Capping off unwanted see-through sides from opacity map on solid?

[CTRL SPACE]

Hi there,

As topic says, is it in any way possible to cap off (and close) the see-through sides made from an opacity map on a solid object? In the attached example, I have a material assigned to a mesh with opacity for the holes (plus an added displacement modifier where the material bends downwards).

In general, suggestions I have found points towards either using displacement + mirror (which I couldnt get to work with the u-shape), or by physical modelling + instance/array etc. In case of modelling a small part and instancing, this would perhaps even be faster when rendering? Anyway, just trying to get a feel on what options and tools to have.

Thanks in advance,

Arin

[hermit.crab]

In general, suggestions I have found points towards either using displacement + mirror (which I couldnt get to work with the u-shape), or by physical modelling + instance/array etc. In case of modelling a small part and instancing, this would perhaps even be faster when rendering? Anyway, just trying to get a feel on what options and tools to have.

Modeling the part, instancing it within the mesh (and afterward collapsing) is the cleanest way to do it. It will probably be faster, but not by much.

[CTRL SPACE]

Hi Aleksandar,

Thanks for a quick response, I figured this might be the way forward. - As to my initial question, is it in any way possible to "close" the gap you get between surfaces when using an opacity map to generate holes in an object (apart from mirror)?

Thanks

[Joelaff]

Sometimes you can cheat it with a barely blurred displacement map to stretch those edges down. But that can easily lead to streaks or very long render times/memory use or both.

A solid render time Boolean would be cool. A number of ray tracers used to have those (Infini-D for one). I guess there is some reason they seem to have fallen out of favor, like perhaps they don’t work with GI or something, because I haven’t seen that in a decade or two.

[ChuckRT]

have you tried with Displacement applied to flat planes? This is not the best example but it could work

[dimitar_panayotov]

if you want to use simple geometry but to have a detailer result, you might also try Enmesh. Of course, you will need to model a section of this grid.

[CTRL SPACE]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for chiming in

Joelaff Yes, a render time Boolean that works for this kind of situation would be nice. I tried stretching the edges but couldn’t get it to work. – Maybe the use cases are just minimal when other options are available such as Enmesh etc.

ChuckRT I tried the displacement on a couple of planes, and the downward displacement bend works fine, but the actual holes come with streaks and a lot of “noise”. Edge length on this displacement is set to 2. Also still having the issue with the “open” object afterwards.

dimitar_panayotov The Enmesh modifier seems like a solid solution. I do however get some streaking on the surfaces of the tiled enmesh object that I’m not quite sure how to get rid of.

I tried two different approaches to the modifier:

1) With the enmesh object fully modelled (VIZBlock from Autocad) and put onto a flat plane.

2) With the enmesh object modelled as a “flat” solid and put onto a linked plane that curves upwards. In this case the modifier takes into account all the separate faces and is being instanced to all of them rather than a single time. Can this be changed?

As a workaround for now I have instanced the modelled section block in autocad and linked the overall object into 3ds max.

Best regards

[dimitar_panayotov]

"The Enmesh modifier seems like a solid solution. I do however get some streaking on the surfaces of the tiled enmesh object that I’m not quite sure how to get rid of."

First, if your source mesh has some modifiers stacked on it, merge them all. Use just a simple poly model with a clean topology.
Second, check your UV coordinates. Enmesh works best with good UV texture coordinates.