White Glass Lamp with Reflections

[percydaman]

oh that was prolly just a goof. I rarely use the vraymap so I had to relearn the glossy settings. The higher the glossy number the less blurry the reflection I believe. And frankly when the lamp is "on" its so bright that your not going to see much reflections anyways, so dont waste too much time on them.

[flipside]

What did you do that was so special? I can't open the file but would love to know how you approached this.

[percydaman]

trust me there was nothing special about it. I just used a standard material with a gradient ramp in the self illum slot and messed with the gradient colors and output settings until I got what I liked. Pretty simple and straightforward, but hey, sometimes we all come across an approach EVERYONE else has been using but just slipped us by. Happens to the best of us....

[davision]

Hi. Percy... I like what you did with the materials. However I noticed a problem when I examined your material. The self-illum Gradient Ramp had a Radial map type... so the lamp won't look right from another angle (see attached image). Maybe you meant to use a Normal Gradient Ramp? I tried to take a stab using Falloff maps... maybe Normal Grad Ramp would look better?

I added a mask to the self-illum which also dims the light a bit when there is no external illumination hitting it (sorta fake translucency).

My .max file doesn't have the HDRI that came with Percy's.

Rear of Percy's scene...


With revised material...




http://home.comcast.net/~mncdavis/vr...off_nomaps.rar

[Da_elf]

actually what i did was to take his gradient ramp. did the same thing as you however i put it in a vray light material. i didnt need the reflections since on one of those lights when they are turned on you wouldnt even notice reflections so to trace reflections is just a waste of render time. especially glossy ones

[davision]

I'm not sure I agree about the reflections not being visible on the illuminated lamp. It's a minor thing -- but I do believe there is a detectable amount of reflection on the globe coming from the vraylight which is above.

[percydaman]

hmmm...i had no idea the gradient ramp wouldn't look the same regardless of angle. But now that I think of it it makes perfect sense. Good call.

[davision]

Hey Percy,

I just noticed.... why are you using an older beta version?

[ajohnson48]

lamps

you could also use a blend material, with a VrayLightMtl, and a VrayMtl, if you didn't want to us the standard Max material

See image here: http://joose.4t.com/photo.html

[percydaman]

Hey Percy,

I just noticed.... why are you using an older beta version?

because we haven't upgraded at work yet.

[davision]

Yeah, I like the VrayLt blend trick. I've used that a few times myself.

All's I have to say is...

"G'damn!" I think we've nailed that glowing plastic ball.

[percydaman]

haha ya...problem is blend materials can really slow things down. I try to stay away from the if at all possible.

[davision]

Do you mean all blends -- or vraylight mtl blends???

[percydaman]

well...i haven't tested blends using a vray light mtl. But its been said more then once that blend materials PERIOD cause an appreciative slowdown of a render.

[davision]

hmmm... I didn't know about that. Is that max in general -- or Vray especially? With & without GI?