Preserved Topic: a glass horsie

Keep in mind, this is just a test scene I did to play with a new renderer. The model and scene setup are simplistic, but I thought it looked kinda cool, so I'm posting it.

The glass horsie on the right is a subdivision surface created from the hull on the left. (Actually, the glass one is a reference copy, so modifications to the hull propagate to the 'soft' model in realtime). I left the hull in the scene to give the glass something interesting to refract.

There are no lights in this scene. The only illumination is from the 'sky'. Imagine it's a very cloudy day. Thus, no caustics under the glass. Normally, a 'sun' light would be combined with the sky illumination, but I wanted to see how the skylight worked.

Das you always post cool glass stuff....

any chance you could post a tutorial on how you achieved your glass effects in MAX?

Well, that's not technically Max glass there, since it's a plug-in material rendered in a plug-in renderer, but I can give you a good basis for Max glass:

Material type: Raytrace
Diffuse color: black
Ambient color: black
Specular color: white
Specular level: 90ish
Glossiness: 70-90
Index of Refraction: 1.4 for physical accuracy, but I sometimes drop it to 1.2 or even 1.1 for aesthetics
Transparency: MAP - Falloff
-- Front color (listed at top): 215R 215G 255B
-- Side color (listed below Front color): 0R 0G 144B
-- Falloff type: Perpendicular/Parallel (default)
-- Falloff direction: Viewing Direction (default)
Reflect: MAP - Falloff
-- Front color: black
-- Side color: white
-- Falloff type: Fresnel
-- Falloff direction: Viewing Direction

These settings will give a fairly convincing blue glass.

The falloff maps are the trick. Fresnal falloff maps were specifically designed to make more realistic reflections. A shiny material in the real world is much more reflective at sharp angles (at the edges) than dead on. Pure reflectors like chrome are an exception to this, of course. Most glass is not totally transparent, and is more transparent dead on than at a sharp angle. This makes glass seem darker at the edges.

The two falloff maps simulate these effects. The reflection will be almost non-existant where the object faces the camera, but quite strong at the edges. The glass will seem almost totally transparent 'in the middle', but quite dark at the edges.

For best effect, the object should be all curves, and should be set in a scene with clearly defined areas to reflect/refract (dark ground and light sky, for example).

Did you render that in Ghost? GI is very nice isn't it

What was the render time on it?

-Electro

Have you ever tried "Brazil" ? Its a new render engine being developed for MAX. Its a free beta, and is pretty quick considering the level of GI it outputs. The glass render/raytracing in it aren't too shabby either, but take much longer to calculate then desired.

You can snag a beta of Brazil over at http://www.splutterfish.com/sf/brazil.php3

I still cant wait for "Arnold" (not juts MAX, but it has Maya support..yay!)

--now inc

www.now-incorporated.com

that is soooo cooollll....

i wanna make glass horsies!!!

PekachueThePyro

Yes, this was rendered with Brazil (previously known as Ghost). The skylight is one of the newer enhancements to the GI functionality.

Render time was 23 minutes.

btw, it's in alpha, not beta, NowInc

Beatiful Das.