Digital Art Zone

Well, I guess that is the question.

I’m in DS4 and trying to adjust a material to make it look like glass. At the moment, I have:

Diffuse White at 50%
Glossiness at 0%
Specular White at 100%
Ambient White at 50%
Opacity at 12%
Reflection White at 50%
Lighting model Glossy (Metallic)
The rest are defaults.

The material doesn’t look too bad, but I suppose could be more clear. Was wondering if there was something totally different I should be looking at, like shading or if I’m just missing something in the material editor?

Thanks!

dumorian - 18 August 2012 08:27 PM

Well, I guess that is the question.

I’m in DS4 and trying to adjust a material to make it look like glass. At the moment, I have:

Diffuse White at 50%
Glossiness at 0%
Specular White at 100%
Ambient White at 50%
Opacity at 12%
Reflection White at 50%
Lighting model Glossy (Metallic)
The rest are defaults.

The material doesn’t look too bad, but I suppose could be more clear. Was wondering if there was something totally different I should be looking at, like shading or if I’m just missing something in the material editor?

Thanks!

Do you want reflections? Then use raytracing.

LOL yes raytrace is very useful indeed :D I’m no expert on glass, but an ambient of 50% seems rather high - likely to kill specular. I’d think specular set to 100% would be better for a nice crisp fake reflection.

There’s no “use raytracing” in DS - except for shadow type, which isn’t relevant here.

Adding some refraction (strength 100%, colour light grey, index somewhere around 1.5 offhand) may help, assuming you scene includes things to be reflected and refracted. Glossiness 0% is way too low - that will smear the highlights over the whole surface nearly - if you want to tame the specularity lower the strength. Using uberSurface would enable you to use Fresnel which should look more realistic.

There is the ability to turn raytrace on and off when using Ubersurface, but it just amuses me to see the “use raytrace” suggestion whenever reflections are required (being the DS default). I guess it is a good reminder for those that don’t usually use raytraced shadows.

Refraction has been stomped upon by the Borgs and is utterly broken in DS4.5! :-(
Opacity 1%
Diffuse Orange 100%
Refraction Blue 100%
Max trace level 12 (just to be sure…)
and here’s the result of a Torus:

I’m not seeing that:

Weird. Are you using 32 bits or 64? I’m on 32 bits. I also attached the duf scene to my bug report, can you try iy on your computer?

I’m using 64 bit, I’ll give the scene a go in a bit and add my note either way.

Refraction is broken if rays need to bounce more than twice ( as found by Rob ). This is 3Delight related. This has already been spotted and reported and fix should be available soon.

Thanks, I was seeing it when I looked through the torus edge-on, or through a pair of nested cylinders, but wasn’t sure if it was the geometry throwing too many rerefractions for the engine or a bug

Following link to Glass Shader Presets for DS by ChaomancerOmega.

http://chaomanceromega.deviantart.com/art/Glass-Shader-Presets-for-DS-86711865

I’ve used them ok in DS3 and DS4 (not sure about DS4.5)

They work stunningly in 4.5. Holy thank you - I’d lost that link and needed those shaders.