making transparent object without refract enviroment

[highpoly]

I am trying to make a thin pane of glass but not have it refract the scene env color set in vray (black). i set refraction IOR to 1.0 since i dont want distortion. even with reflections off, the pane is still refracting the black enviroment. is there a way to just make it transparent like controlling opacity in a max shader? i thought making IOR 1.0 would eliminate it but its not. any ideas? i hate to have to use a max material with opacity for this..must be missing some obvious setting..

oh, one vray light in scene, vray enviroment color white, vray reflect color black and second bounce is off...

thanks

[Codi]

I guess you want to remove the rendered environment to composite a different background. So if you are rendering over black background you can later remove it using photoshop. To get correct alpha channel first you have to check on the glass material 'Affect Alpha'. You just have to save the render with alpha channel (TGA for example) and use the photoshop tool Layer/Matting/Remove Black Matte to remove the black background and then composite what you need.

[highpoly]

see thats the thing..its not a rendered background, its the background color for reflections in vray. I know what you are refering too and yes, that would work, but this is not that case...

[percydaman]

try putting a vraycolor in the opacity slot. Or just use a standard material. I frequently do...

[andrewjohn81]

what I've done is put a refraction override as just white. This doesn't usually look so hot though.

Instead, I would suggest this:
make a copy of your environment map and adjust the gamma so that there is much less contrast, then lighten it so it appears uniformly near white.

This will let the refraction appear white without just flatting out the refraction completely. That's what using plain white usually causes.

This technique can also be used for black backgrounds as well. It's pretty much the same technique.

[highpoly]

thanks guys, ill give that a shot..