Glacial Crevice WIP - Help with material and render settings

[djembe]

Truly, Priad, he seems to have an innate search algorithm regarding these things.

DaForce, Russell's material looks really good. Thanks for messaging him about that.

Jason

[DaForce]

I shall never let anyone know my search algorithm..
I do have a knack for it tho

Yeah its not bad, hopefully he will reply back

Fingers crossed.

[DaForce]

He replied

He is pretty sure he still has it and will get back to me in a couple of days as he is abit busy at the moment.
It was a 1.09 file from what he remembers but should be easy enough to translate.

[djembe]

Great, thanks.

I'll take it as a sign that I'm to work on another project for a couple of days myself.

[DaForce]

Could well be

Will let you know as soon as he gets back to me.

BTW I have tried to look for a MR to vray converter but no such luck. So hopefully this will do the trick.

[DaForce]

Russell just sent me a couple of emails with 2 max files that should be able to produce basically what we saw in his renders. He even gave some info on how the shader works.

Will be posting it up a little later once I have had a chance to give it the once over and upload the files.

Stay tuned

[geoff]

Just noticed this material on the vray materials website

http://www.vray-materials.de/all_materials.php?mat=1004

maybe of some use to you.

Geoff

[djembe]

Geoff: Thanks. I'll check that out.

DaForce: Cool. I'm tuned.
My thanks to Russell, and to you for locating and requesting the material on my behalf, and personally looking it over it no less. I'm in your debt sir.
Now to see if you've created a monster when I have to ask further questions.

[DaForce]

Sorry for the late reply. Had a rather serious family emergency come up.. and well... its still up.

Anyway, havnt really had much of a chance to look at his files yet.
He said it was initially made in 1.09 so it will need tweaking to get it back inline with RC3.

Here are the files and will post some comments he made. There are 2 max files the rock one is the better of the 2 he said I believe.

ice_glacier.zip 1.76mb

some of the quirks might have been ironed out with RC3, but if not heres a quick description.

the fog colour affects the absorbtion colour of the ice so change the red channelto get that blue(!) glacial effect. but make sure the blue and the green channels are not at 255, for some reason that kills the absorbtion effect. Add reflection for a melting ice, wetter feel.
thickness will reduce the length of light absorbtion.
displacement (which is one the rock) will skyrocket rendertimes hugely

the omni is sort of the ambient light source with the direct setup to create the sunlighscattering. too much omni tends to kill the scene.

Full credit goes to Russell for the original files and many thanks for his generosity.

I seem to create a few of those monsters

[djembe]

Hi DaForce,

No apologies needed man. Family always comes first.
The best of luck to you in all things.

Thanks again for going so out of your way to assist me. And my thanks again to Russell for the same. I'm looking through the files now and will study them carefully. I'll post the results of what I've learned in coming days.

Regards,
Jason

[DaForce]

Hey Mate,

Yeah thanks for your regards, unfortunately things didnt turn out well at all.

Have you had any luck with the ice yet? I havnt really had a chance to dive into it yet.

[peterC]

Hi
Did some quick test perhaps you can use it.
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Ill post the max file if you need it

[djembe]

DaForce: I'm sorry that things didn't turn out well man. I'll continue to wish the best for you.

As far as my luck with the ice and glacier materials, I suppose you could say my progress is slow. I've spent some quality time with Russell's glacier material and was able to get it looking something close to his 1.09 renders. (The renders are painfully slow on my aging PC however.) From there, I'm experimenting with the material and light setup with my own small test object and maps to see about getting more specific glossiness and displacement results. My test renders thus far are of the sloppy, canceled mid-way, render region variety and not worthy of posting.

Oh, duh...
Something that I've noticed about everyones' examples of VRayMtl translucency is that they've been applied to objects that are fully closed volumes. Also the objects contain a good distribution of thin areas where the translucent effect can be made more evident. My glacier geometry isn't a closed volume and the surface detail is provided by the displacement map and doesn't really interact dramatically with the translucency (no true thin walls).

So, I think I need to re-create the scene altogether with those considerations in mind. So whatever I come up with, it's going to take me a while.

Peter: I didn't realize that I might end up with such an expansive collection of VRay glacier materials by starting this thread. If you can post the file somewhere without too much effort, I'll certainly check it out. I've learned something from each of the materials shared here thus far. Thanks!

[DaForce]

Yeah I noticed things were rather slow on my X2 as well. Especially to get rid of noise it was deadly slow.

I should have some time in the next day or 2 to have another look at this. I find it quite interesting and would love to see the render with that look that you are after.
And now that you mention it, not having closed geometry could well be the biggest problem you have to over come. Mind you adding in some mesh to close up your current geometry wouldnt be too hard to time consiming at all I would imagine. I would say do that before continuing with further glacier material development

[Joost Ink]

: My glacier geometry isn't a closed volume and the surface detail is provided by the displacement map and doesn't really interact dramatically with the translucency (no true thin walls).

maybe the shell modifier can help you out here, it will give you some depth without too much effort.