Lampshade Material Question

[jujubee]

I'm having a very fun morning trying to figure out how to make a lampshade translucent. I've tried a bunch of different material settings (including the vraymat) but to no avail. Nothing seems to be working right.

I almost always use max lights- whether it's target spot or omni with a vrayshadow. In this particular case I have an omni set inside the lampshade. What the heck am i doing wrong? Can someone please be kind enough to offer up a little help?

-jujubee

www.lunarstudio.com

[Syclone1]

Egz wax material over at http://vray.info would prob get you what you need. Otherwise search for tips on using translucent in the vraymaterial.

-dave

[mc-escher]

here's a bit to read too!

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/foru...ighlight=shade

[mike_kennedy]

If you want quick and dirty, try the max translucecy shader or a freeware plug-in called Backlight (www.maxplugins.de)
fakes, but they can look okay.
Cheers
Mike Kennedy

[jujubee]

Hey Guys- thanks for your responses.

Egz wax material over at http://vray.info would prob get you what you need. Otherwise search for tips on using translucent in the vraymaterial.

- Dave, I'm getting too old to be a beta tester but great idea. As much as I think EZG is absolutely brilliant and kind- I tend to have issues with final products let alone stuff in the development phase. My days of breaky breaky are through though it's half-tempting to go back on over to the dark-side. As for searching for translucency with vray- I kinda been doing that for several hours now. But I do appreciate that tip- will give it a run if all-else fails.

...you'd think Max would have a lamp material!!!


Mike- thanks for the link to the other message. Hopefully the zip file solves it. I'm gonna have to check out that backlight plug too as it sounds pretty handy.

-juju

[jujubee]

I'm not sure if the default translucency shader that ships with Max works with vray- at least i cant get it to work much to my suprise...

[jujubee]

Ok- checked out that zip file from the other forum message- nein. That's all it is is a vraymat with the refract color set to a map. It's transparent- not quite a lampshade material. I wasn't looking for transparent glass as I have object in the interior...

As for the backlight plug- nein too...

Any suggestions out there still?

[jujubee]

Ok one last go- this time with the ezg materials beta:



As you can see- the wax material makes for a fantastic lampshade! The only problem is that doesn't allow any diffuse light/radiosity to pass through. One could say "add some more lights" in order to fake it- but if you saw the rest of my image you probably wouldn't want to attempt that...

-juju

[jujubee]

ok- not quite "one more last go" - here's another render with the default Max transluscency shader. I gather it only works if you have some opacity applied- you can see the results in this image. Too much is revealed within the interior of the lamp shade:



-juju

[Dman3d]

Check this out might help -
http://www.richardrosenman.com/vray_absorption.htm

I am having the same ongoing fight now. Translucent stuff is alot like
being poked in the eye all day.

good luck, if you score something come back and let us know

the funny thing to me is to use translucent, refraction must be on, I just
want areas that are hit by light on the backside to glow and fuzz. Seems
odd to need to use transparency - but I guess that is the point of absorbance, eh whatever, anyway-
the roseman method works great but I am having some serious problems
trying to pull it off with a curtain and thin objects in general.
only about 40 zillion combinations.

Been reading every post about it and not really gotten much further,
anyone out there have any new ideas about lampshades and curtains?

[jujubee]

Ok. It's good to know I'm not completely crazy here DMan. You'd think it would be very simple but it turns out to be just the opposite. I guess to summarize the max translucency shader- what's the point of having translucency if you're forced to use opacity?!?!?!

I just wrote Rosenman about this forum message- hopefully he'll take the time out of his schedule to pop on by and pay us a helpful visit. As a side-note his work is fantastic- you guys/gals should check it out when you got a chance.

I gather when it comes to "translucent" materials, translucent mats always involves some level of refraction- not necesarily opacity. The problem with the translucent shader (default max) is that it expects opacity to be on. If there was only some way to 'blur' the regions within that shader so that it obscures interior objects- then this would solve most of our problems.

Or, if there was some way to 'blur' the vraymat, through a spinner- that too may work for objects such as lampshades that may have objects within the interior that's to be partially obscured. It would also be nice if the vraymat had a density/thickness option under some of its controls.

I guess the third option is that the lampshade object would become a light emitter itself (almost like a dull neon light.) I say to pots with that. Plus I wouldn't know where to begin. Wanna talk about long render times...

The beta Wax Mat would be the ultimate material for this- only if it allowed for the diffusion of light to pass-through- maybe some sort of control spinner. Hopefully EZG will be kind enough to implement this into his next revision (should I post it on the wish-list?) Other than that wish, I think it has the making of a fantastic material.

On that note I'm off again to play with Rosenman's settings. Will post if I get better results. Would be even happier to post a .mat that other's could use in the future.

-jujubee

[jujubee]

Here's another render with a slight variation on Rosenman's settings:





Render times were 7.5 minutes- not sure if it's cause I have a ton of other high poly objects out of view. That's more time than I usually spend rendering considering the speed of the machine I'm on. And considering that I was planning to throw in 4 more lights I'd imagine it would take forever... As it is, subdivs on the materials have been cut from a default of 50 to 15 for the refraction values. I also took out the 'guts' of the lamp- removing the bulb after it proved too much a headache.

The lighting I used was an omni (Inverse Square for more realistic lighting conditions) with Vray Shadows- I couldn't get this effect with any other shadow types.

I still find this technique unsuitable for lighting my scene. The problems I have with this shade are:

1) the background now seems washed out. I'd think the shade would have properly taken care of diffusing some of that light. Perhaps it's because two lights so closely spaced together creat an 'unnatural' additive effect. Or is it just me? Is there some way to lower that effect or turn it off completely?

2) or... shade seems like it should be lighter if that amount of light is passing through.

3) The light exiting the bottom doesn't seem strong enough. I'm getting alot of light funneling through the top but not enough through the bottom. Is this the case for something more volumetric? Some lampshades in real life have another inner material thats reflective- in order to cast the light more effectively downwards.

4) I hate raytraced shadows. Hate the fact even more that I'm forced to use them in this particular scenario. And I really hate to hate things. While raytraced shadows are physically accurate, they don't really take into account diffusion or global illumination. Most shadows from my observation tend to be more like shadow maps- or even better yet the results of an HDRI that's been set up properly. The lamp shadows here seem too dark and much too sharp to be natural.

Perhaps I'll run another render with GI on. I just gotta find something to do with myself for another half hour. Coffee anyone?

-jujubee

[mzmeskal]

Try to check translucent ....it sould get much better

[jujubee]

Here's some more weirdness with GI on. Same material settings as above. This image is taken from a different angle- even looks like it created some new 'angles' in the process due to the weird shadowing. The lamps do not look like they are illuminating the scene:

[egz]

Hi Jujubee,

The wax material does let light pass through, but it depends on a few things: The thickness setting in the material, the strength of the light source, the thickness of the object itself (it should be a solid object), and the lightsource/shadow type (should be VRay shadow or light).

Here is a quick example with a VRay light inside a closed solidified cone. The light inside the cone is the only lightsource in the scene.