Watch Bezel Lighting Help

[wongsyu]

Hi Fellow Keyshotters!

Been having problems replicating this effect, most watch renders by big companies (PP, AP, Rolex) all have this very nice black line around the bezel, where the light seems to curve around (attached below, highlighted in red). I cant seem to replicate it in keyshot on my end however, not sure if its a problem with geometry, or im not setting up the HDRI editor correctly.

Anyone have experience with this?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[RRIS]

You'll simply need more lightboxes and/or reposition them to where you need them to be. A thin black line could be nothing more than a thin bit of background visible between two closely positioned softboxes.
Also those watch photos tend to have a huge amount of photoshop work done to them, so keep that in mind.

[Eugen Fetsch]

Hi wongsyu, welcome to the forum.

Be aware of that ...
- the 3D bezel has not the same shape as the bezel in the example - the watch in the example has an octagonal shape where the reflections can "brake". In any case, the reflections can't brake on a perfect surface like we have in 3D. A product is never perfect, there is always a slight variation in the surface from the production. Variations of 0,005 mm even in the polishing are already visible in the reflection as suttle "bandings".
- real world lights are more "complex" then the simple light pins and area lights in CG. Light diffusors have a natural light gradient (LINK) that can be visible in a high reflective material. (LINK)
- light setups for watches can be very comlex (LINK)
- As RRIS already mentioned. Product photos can have masive post production work and can be made of 10 or even more shots. Stitching and blending the reflections together from different shots to one piece are very common, even in CG. Check out this LINK

When I work on watches or cars I often render over multiple shots with different lighting and compose them together in post - #1 Bezel, #2 Case, #3 Dial, #4 Hands, #5 Band.
If all that is not enogh you can still use the normal pass for reflection painting - LINK.

The magic of a great shot is hidden in a mix of all that techniques.

Hope that information helps you somehow.

Cheers

[wongsyu]

Thanks so much for the replies!

It always stumped me just how much of it is pure rendering and how much is additional photoshopping.....
The links were very helpful too, like i knew the setup for lighting watches was heavy but this is just insane haha.

Guess theres always more to learn.

[RRIS]

Here's a timelapse of a photoshop job done on some photos of a Rolex watch:

[wongsyu]

Thats alot of retouching in photoshop..... does that mean that the industry process for watch rendering is actually less rendering and more photoshopping?

[Eugen Fetsch]

The last video shows a process for photography. That doesn't fit completely in the CG workflow, but is similar.

As said earlier it is common and more easy to render elements seperatelly with different ligth setups and compose them together in post. You're more free in 3D, because you can place your lights and flags in front of the camera and make them invisible. As well as you can adjust the surface imperfections in the material beforehand. So the post production work is not the same.

I've attached a setup of a soldier render I did in the past...
Even the small arrows/indexes were rendered with a different lighting setup than the numbers with the dial itself. This way it was possible to show each element in the required way. Yes, it's not physically accurate, but product photography cheats the same way. Soldier shots like this are mostly done without the glas for example. Manufecturers send one piece of the watch without glas to the studio.

So, basically speaking, to have a good result it is always good to think like a photographer and then use the available CG shortcuts.


P.S.: The hands shadows in this image are done in post too.