Raindrops on Glass

[bdesign]

This is an image I rendered as a material study for trying to achieve realistic raindrops on a glass surface. I wanted to use the Liquid material to take advantage of the realism offered by the combination of Refraction Index/Refraction Index Outside, for the water on glass. Since the Liquid material cannot be layered (applied as a label) over other materials, I took a reverse approach and layered an Advanced material with an opacity map (for the glass face) over a Liquid material (for the raindrops), using a combination of a normal map and procedural textures for the drops/streaks. Post production color grading done in Photoshop.

Cheers,
Eric

[Speedster]

Amazing!  I'm going to study this for quite a while, with my thanks!
Bill G

[bdesign]

Amazing!  I'm going to study this for quite a while, with my thanks!
Bill G

Thanks very much, Bill! Nice to hear from you, and...you're welcome! Any questions, feel free to ask

Cheers,
Eric

[TpwUK]

That's pretty impressive - Have you tested it with a beer bottle cliche scene ?

Martin

[Esben Oxholm]

Clever trick as always, Eric!
However, I can't grasp how the 'surface backside mask' and 'color to number' is altering the bump height. Can you elaborate on what is happening there?

So, this trick doesn't work for water on opaque surfaces. Do you have a trick for that?  My best approach so far has been to do a duplicate of the model, scale it slightly and apply the water surface to the copy - which I don't think is optimal.

[Will Gibbons]

I love the results here! Great study.

[bdesign]

That's pretty impressive - Have you tested it with a beer bottle cliche scene ?

Martin

Thank you, Martin! I haven't yet tested it on a "beer bottle cliche", but I plan to.

Cheers,
Eric

[bdesign]

Clever trick as always, Eric!
However, I can't grasp how the 'surface backside mask' and 'color to number' is altering the bump height. Can you elaborate on what is happening there?

So, this trick doesn't work for water on opaque surfaces. Do you have a trick for that?  My best approach so far has been to do a duplicate of the model, scale it slightly and apply the water surface to the copy - which I don't think is optimal.

Thanks very much, Esben! The Surface Backside Mask > Color To Number is controlling the bump height as seen from the front or back of the glass, with the "Output To" and "Output From" parameters (-.5, .5), reversing the bump direction when the glass is viewed from the other side (for instance as if looking from a window indoors, with raindrops on the outside), to hopefully enhance the illusion of the drops being on the outside surface of the glass and not look like they're inside the glass surface. I hope that makes sense...just one of my crazy detail ideas

I've been working on an opaque surface method, but don't know that I'll be able to come up with anything better than your current method of offsetting the water surface.

Cheers,
Eric

[bdesign]

I love the results here! Great study.

Thanks very much, Will! I appreciate the kind words

Cheers,
Eric

[Despot]

Really, really cool Eric... quite a unique and may I add, successful approach to achieve the effect.

[bdesign]

Really, really cool Eric... quite a unique and may I add, successful approach to achieve the effect.

John! Good to hear from you, man! Thanks very much for the kind words

Cheers,
Eric

[Josh3D]

LOVE IT. This looks great Eric.

[bdesign]

LOVE IT. This looks great Eric.

Thank you, Josh! Much appreciated

Cheers,
Eric

[Hossein Alfideh]

Another great study Eric!
Thanks for sharing with us man!

[LayC42]

Great use of the material graph!
I'll have to give it a try, when there will be some time to study.

Is the glas part one solid piece or splitted into front, back and side walls?