Architectural glass. The bane of my existence.

[flipside]

You just cannot have very strong reflections and transparancy at the same time!!! Look at real windows, if they're very reflective, you can't see through them. This is usually if you look at an angle (which is the fresnell effect), or when it's light on your side and dark on the other side of the glass.

[Psy]

yes flipside, but its arch glass, which seems to defy all the regular conventions about glass.

[twinxel]

You just cannot have very strong reflections and transparancy at the same time!!! Look at real windows, if they're very reflective, you can't see through them. This is usually if you look at an angle (which is the fresnell effect), or when it's light on your side and dark on the other side of the glass.

Flipside,
if you have a dark color in the fresnel slot, it doesn't mean a strong relection, but a weak one. The brightness sets its intensity, thus its not controlled by the number in the standard reflection slot.
So his settings make sense in my oppinion.

Regards,
Joao.

[plastic_]

yes flipside, but its arch glass, which seems to defy all the regular conventions about glass.

thats true. the thing is, in the real world small windows are black because there not enough light to illuminate the room inside at outside exposure.
the aim in not to perfectly simulate reality (often reality is ugly), the aim is to make pictures that look better than photorealism.

[RErender]

ahh the elusive "hyper" realism

[flipside]

maybe I should look at some arch images... What exactly do you mean with arch glass? And what is structural glass?

[free4dom]

Indeed, arch glass seems more reflective when it is dark behind the window and when you look parralel to the glass....
Now, how do you set both in a fall-off map ?

cu

/free

[sc]

If you look at real (flat panel) glazing, you'll notice that the bightness of the actual reflected objects play a big part on reflectivity and transparency.

If a white wall is being reflected, the reflection will appear very strong. If a black wall is being reflected, the glass will appear more transparent there.

Finally, if your glass is in full sunlight it will be more reflective than if it is in shadow. In architectural images, the glass in your scene experiences every one of these situations in different parts of your image, therefore finding the one glass material to accomplish everything is near impossible. We must understand the mechanics of what can create each one of these reflective.refractive effects.

Like Junglejuz, I find creating real looking glass is the absolute hardest feat followed by brushed metal on flat surfaces.

Whenever someone posts tests of glass materials, it's always on curvy surfaces in a closed environment. Easy. Architectural glass is nasty.

Sunny.

[R2J2]

just my knowlege from playing around with glass, if you use a standard Mat'l & the opacity is 0 then there is no decrease in render times, any value above 0 will slow the render down(so use the VRay Mat'l) but the otherthing I found, was that using the standard glass (Opacity=0) would blowout bright areas when you look through the Glass, the Vray Mat'l woks fine. also the spec & gloss will affect the amount of reflection (Standard Mat'l), I wonder if there anything interestion you could do with using a spec/gloss map.

[sunny]

The thing that bothers me about the Vray Mtl is that there aren't any visual specular controls like there are with the standard Max material.

I know others have been saying to use the Shellac material in combination with the Vray Mtl, but I find that it's starting to get a little complicated for something that should be quite simple. Besides, the more complex the material gets, the slower the renders, right?

Sunny.

[flipside]

Yes that bothers me too. Ok, in real life specular highlights actually are blurry reflections, but this means that with vray mat you have to enable blurry reflections for all mats, because all mats are a bit reflective. Why not just leave the specular control in, and people who are so freaked by reality based controls can still disable the fake hightlights and use blurry reflections.

regards,

flipside

[GoncaloP]

If you unckeck trace reflections, you can have faked specular high lights if the material is not a reflective one, or you can add the specular with a stardart back material using a shellac, like mentioned. I know that isnt a simple way to do it, but its the avaiable one.
Anyway I really think that the best way is the use of interpolation glossi reflections for that porpouses but some times means time consumption...

Gonçalo

[Infrared digital]

Hi

I tried your glass mat free4dom and it works brilliantly, only thing is that it goes black sometimes on the reverse side of some geometry.

I've tried a number of obvious setting changes but the problem persists - do you have any ideas on how to remedy this?

Thanks

N

[free4dom]

Strange about the black. Are you sure your glass has some thickness ? not just a single plane ?

I worked also on a glass version with only the vraymat and it looks quite ok as well except that the specular isn't as strong as a combined material with max+vray. But it seems better from close on.

Will post a copy...

cu

[Infrared digital]

The glass is made up of planes with no thickness - is there any way around this as alot of the model is made up of this geometry?

Also, I need to start rendering soon to get is completed - always the way !!

Thanks

N