slightly different composition. As you have guessed, the blown out white spots are due to the HDRI which does contain a custom pin (rectangular) light. However, removing the custom pin does not ameliorate the problem.
I think adding a black pin is a good idea, this is something I was contemplating.
Being a commercial photographer this is common and sometimes unavoidable. I treat most 3d environments in the same way and in 3D, sometimes you don't want to mess with the texture material or lighting set up just to get rid of a hot spot. I use diffusers all the time to control that, I did a really quick set up to show one of a few options I use with Keyshot.
1. Ad a plane - Size and position the plane between the light source and the hotspot, adjust so that you no longer see the hotspot.
2. Using the material node editor change material to advanced. Diffuse white, RGB all at 245, Specular Transmission - start at 50% grey, RGB all at 128
3. Add a ColorGradient material and attached to Opacity. Use spherical for Gradient type and adjust so that the edges fade away not to show up in the floor reflection.
4. I have attached a screen shot of the settings used in the example but should work for most cases. Roughness transmission is the main setting for the diffused light coming through the diffuser. Specular transmission plays a part too. Play around with the settings and hope this helps.
cheers
Paul
^this was extremely helpful and thank you for sharing. I'll give this a shot as well.