#Transparent material
8 messages in this thread
>> If the plastic was clear, then the object is made of clear plastic. <<
Ok, George, how do I make the plastic clear? Huh, Huh, Huh?
Jinny
Jinny –
Not sure if S3D works like RL, BUT, if it does:
Start the routine that lets you edit materials, and edit that material.
– Set matte color to dead black.
– Set shiny HSV color values to 0, 0, 0.9 (slightly off-white).
– Set reflect HSV color values to 0, 0, 0.7.
– Set highlight size to 1.0
– Set general opacity to 0.05
– Set edge opacity to 0.3
– Set highlight opacity to 0.75
– Do not render backfaces (rendering backfaces turns plastic into glass).
(In the Renderize live manual this is described on p.140). The amount of
transparency is controlled by the general opacity setting. The value you give
it (in this case 0.05), I think, is the amount of light which does not get
through the material. A value of 100 makes a material totally opaque. Giving
the edges more opacity than the body adds realism. Plastic edges are more
transparent (= less opaque) than glass. If you were creating glass, edge
opacity would be more like 0.5 than 0.3 and general opacity would be more like
0.025 than 0.05, and you would render the backface.
Don't ask me why the matte color is set to black, but it works. I think
this value gives the material no color at all. If it was not set to black,
then the material might have a tint. Have not experimented with this.
— gtm —
>> Don't ask me why the matte color is set to black, <<
George: Got it, did it… toooooo cool… up till today, I NEVER left the
matte color black, I only used that to change the material color to whatever I
was experimenting
with… this morning I did exactly what you outlined, and it was SO
transparent, (used my little computer drawing, and then a cylindrical object,)
that I had to find a background
that would let me see it…
I do think that lighting has some impact too, will experiment.
I also changed the reflect settings, by adding a very light blue as the first
color, having used all your settings and only adding the blue there… didn't
do anything that I could
determine.
I am so impressed that you read the manual… I GUESS that means I really
should get mine
out now and do the same… sigh…
}:<
Jinny –
Ah, the sweet smell of success! On lighting, try the spotlight. It
produces a nice highlight on curved surfaces (the default lighting is ambient,
which doesn't do too much). On flat surfaces, you may need a glass bump-map
and some environmental reflections to produce highlights.
–gtm —
>> Ah, the sweet smell of success! <<
George: Yes! Well, as an experiment, I took a tif file that I created with
Painter
and used it as a texture, it's a wild sorta thing… lots of colors. Changing
the
General Op. setting, from .05 to .25, I could still see the colors, stronger
or
muted, but the transparency was obvious. Thanks for helping me with that…
Now, I need to figure out how to make more "depth" to my object, it's more or
less
like a pancake.. has an edge, but not as extruded as I want it to be.
I'll read the book today… it could be enlightening… couldn't it???
Jinny
Jinny –
The pen is usually mightier than the sword – except when it's used to
write VisSoft manuals <g>. But whatever manual there is is better than no
manual at all, so go to it. It will definitely help.
— gtm —
Hi gang:
Just one or two more notes on transparent materials… Although you sound like
you've got a better grip on it than me at this point!
The Matte color controls the base color of the object. Black is completely
colorless. The value (HSV's "V") affects the look of the object in that if the
object is solid black there not a lot of room for shading differences due to
light postions, so the perception of depth on the object is less pronounced.
This is esp. evident when using reflection maps.
The Shiny color should be used in conjunction with the HiLight Size. As a
material becomes more polished (going from plastic to glass, for example) the
highlight size becomes smaller (reduce HiLight Size value) and the Shiny Color
becomes less intense (hence George's suggestion to make Shiny Color off-white).
As Jinny said, lighting does affect the look, because of the way this affects
the appearence of the specular highlight. Here Renderize Live can offere an
advantage over Renderize Live EZ, because in Renderize Live you can define a
Bump map, which gives an otherwise smooth surface a topography that catches
light and gives the specular highlight more play.
Nick Josephs
Visual Software
Nick, et al –
More on bump maps when used with transparent materials, mainly glass –
Bump maps add desirable highlights to glass but the default "GLASSBUMP" in
Renderize Live seems a bit pronounced, and it takes a little fiddling with the
bump parameters to get the highlights correct and in scale with your object
(haven't quite got that down myself, yet). However, of more interest is the
fact that the glass bump map changes in appearance depending on whether the
glass is backlit or not. When not backlit, the highlights appear white-ish.
When backlit, they appear more gray-ish, which reduces their effectiveness as
highlights. Now, the dilemma is: glass looks more like glass when it IS
backlit, but the glass bump highlights look more like glass highlights when the
glass is NOT backlit. Sigh . . .
— gtm —