How to make a computer screen image look realistic?

[antonio_silva]

Hi guys. Sorry for making such a newbie question, but can someone please say how to make a computer screen look realistic? I made a room and filled it with objects from Chaos Cosmos, and they look nice, but I want to change the computer screen, placing an image on the screen. Meaning, a screenshot of Windows 10, for example.

I'm not much worried with the reflection of the screen material, but I want to make the screen look like a real screen. I'm guessing this is possible to achieve, but I'm not sure how.

Thanks in advance for all comments and suggestions.

[fixeighted]

No apologies needed for any questions at all...they're all valid

I don't use SU but the principle is the same.

For your screen, ideally you want a separate 'screen' plane behind the glass front of the monitor, just so you can turn it off/on easily.
Then you simply make a material that has the image you want to see in the diffuse channel, then also duplicate that to the emissive channel
and tweak the value to your liking.

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi antonio_silva,

The simplest way to add a custom image to a Cosmos screen is to replace the default one.
There is however a bug in V-Ray for SketchUp and Rhino I just noticed which is preventing the default image from being displayed (you can only see it looking at the monitor in an angle...).
We'll fix this in a future update. Here's how to work around it in the meantime:

1. Navigate to the Settings (right) / Render Parameters / Optimizations and locate the Secondary Ray Bias option. It seems to be disabled but actually it isn't and that's causing issues.
2. Enable and then disable the Secondary Ray Bias checkbox. This will properly disable it.
3. Render - you should now see the default image behind the monitor's glass.

Note that you will not have to re-apply the workaround in the same project.
The fixed state will be saved in the model.
For any new project you start, you'll have to repeat the steps.

After you've dealt with the issue you can do the following to show a different image on the screen:

1. Merge the asset. This way you'll gain access to the materials.
2. Locate the Desktop Set 001_Screen_mtl_mtl_1 material and open it's properties.
3. The screen texture is plugged in 2 material slots - Diffuse and Self-illumination. You have to replace both with the image you'd like to use. Alternatively you can delete the Diffuse texture and set the diffuse color to black. This will leave only the Self-illumination map to deal with.
4. Render and you should see the new image on the screen.

Here's the result:


Hope that helps,
Konstantin

[antonio_silva]

Thanks fixeighted, yesterday I tried your solution and it works beautifully. Thank you very much. The only issue I got is it was necessary to adjust the size of the texture, but that was very easy to fix.

And thanks konstantin, I'll try that solution too. Thank you.

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi antonio_silva,

The original issue causing this problem has been resolved.
Installing the latest V-Ray for SketchUp version should fix it in all cases without the need for a workaround.

Regards,
Konstantin