Render Battle #6 - Coffee time ☕(Winner gets a real Prize!)

MichaelPascoe · March 3

I'll start us off and cast my vote for:
Entry #6 by @C_Ivey. That liquid is insane.

MichaelPascoe · March 3

Re-posting on this page so everyone can see the entries without needing to switch pages:

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Voting is officially open!

Comment below with which #entry you liked the most. Please take a moment to review the entries and the voting rules below:

Voting Rules:

Anyone can vote!
- Voters account must be created before January 23rd 2025 to deter self or friend voting. @Hellessey and @C_Ivey are exceptions for this rule, you were active participants in the battle so feel free to vote.
- Votes must be from relatively active forum members, not newly created accounts.
Voting will last for 1 week. Voting end date March 10th 2025.
You may vote for 1 entry.
Once voted, you may not change your vote.
The render with the most votes wins. (Tie breakers will be determined by likes.)

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Render Entries:

Special thanks to everyone for participating, you made this render battle a blast! Good luck!🍀

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Entry #1 by @Hellessey

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Entry #2 by @Derek_Van_Allen_BD

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Entry #3 by @sebastian_glanzner

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Entry #4 by @MichaelPascoe

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Entry #5 by @bryan_lagrange

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Entry #6 by @C_Ivey

glen_dewsbury · March 3

Tough call. I'm torn by 3 of them but in the end. #4

sebastian_glanzner · March 3

I cast my vote for:

Entry #4 by @MichaelPascoe

Really nice setup!

john_hauck · March 3

Maybe self-serving?
Entry #4 by @MichaelPascoe

bryan_lagrange · March 3

Entry #4 @MichaelPascoe

wayne_sauder · March 3

#6

Ste_Wilson · March 3

I like number 3. It has me wanting a cuppa right now!

MichaelPascoe · March 3

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We still have a full week for anyone else who wants to throw there vote in here. 🎟️

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Current vote count:

#1
#2
#3 (1 vote)
#4 (4 votes)
#5
#6 (2 votes)

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MDesign · March 3

Since I don't drink coffee, I'm going to have to abstain…LOL

I love the realism of #4 but have to disqualify it for trying to game the system with distracting supporting objects. LOL

So since the render is really about the cup, I'm going to vote for #6 and its implied motion as being worthy of my vote. quite creative and quite impressive.

Just messing around Micheal btw… I really like yours too. 😉

#3 is just well really real. I love it. impressive

#2 I love inverted concept.

Combine #2 & #6 and that'd get my vote for sure.

David_YL_Nguyen · March 4

Voting for #3, I like the trickery of the liquid interfering with the glass cup.

andrew_kleinert · March 4

I'm voting for #3 because it featured an elegant tip with the liquid and the glass. There's a good chance that will come in handy for me one day 😀

GWS50 · March 4

The modelling of the liquid in #6 is amazing but I'm voting for #3 because the way the liquid interacts with the glass mug

MichaelPascoe · March 5

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We still have almost a week left for anyone else who wants to throw there vote in here. 🎟️ We're going to need it! 🎟️

Current vote count:

#1
#2
#3 (4 vote)
#4 (4 votes)
#5
#6 (3 votes)

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MichaelPascoe · March 7

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📢 Calling all users 📢
There's a few days left to vote on your favorite render entry.

The fate of this battle depends on you!
Your vote will be the tie breaker or a 3 way tie maker. 😎

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sebastian_glanzner · March 7

I asked my buddy ChatGPT 4.5 and he voted for #1:

I vote for image #1 (1.jpg), the coffee mug with latte art placed in a cozy and inviting café environment. The warmth, realistic lighting, composition, and overall atmosphere stand out, making it the most visually appealing and authentic render among the provided options.

andrew_kleinert · March 7

MDesign · March 7

Someone I just met this year named Grok Musk the 3rd voted #6 (I hate Mondays) (sorry I didn't upload them in the correct order)

Wonder what Gemini and Copilot or Deepseek vote for.

Here is the text from Sabastian's query in case anyone wants to try it.

There is another round of an Render Battle in the Onshape Forum:

How it works:

Whoever creates the most legit render using this Coffee Mug
will win the battle!

The winner will also be added to the Render Battle "Hall of
Fame" list for all future battles.

Rules:

Render must fall into the specified topic.
You may use the provided pre-modeled studio or your own.
Feel free to model any additions to make your renders stand out!
Use Render studio or reality server for rendering.
Have fun!

You have to vote for the image you like the most!

The_M100 · March 7

#4

C_Ivey · March 10

My vote goes to #3. The inclusion of the meniscus around the coffee's edge makes it really come together.

MichaelPascoe · March 10

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Technically GPT and Grok don't have Onshape accounts created before the battle started. However the goal is to have fun, so I'll count their votes. 😎

Final vote count:

#1 (1 vote)
#2
#3 (5 votes)
#4 (5 votes)
#5
#6 (4 votes)

This is a 2 way tie between myself and @sebastian_glanzner!

