Combining Edge Rounding and Translucency?

[seltzdesign]

Just getting into a little more advanced materials in Vray for Rhino and playing around with Edge Rounding using Bump with the Edge features. It is working great.

Now I want to simulate a 3D printer material, which is fairly translucent. I noticed that the rounded edges are now dark and not translucent.

Is that a known limitation? Is there an option I am missing?

Without edge rounding:



With edge rounding:



Here are my material settings:



Thanks for any hints.

[Micha]

Maybe I'm worng, but I suppose so you used the Translucency in a wrong way. Translucency is a fake SSS for surfaces, where the lighting of the backside is shown at the front side. In your case the backside is inside the material and without lighting. Also you don't set a backface material.

I would try a SSS material from the library, for example "Plastic_SSS_02_Orange". I don't used SSS so much, but this could work.

Also you could check the surface normals per _dir. They should show outwards.

[georgi.georgiev]

Hi seltzdesign

As Micha has suggested, the V-Ray Preset Material Library has some materials that you might find suitable (e.g. 3D Print)

Regarding the Edges texture, please be informed for it to work correctly when slotted as Bump, the Mode / Map parameter needs to be adjusted to Bump Texture Channel.

[seltzdesign]

Thanks, I actually gave the 3D Print materials a go, but they are very slow and don't look quite right to me, especially when combined with the edge rounding. The translucency actually looked very close to the real thing (I literally have that text object in yellow next to me).

What I have noticed though is that those dark outlines from edge rounding are actually not just caused by translucency. I have had it show on other things as well as soon as you switch to the production CUDA renderer. After restarting the computer they are not there any more. Its like something in CUDA gets corrupted. I had the HDRI environment look completely different between the interactive and production renderer. It was like the HDRI was inverted.

Interestingly the render at the top here doesn't use a HDRI though. Weird. I will try to see if I can find a reliable way to make it fail.

Also, I wish there was a better way to add edge rounding to stuff. I now have to always create bump materials just to add the edge rounding to a material. Isn't there a way to do edge rounding using displacement, so its actually properly rounded, not the bump fake kind of way? Edge rounding is such a no brainer since there are very little sharp edged objects that don't have some tiny edge rounding. Is there a better way to add the edge bump and another bump map together? I tried using a Mix Map for the bump to add 2 bump textures, but I couldn't get it to work.

[Micha]

Did you try the Rhino softedgening? It's not so stable like the V-Ray soft edge, but it is "displacement" on model level.

[seltzdesign]

Did you try the Rhino softedgening? It's not so stable like the V-Ray soft edge, but it is "displacement" on model level.

Hi Micha, thanks. Could you tell me about this "softedgening" in Rhino. I see you mention it in several posts, but cannot find the function in Rhino or GH and googling also only leads to your posts!?

[Micha]

Here a screenshot where to find it and how it works.