2Sided Material - set translucency by texture

[leandro_cs]

Hi,

I'm trying to recriate a leaf material described here: http://www.peterguthrie.net/blog/2009/1 ... al-leaves/
Butif I use an image to control 2sided translucency the result looks the same as using translucency=0
[attachment=2:11fhc37r]translucency_test.jpg[/attachment:11fhc37r]

2Sided tab settings:
[attachment=1:11fhc37r]mat_set.jpg[/attachment:11fhc37r]

Here is the blend file:[attachment=0:11fhc37r]2sided_test.zip[/attachment:11fhc37r]

System Info:
Blender 2.63
Windows 7 64bits
Vray 2.00.01

[Hugh]

Re: 2Sided Material - set translucency by texture

Yes, texture control is not working. As far as I remember, it has never worked in VB 2.5+
I had the exactly the same problem, and this was the solution:
- Front material: Think of this material as what is seen normally. Use a common diffuse material (alpha mapped also).
- Back material: Think of this one as how the material looks against the light. The translucent part (most the leaf) must be defined by whites; the non-translucent (leaf veins) must be defined by very dark colors. Picture this texture as just a drawing of the veins.

To control the effect strength, use the slider.

[Hugh]

Re: 2Sided Material - set translucency by texture

I tired the effect again.
The result of the mentioned workaround is poor for most cases. Excuse this washed-out render, I was just testing.

As long as the texture control does not work, there is nothing to be done for custom translucent maps.

Andrey: I do not see any warning in the console when trying to use a texture as the control for translucency, but it won't work anyway. Is this a restriction in the Demo? Or it is some bug?

[bdancer]

Re: 2Sided Material - set translucency by texture

Thanks! Fixed.

[Hugh]

Re: 2Sided Material - set translucency by texture

Confirmed: it works.
However, is someone else getting bad UV's with the sapling plugin in VB?
(Forgive the horrible render)

[soulofsound]

Re: 2Sided Material - set translucency by texture

How did you make the tree? Can you animate it?

[Hugh]

Re: 2Sided Material - set translucency by texture

It's just the sapling addon. Yes, it supports animations (but it looks funny to me).
Enable it and play with it -it's pretty straightforward:
User preferences Window -> Addons

[bdancer]

Re: 2Sided Material - set translucency by texture

However, is someone else getting bad UV's with the sapling plugin in VB?

Could you explain your issue more deeply?

[Hugh]

Re: 2Sided Material - set translucency by texture

I got it now.
The original sapling addon UV-unwrapped each leaf independently and automatically oriented.
When Blender upgraded to Bmesh, the addon was not longer able to auto UV-unwrap the leaves.
As workaround, Andrew Hale (the author) removed the auto unwrapping, which leaves the addon without auto UV-unwrapping until... who knows when.

I know what everybody may be thinking: "I'll auto-unwrap square leaves faces."
Well, that will give you many wrongly oriented UV maps (i.e. steams in the wrong direction).

If I didn't sucked at coding and had enough time I would be trying to fix that...