While we are on a roll of having fun, I'm not going to break the tie with likes. We'll just have to take turns wearing the hoodie. 😁
I'll dm you for your preferred hoodie size, color, and shipping address.

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🎉🎉Congrats @sebastian_glanzner for winning your second render battle! 🎉🎉
Hey, that makes 2 for both of us now.

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Thanks to everyone for participating. This was an epic render battle! I look forward to seeing you around.

glen_dewsbury · March 11

Congratulations Sebastian and Michael. Nice job. Good effort to all.

sebastian_glanzner · March 11

Wow cool! Thanks everyone, I am really excited for the hoodie 😀
That was a close battle. Thanks for the organisation and congrats for the win too @MichaelPascoe

Can everyone spill the coffee beans on how they did their render? There are some awesome techniques we can learn!

MichaelPascoe · March 11

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Yeah I'm interested in learning more about the details of #1 and #6.

My tricks were pretty simple, but tedious to figure out. Especially trying to edit and pick textures. These aren't that uncommon of textures so I'm not sure why it was so difficult to figure out. I think having the ability to easily create a new texture and pick what you want it to do, would make this entire process 50% less tedious.

Entry #4

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/0fac03550e86f9ade78b2f25/w/069f4080decdbd864e955ebb/e/3fa947c9348bf06fc148…

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Mug:

Used the Transform tool to scale the z direction of the mug down a bit to fit in the coffee maker.
Placed the decal using the Decal feature. It carries over to render studio nicely.

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Steam:

Ensure the model is a completely filled solid with no sharp edges.
I used a combination of Freeform spline, Loft, and Fillet.
Set the texture to this:

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Liquid:

Used Sebastian's edge surface tension trick for the edges.
Used a combination of freeform spline and loft to create the streams.
Revolved a sketch of the ripples.
Set the main liquid body to this in order to get the rest of the ripples:

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Coffee Beans:

Modeled a single bean using Loft, Extrude, and Mirror.
Placed the bean into a sub assembly for a small pile, then that pile into a larger assembly for a larger pile. Placing them was a pain.
Had to use a leather texture to make it look right:

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Environment:

The environment sucks… I tried to get a simple restaurant or coffee shop hdri but no go. Even when I got one I couldn't scale and orient the background easily so it was impossible to get it to line up realistically. Ended up just using one of the studio environments.

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Coffee Bag:

Used the following features to make the bag:

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sebastian_glanzner · March 11

@MichaelPascoe The coffee bag looks so good!
So you modelled the face of flat to place the decal. Then you deformed it with sculpt face and the decal moved with it! Is that correct? Didn't know that 😃

MichaelPascoe · March 11

Yes, I think I learned that trick from either @S1mon or @bryan_lagrange

MichaelPascoe · March 13

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Hey everyone, check out Onshape's latest update!

They improved the workflow for creating custom textures in render studio:
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/27130…
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C_Ivey · March 14

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/79f48e026fae1d5525035ba5/w/f2b7af08a427d76ea53e406c/e/77cbce2af33dc4b405619793

From looking through falling coffee mug references, the first element I figured I needed was these wobbly lines where the liquid has not quite dispersed into droplets, both detached from the main fluid body (as a not-yet-dispersed spray type deal), and gathering at the edges of the main body (again, before it disperses). I wrote a very hacked together, not at all robust or up to my standards featurescript to take a curve, chop it into irregular pieces, draw circles of pseudo-random radii at the cut points, and loft it all together. Then I just revolved a cap at each end.

Most of the modeling for the main fluid body was just a lot of solid lofts with a lot of cross-section sketches. The two tricks here was to get wider and thinner further from the mug, and to have the coffee gathering at the edges with the wobbly lines basically looking like it’s trying to escape. I was a little lazy with my cross-sections, as it probably ought to be thinnest nearer to the center, but I used ellipses instead since I didn’t think it’d be too substantial a difference.

The lower portion of the main fluid body is a few amorphous blob sketches that I allowed to twist wildly when I lofted them together. This created some weird knife-thin edges that I added a wobbly line to. This is just placed overlapping the upper portion.

I definitely modeled everything with the final render camera angle in mind, as a lot of weird sharp edges are blocked from view, and the main fluid body is incredibly flat.

The spray is another quick featurescript I threw together that draws spheres of pseudo-random radii within a defined box.

I used the decal tool for the mug text and for the floor texture. I had made the floor texture to test the decal tool when it was first released; it is a picture of my office’s break room floor. The cabinets are simple, just have to remember to leave gaps between and behind the doors.

I used different settings for the different coffee parts, but the most important was the main swoop (as I call it in the document, the Schwoop). The wave parameters were key here.

Overall, there was a lot of testing early on to determine what elements I needed, but once I settled on them, it was just a lot of lofting.

Render Battle #6 - Coffee time ☕(Winner gets a real Prize!)

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