Digital Art Zone

Been playing with the ubersurface. As all fabric has thickness, transparency depends on the angle at which it is viewed. Anyone have a quick way of achieving this?

I’m not sure this can be achived in DS. Most Items in 3D are only a single mesh thick with a texture map then applied to that surface. You can play with the Opacity setting for an items Surface in the Surfaces tab but I’m not sure you can get the effect you are looking for.

Have look in the Shader Builder for a Fresnel brick.

Don’t have on this computer, so I can’t say whether DS actually has one or not. It should, though. The thing is dead useful.

Ascania - 06 July 2012 10:03 PM

Have look in the Shader Builder for a Fresnel brick.

Don’t have on this computer, so I can’t say whether DS actually has one or not. It should, though. The thing is dead useful.

I don’t know about Shader Builder but there is a fresnel brick in Shader Mixer under Raytracing.

ok will look into that. Fresnel is for reflections, so if I can link that somehow to opacity I’m set!

Pendraia - 06 July 2012 11:31 PM

I don’t know about Shader Builder but there is a fresnel brick in Shader Mixer under Raytracing.

Or there.

While Fresnel brick is the correct idea, the Fresnel brick in Shader Mixer is not newbie friendly (where do I plug the output vectors?). I’d use the Lighting/Diffuse/Diffuse brick instead. If you have a main light coming from the camera position and leave the default colour on it (white) you’ll get as a result of the brick, the cosine of the angle between camera and surface reflection angle, i.e. 1 (AKA white) if surface is pointing towards camera, and 0 or black if surface is orthogonal to camera ray.

What’s wrong with the Edge Blend-brick?
Cheers! Oom

Improved version.

I was not completely happy with that one either. You must boost white so it “clips”.
Sorry for the rambling

Oh, yes, good idea!