Fish bowl

[Roger]

I've decided the best way to make progress is to try small projects, not necessarily related to my main film, to at least keep my skills up. The kind of thing that could be completed in a night or weekend.

 

Hence, a fishbowl. I was curious: how would the rest of you go about handling water inside the bowl? Model it as a separate object, or try and use the fluid feature? Or some combo?

 

I'm going to post my fishbowl model by midnight CST, if anyone is interested. At least the glass part.

[Roger]

Well, it is a start. I must have done something wrong with the materials, though, since both the table and the fishbowl have the glass material applied.

Should I save the table out as a separate model and import the table and bowl into a new chor?

 

It is difficult to make out the glass material so my guess is I will need to have the objects placed on some sort of set so that they have some sort of background.

[Roger]

The geometry looks fine but the materials are not looking so hot. Also, the glass material is applied to both models. I wonder if I should save each model separately and then import to a CHO and create a set, that way the materials will be applied properly and it will be easier to make out what is what?

[fae_alba]

I would group the table and bowl separately. Then hide the table group, and apply the glass material to the bowl group. That should keep do the trick.

[John Bigboote]

I see you gave the glass 'thickness', that's the way to do it! So then when you add refraction and density to it you will get nice caustic results- just double-check your normals so the outer glass is pointing out and the inner points in... You need to flatted the splines that make up the top and bottom of the table... grab a spline that heads inward from the edge and hit 'P' for 'peak'... then go around and do all of them. Maybe so on the base a little too.

 

I would like to see you add a room... an animated little fishy or two... animated bubbles... and some seaweed and gravel.

[Roger]

That's the plan, to have an animated fish ( or at least a 5 seconds of animation) in the bowl.

Do I model the water as a separate object, though?

[Fuchur]

That does not really matter... whatever you like better... in general I would keep it with the bowl.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[robcat2075]

The difference in "index of refraction" for water and glass is so small that for most casual 3D purposes they could be modeled as one continuous substance rather than try to separate them.

 

A lathe cross section for a bowl with water in it might look something like this...

 

 

The fish would swim inside the solid part.

 

 

Notice the tiny curve where the surface of the "water" meets the side of the bowl. (the "meniscus")

[Roger]

Robcat,

 

That is a good idea, I was trying to figure out how I was going to scale the water part so it would fit properly within the bowl.

I will give that a try.