Achieving *Vista Logo* reflection effect

[4arms]

Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum, and would really appreciate any help and advice from experienced 3D veterans. I'm a 3D modeler and animator, who is trying to achieve a effect, like the logo animation of Windows Vista by Renascent : http://cargocollective.com/renascent#5455/Vista

Any advice to achieve that kind of result? I'm sorry if my request is kidda straight forward, but would appreciate a simple step by step procedure to achieve that kind of rendering. Thanks~

[ClassicGamer-3DT]

Glossy reflections, light planes plenty of Global Illumination, Ambient Occlusion and you're all set.

Step By Step

Your Geometry

Build your reflective objects, be them a logo, torus....whatever

Your Light Planes

You can use a number of different basic model object to add as light planes, the easiest of which would be to take 3 to 4 planes position them above the geometry or logo created, give them a slight rotation to, use them like you would lights because that's what they will in effect be doing once your turn your GI on.

Global Illumination & Ambient Occlusion

This is all dependant on the software of your choice but it's fairly straightforward and there's plenty of tutorials on acheiving a good mix of both for good renders which are quick render times. Start off with fairly low settings for both initally then when you are ready to render out the final output size for animation you can then increase the values on both.

Materials

For you logo geometry you'll want a nice reflective material, so that'll be a colour channel set between 80-100% brightness and a reflection channel set to between 20-40% reflectivity and it's good practice to add a fresnel into the reflection channel and play with the mixture settings, as reflections are never completely reflective and too sharp in reflections, you could also play with some dispersion if you wished too.

As for your light planes/geometry no colour or specular channel will be needed just the luminance channel set to white or off white if you want a warmer natural colouring. Play with the intensity of the luminance brightness between 100-400% for brighter and stronger reflections.

Alternatively you can also use a studio HDRI which is the same as light planes already assembled for you and you can attatch the HDRI onto a sky object or a sphere/dome that is larger than your scene, again you can have the HDRI loaded into the luminance channel or the colour channel it rearely makes a difference.

A HDRI image or the built light planes will in effect act for two things they will generate a certain amount of reflections but they will also act as emitters and will emit a certain percentage of light into the scene too. If the scene is too dark you can play with the luminance percentages or you can add lights or play with your GI's gamma levels.

I haven't really got the time to go into any futher details right now, this should be an easy enough starting block to acheive the look you desire.

Here's a simple test created with this method

http://i281.photobucket.com/albums/kk208/classicgamer-3dt/TestRender.jpg

Kind Regards

CG.

[rocneasta]

detailed walkthrough CG!

[4arms]

Groovy, thanks a lot!

[ClassicGamer-3DT]

No worries, I made a windows xp logo a few years ago with this method.

Glad to be of help.

CG.