Modelling water sprays

[mattjgerard]

Have an image of an industrial drive through truck wash, and I need to add in water jets from the nozzles. I know there are a few ways of doing it, but I've never worked with water sprays and stuff before, whats the best way? Here are the options I'm seeing-

1) Use X-particles or similar system to simulate water sprays. Not sure how long that will take to get something that looks good, and frankly I'm under a deadline so can't spend too long figuring it out. Would love to do it this way, seems the "right" way to do it.

2) Find pre-modeled water sprays/jets. Haven't had much luck finding just simple plain water sprays, most are spinning artsy cool water fountain types of effects

3) Find flat bitmapped water sprays and either slap them on planes with alphas in keyshot or loads of photoshop work. Worried about lighting and looking "photoshopped".

Here's the look I'm trying to replicate, and a grb of my scene-

[bharris]

Perhaps look into the new volumetric options? Models the clouds quickly as cones and such and then use volumetrics to make it look like mist?

[mattjgerard]

Perhaps look into the new volumetric options? Models the clouds quickly as cones and such and then use volumetrics to make it look like mist?

Good lord, I just thought of using flakes after spending the better part of the day playing around in x-particles. Granted it was fun and I re-learned how to use it, but I just took your advice of creating cones, imported them and said hmmmm, what was this flakes thing about?

Cripes. Think this will get me dang close.

[mattjgerard]

Well, as it happens so often in corporate life, other things get in the way and I don't get to spend as much time as I want to on something. So, here's where it landed, photoshopping in the water sprays. It works, yes, but not the way I wanted to do it. Clients are very happy, so that's what matters. I did learn a lot of techniques that did NOT work well, partly due to my lack of knowledge of xparticles and such. Anyway, here is the final image, I did spend some time working on the lighting more than I have in the past to get some good looking reflections and play on the vehicle.

[RRIS]

Whatever works for the client Looks very convincing, good job!

[Esben Oxholm]

Great job, Matt. I think it looks good!

[Eric Summers]

Yep, looks pretty good! Are the water drops geometry or are they Photoshop too?

[mattjgerard]

Water was just water drops from poliigon in the bump channel. Would have liked to be a bit more detailed out them, but they were 80% there, and the client thought its was unbelievable, so I was OK with leaving it as is. For me, I was not real satisfied with it, but from what the people here are used to its a huge step up, so in perspective its better than what they had, so they are really happy.

And deadlines. Darned printers need time to do their magic And the todo list for the week just got a bit longer so had to let go and move on!

Thanks everyone for the positive comments, sometimes I have the habit of getting so close to an image that I can't tell if it looks like junk or OK. Need to walk away for a bit and come back to it with fresh eyes. But now its archived and moving on!

[designgestalt]

hey Matt,
what you are reffering to is a well known problem at least in the world of creatives... 
here in my studio we call it "delayed perfection". I think that describes it pretty good.
the main questions are:
is your 80% also 80% for your customer, or may it be already 110% for him !
how long will it take you to get from your 80% to 90%, or even 100%? (also in comparison to: how long it it take you to get to your 80%)
and how much of that additional 10 or 20% more is real percepted value?

In my eyes, the work you posted looks very good and for what it is used for (at least what I assume), a more or less technical communication document, it has the right deal in between not beeing too photrealistic and getting the message across ...!
I think:
mission well accomplished !!
cheers
designgestalt

[mattjgerard]

Designgestalt- you are certainly right. I recall the saying I learned while living in the video world for 18 years- It takes less time to get a project form 0 to 90% than it takes to get the project from 90% to 100%.

I like the "delayed perfection" description, as often times I will take an image to the level that is acceptable to the client, but I'm not totally happy with, and come back to it at a later time and take it further to the level that would make it a piece for my demo reel. Often times it would be there already, and the client would make changes to it that I personally find detracting, and I would keep the original version for my own use

I see all the "perfect" images on these boards, the best of the best that people post, and while its all very very inspiring, getting images to that level is just not always feasible for my day to day work. So I hope that by posting what I see as less than perfect images, it is a real world example of what sort of stuff is happening on a day to day basis as some of us slog through the work trying to get it done so we have some play time on our own images

[Will Gibbons]

Well-done! I think it more than does the job! Most often, renderings are being used to communicate an idea rather than fool the eye completely. Even if you would have liked to push it, I think it works well.