speaker grill material

[cstuartpaint]

does anyone have a speaker grill material? i'm looking for one with the round holes. they are usually found on home audio products. if not- could someone tell me how to create one? i understand how to create a bump pattern, but this one tricks me because i want the small circles to actually be see through.
thansk

[dalomar_cg]

Re: speaker grill material

The small circle maps can be created in photo shop fairly easily. There is a selection tool that will select ellipses rather then rectangles, so you could use that.

[cstuartpaint]

Re: speaker grill material

i have the image created in illustrator. i don't know how to make the black circles become see though in v-ray.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: speaker grill material

you'll want to add that image to the Transparency slot in the diffuse layer. Vray will consider black opaque and white transparent just so you know.

[cstuartpaint]

Re: speaker grill material

thx. i will try. as a rule.. is there a certain size bmp that vray likes? when i save it in photoshop, what is ideal?

[cstuartpaint]

Re: speaker grill material

cool- it worked. so now- if i want the surface to appear to have a thickness, i just add a bump pattern?

[Micha_cg]

Re: speaker grill material

Image size - it's a question of the image details, they should not be pixelated. If your map show a few wholes only, than 512x512 can be much enough.

Material thickness - use a blury, intverted version of you transparency map. Also you could try the transparency map + midmap blur at a higher value than default. (theoretical you could use the non inverted map and use the the "invert" texture option, but if I remember me right, a bug cause, that inverted maps allow texture multiplier 1 only)

[cstuartpaint]

Re: speaker grill material

thanks. so i'm guessing here that using a blurry version creates mid tones which become translated into varying heights. is this correct? anyway- i will try. i just wanted to understand the reason for it.