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How to Create Water Droplets and Condensation in KeyShot
KeyShot not only allows you to create advanced materials and textures with features like 3D Paint, but also provides rich texturing capabilities to add water droplets and condensation. Today, we go in-depth with a texture combination to dial in exactly the water droplet appearance you need for your product visuals.
There is an array of applications for making a scene appear more realistic with water droplets, water pools, water streaks, or light condensation. Beverage visuals are probably the most obvious but the following method will work just as well for a bedroom window after a light rain, fresh dew on an outdoor automotive scene, or the hint of sweat on a character’s brow. Let’s dive in.
Before You Start
Double-click the object you want to add condensation to and select the Material Graph button from the Project, Material tab. We’ll add water droplets to a glass bottle, so make sure the Material Type is set to Solid Glass. If you aren’t using a glass object, no problem at all, you can still use this method to create believable condensation on any material.
Once you have your base material set up, the next step is to add the water droplets. You may have experimented with using bump maps, procedural textures, displacement. They all have their own strengths, so we’ll show you how to use a combination of them all to dial in the perfect combination of water droplet and condensation.
Add a Procedural Texture
To start with, I’ll apply a Spots texture node by right-clicking the Material Graph workspace and selecting Texture, Spots. Select the Spots node and hit the C-key to enable Preview Color for a better look at adjustments you make. Update the Spots Scale, Distortion, and Falloff settings to your liking.
Change the Spots node Color to black and Background color to white to use the texture to drive the roughness of the parent material. Now, connect the Spots node to the Glass materials Roughness input for the white-colored background area to become rough while the black water droplet areas to remain smooth. This will create the appearance of a frosty, chilled glass with water droplet on the surface.
How to Draw Water Droplets
When it comes to drawing water, it can be really tricky to get it right. Drawing water droplets is a very cool skill to have because they look MUCH more difficult than they actually are. You can spend a lot of time refining them to look hyper-realistic, but even with just a few minutes of time, you can get pretty impressive water droplets on paper. I love drawing them because they add a lot of visual interest to artworks, and they can really create depth in an otherwise lacking piece.
You may be surprised to learn that drawing water droplets is actually extremely simple. I’ve created a fun video to show you how it’s done, but you can also see this simple step by step that I did in five minutes in my sketchbook!
Next, I drew some water droplet shapes with a blue colored pencil. I tried to create a few different shapes, as water droplets can be any shape at all.
When drawing water droplets, you need to decide where your light source is coming from. In this case, I decided it was coming from directly above the page. Water droplets are counter-intuitive for shading, as the light actually creates a shadow instead of a highlight. Therefore, wherever your light source is will be darker. I used my blue pencil to shade in a dark to light gradient from the top of the drops to the middle area. Then, I added a shadow underneath each droplet. (See the video if you’re confused. It’s hard to describe!)
Next, I used a white prismacolor pencil to add in the highlights of the water droplets, which in this case was the bottom of each sphere. As I said before, there will be highlights in the darker part at the top, as well as in the shadow underneath each droplet. You can use your pencil for these, but I tend to use a gel pen or ink.
You’ll want to use your fingers, a cotton bud or even a damp paint brush to blend the white into the lighter blue and then up into the darker blue. It’s important to have a VERY smooth gradient to really make your sphere look realistic. But even in just a short amount of time, you can create something fairly impressive.
The final step is adding in your highlights. In this case, I added two small highlights into the top of the droplets as well as a thin line in the shadow underneath. I also touched up the white part of each droplet with some ink to really make them stand out.
When you look closely at the paper, it obviously doesn’t look super realistic, but as you get further away, your eyes will start to see water.
Spend as much or as little time on these as you like, but remember that the smaller the droplets, the more realistic you can make them look. Larger is definitely harder.
There you have it. Very cool looking water droplets anyone can draw!
Steps to a Perfect Water Droplet
First, you need to understand what happens in the drop of water.
What are you seeing when you look at a drop of water? Water is denser than air so it can form a bubble. Think of the drop as a tiny structure; a dome or half a sphere.
The light entering into this little spherical structure is refracted or bent. Some of light reflects off the back wall of the structure. And, because the drop has mass, it creates a shadow. Often in the shadow there is more refracted light. That creates its own little highlight or sparkle in the shadow.
Rain, droplets of water, a mist or humidity in a sunny sky has light passing through each drop.
The light gets refracted and we see it as a rainbow.
Amazingly all this is happening in every dew drop, every raindrop, every splash of water that has light passing through it whether in a sky or on a tulip petal
Here is a photo of a seed pod. I sprayed water on it to form a spattering of droplets.
I suggest you do this, too, before you start painting. Take a picture of your droplets and keep it handy as you paint or draw to remind yourself how intricate and beautiful they are. If possible, move the light source into varying positions to see what happens within the droplets and in their reflections. You may wish to take several photos. For tips on critical observation, read this.
