Hi,
recently I saw the picture below on the Artist Daily Magazine (detail - Dew Drop In - Pat Averill).
I'm wondering whether someone wants to take the challenge of creating a script able to reproduce similar realistic water drops on an image.
I saw in the past other tentative experiments (coming out from tutorials), but -as far as I remember- not so fascinating. This is a piece of art, real art, not digital, so the goal is probably up in the air for a piece of code. But: who knows...
Maybe such a script (or plug-in) is already available, and I do not know it.

Dinasset, that's sure a huge challenge. I wonder, How amplify a background inside a drop if each picture will have a different background? But here in the forum there are such good script coders than it's sure that someone of them will take the challenge.

Not very realistic because the shadows are often incorrect. The height of the drop is totally related to its diameter, so large drops should have longer shadows than small ones. And all shadows should be roughly parallel.

If you want realism for this there is Blender

First of all, let me say I would be very happy to be so able as that artist!!!
Secondly, what you said is not always totally true:
- large drops tend to flatten, small drops are often more spherical
- shadows depends on the surface below: a leaf is not a flatten surface as could be a table
But thanks for contributing to the cause!
Let me say I'm still hoping on some chatters entering the game:
- one could be the "duo" Conbagui-Tin: the first one who writes the tutorial and the second one who writes the script
- other two script-ers who maybe will participate are Gnutux and Graechan: many of the effects (light, shadow, bump, lens...) are part of their "culture" on text management
So, I hope.....

Thanks, Graechan!
Could you recall me that your script? Maybe posting it again here?

Thanks!
I'll have a look at both.

Gosh, Graechan, I don't even remember doing that one.

1) me too, but we aren't discussing the artist but the realism of the picture
2) large drops are proportionally not as high, but still higher than small drops.
3) the leaf is somewhat flat, otherwise all the drops would concentrate as a few large drops in the lower parts, or at least assume a different shape (the hydrophobic properties of the leaf come into play)

you are right, Ofnuts
(I was somehow fascinated by the artist!)

Using the image of the tutorial and your script I got the following result:



not bad at all
the only thing I would like to have in your script, is the possibility to select more spherical drops (as an option in the script, something like: percentage of almost spherical drop=xx)

First I created a light-probe map using my entire image (tithonia capture that I took a year ago). I then cropped the image to a single flower and placed random circles on it. I then ran the bevel reflect log script on the dots. I then distorted (wave distortion with large period) on the result. I then displaced the result using the flower as target. I then displace the flower using the drops as target. I then masked the drop with itself to create needed transparency. I then applied drop shadow to the drops making the shadow more pronounced on the flower then the drops (traced the outline of the drops and cut the shadow result from the drops and pasted it on another layer and reduced opacity to taste). Yes, a lot of work and no, this will be the only tut I share. lol

experimenting with Graechan script
here my modifications:
in the script:
1-created and used a pattern noise instead of calling "solid noise" filter
2-set shadow layer mode to grain-extract
when calling the script
3-used as parameters: 80 - 4 - 40