Help! trying to create this ice material

sriesch

I'm working on something for the Fire&Ice; competition, but I'm totally stuck trying to create one material. I'm trying to make something vaguely similar to the attached photo fragment in terms of overall colors, reflectivity, and mix of white rough ice color with smooth area colors, which I then intend to apply to a terrain or whatever. I don't expect the material to have the volumetric rough shape on the edge profile one would get with displacement, although I do expect it to look kind of rough in the middle, whether with bump or clever choice of colors.

Every single attempt thus far has failed miserably though, and the contest does have a deadline, so I'm hoping to gain ideas from others as to the best material starting points or parameters to focus on to try to jump-start this render. And of course if you have a great idea and then want to use the same material idea in the contest too, I'm totally ok with that.

Thanks for any suggestions!

GussNemo

Dave Savage created some nice looking ice a while back. Maybe he can provide the help you need.

Dave Savage

The problem with any material like this is that it's totally dependent on what it's applied to and the lighting conditions.

I find that the best material as a starting point is from the Pro Materials under Glass and Ice... It's called Pack Ice.
It's great because it has the whites but also a nice blue with transparency, so depending on it's application, the frozen water underneath shows through.

Because of the transparency, it is quite render intensive, especially when applied to a terrain.

sriesch

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually had found that material and tried it out, but it was not giving me results even close to what I was aiming for (and while it might be modified to suit, I wasn't able to figure out how to do that yet), so I had moved on to other materials to try. You make a good point that the scene itself will affect the way the material looks too of course.

GussNemo

Just wondering, Sean, what type of object are you applying the material to? Did you create something with a similar form as seen in your picture? Just wondering if that similar form were created maybe the material added could be tweaked to get the same look.

sriesch

Currently I'm testing it on a terrain that has been stretched out vertically to make a cluster of icicles. If I can ever get that nailed down, I'll then move on to a more complex arrangement of icicle terrains plus metaballs. Currently the shape does not match the picture.

GussNemo

Have you thought of using a stacked terrain, using three different terrains to create the look in the picture?

sriesch

I am unclear how that will help, what approach were you thinking of (ie, what would each of the three layers represent in this case)? Like an outer layer for the white/clear rough ice and an inner layer for the blue, or something else?

Fencepost52

What about David's video on subsurface scattering? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0egaeomi5tM&list=UUldbpx-WrHFHUD-w3IaIKkw

The example is more for a plastic-type effect, but maybe the overall concepts will work? I believe that's kinda along the same lines that GussNemo was suggesting. By layering the different terrains, you can apply different material settings.

Art

GussNemo

What I was thinking by using stacked terrains, is that one terrain could be the long jagged ice sickles, another one the knobby looking parts, and a third one the other aspects of the pictures. Using three terrains you have the chance of using three different materials which could get you the look you're after.

sriesch

Ok, I see. Yes, that stacking could help once I get a workable material for each part.

I also looked at the video (nifty, I need to try that sometime). It could certainly be applied to ice. However, I'm still going to need to get the basic material down before I can venture in that direction.

I took a step back and tried to just duplicate the basic ice part, without the blue color and without the larger white clumps, but it all looked awful. But I did discover some fantastic moldy orange rind materials, and some effects that looked like very realistic overexposed photos of things. I think this project may have to be abandoned for the moment and put on the back burner for some other time when I have more knowledge (or luck in material selection), and practice time, bummer.

I also wonder if it would make more sense to concentrate on applying a more basic material (starting from glass and making it foggy white) to a far more complex mesh, like instead of using the terrain with bumps for my icicles, maybe (due to lack of modeling ability) putting zillions of pea-sized metaballs on the terrain's surface for itty bitty ice blobs, if Bryce can even handle that, and if I can even handle whatever resulting render time that would give me.

I also wondered if the lighting is far more critical than I think. I was thinking it was less important simply because the cone shapes of the icicles combined with a 100 bump should have given me plenty of reflective angles to catch the light that was basically shining right at my view from behind the camera. I did try adjusting the angle a lot, and that didn't really do much.

GussNemo

I'm trying to create a house in Hexagon and was trying to find tutorials how it should be done. It was brought to my attention that tutorials don't have to pertain to the software you're using to work in that software. Here's a Blender tutorial, creating ice, which might help you create the material you're after. Here's a PDF which describes how to make ice. This one on You Tube sets up a ice scene in Blender. Maybe one of these, or others out there, can give you a boost up on getting the material you want.

sriesch

thanks for the links!