Notice on the seed pod that there are droplets hanging on the side. Also, the droplet is going to follow the curvature or the indents or unevenness of the surface it sits on. You can use this information to help define the object the drop sits on.
OK now that we’ve had a moment to reflect on the awesomeness of light, here’s my process for painting the water droplets. See this video for more tips on painting fall leaves.
- Decide where light is coming from. Light follows rules. So, if there is no light, there is no reflection.
- Paint a background: it can be an even or uneven wash. On the example I am painting step-by-step for you, I have painted the first layer of a tulip. I added a couple of leaves so a couple of drops could be hanging off the petals about to drop on the leaves. Let your background dry.
- Add an edge to your droplet. You can use a pencil, watercolor pencil, colored pencil or a gel ink pen. I used a gel pen. you want something that is sharp with a fairly fine point.
- Dome color. This is a darker shade of the ambient color; the color of the petal or leaf or seed pod. If often has a highlight in it. In my example on the tulip, I put a highlight in every dome, because it’s fun to do and I wanted to show you how to do it. Let this dry.
This is opposite the light source, (farther from the light source than the dark part of the dome). It is on the outside of the dome. Use a darker color of your background color. You can add an analogous color (color next to it on the color wheel, if you need more intensity. Or as in the tulip, in a couple places I added the complement on the color wheel since those were the two colors in the painting. - Use a round brush to create the shadow and soften at the edges and the sides of the shadow. The angle of the light will determine how long the shadow is. You can figure it out scientifically, or just create it how you want it to look. Again, be consistent with the drops in the same area. Let this dry.
- Light part of the dome. This is where the light hits the “back wall” of the dome. This is opposite the light source, too. To create this light part of the structure, you can either leave some white as you start the painting. Or you can use a masking product, like Mastoid. Or just add a little white. I have tried it in many ways.
I think it’s easiest to use a white gel pen or a white colored pencil and lightly add some white to the area to lighten it up. - Reflection and Highlight. These are the little areas or white in the dark part of the dome, and in the shadow. You can scratch the paint off the surface of your paper with an Exacto® knife, or use masking. gel pen. colored pencil, and other tools. I like to keep it simple and use a colored pencil or a gel pen. Let this dry.
- Finish the painting by refining the details on the petals and the leaves, by emphasizing the line around the droplets if the lines have gotten lost in the painting. Hold the painting up to a mirror to see if you like how it looks. Even Leonardo da Vinci did this to check his composition and values. So there!
Note: if you have a goal of a painting created completely of transparent watercolor, you cannot use gel pen, colored pencil, pastels, white out or even gouache on your painting. I frequently enter paintings in the Transparent Watercolor Society of America exhibitions and so this is an important consideration for me. It’s perfectly fine to use these other media if you are not concerned about transparency.
Have fun with your droplets. Try them in various shapes and sizes.
Remember too that you will not believe the illusion until you put the highlights in. It’s the last major step, so just keep at it.
As an up-and-coming filmmaker I know, Graham T. Mason, said, “As the artist, you have the imagination of the viewer in your hand; you decide where you want to take them.” With a dew drop you can do that. You can grab the viewer’s imagination with your realistic droplets and guide their eyes through your painting. You have the power!
So, when someone asks you, “Dew you know how to paint a dew drop?” Now you can say, “yes”!
Here are some of the things you can use to add the highlights to your painting, or to add white to any watercolor.
From the bottom: white gel pen; American Journey Titanium white pigment stick; white pastel in a pencil form; white colored pencil, white watercolor pencil; Da Vinci Gouache (white titanium); nub of a white watercolor pencil; Dr. Ph Martins Bleed Proof White paint; and art maskoid, masking fluid to resist the paint and reserve the white of the paper. I forgot to include the Exacto® knife in my montage.
I always encourage people to visit their local art store for supplies. I don’t have a relationship in which I get paid for recommending products, so please buy the product that makes the most sense to you– and try to get it at an independent art supply store. Here are the tools I use in this blog post:
Gel Pens White – Uni-Ball UM 153 Signo Broad Point
Stephen Quiller, Jack Richeson Quiller Covered Travel Palette
Arches Watercolor Cold Pressed Paper Block 140# 20 Sheets-9×12”
Daniel Smith 285610005 Extra Fine Essentials Introductory Watercolor, 6 Tubes.
The Essentials Set has three cool primary colors: Hansa Yellow Light, Quinacridone Rose, and Phthalo Blue (GS), and three warm primary colors: New Gamboge, Pyrrol Scarlet, and French Ultramarine.
Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolor Sticks (Titanium White)
Winsor & Newton Designer Gouache, White, 14ml tube
Grafix 4-1/2-Ounce Incredible White Mask Liquid Frisket
Derwent Watercolor Pencil Tin, 12-Pack
Prismacolor Colored Pencils, 72 count
Dr. Ph. Martin’s Bleedproof White, 1.0 oz.
