Making curtains or seetrough fabric that looks good in Revit Enscape?

[Elvir]

Working on a model of my flat and im somewhat stuck. Anybody got some experience with curtains or fabrics with transparency in Revit Enscape? Some good settings to use? Right now I am sliding my material all over the place but the results are poor. Soft and indirect light gives almost self-illumination on the material while direct light gives nice passing of the light but everything in the shade gets a bluish hue. Very unnatural results no matter what. I have added some screenshots (current settings also).

[medmonds]

The trick with curtains/fabrics is to use very fine cutout maps and NOT use the transparency setting.

[RDG_PLANNING_DESIGN]

Can you share your cutout map?

[medmonds]

Put this map in the cutout channel in Revit.

Use the invert function in the Revit material interface.

Set the scale to tile at 1"x1".

Render - fiddle - re-render until it looks good.

[Bill_Gilliss_1]

Here’s a more irregular one that I use, usually about 12"x12" for a looser, burlap-scale look.

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[medmonds]

much better for fabric thanks

[RDG_PLANNING_DESIGN]

Thanks!

[phil_read]

Here’s the technique that i use. Keep in mind that creating natural looking curtains in Revit is beyond the modeling environment - but you can get close. The trick is not using a double sided solid geometry for the curtain, but only paint the material on one face. This will help calculate transparency more accurately. This technique also works for curtain wall panels that are colored.

1. Model a swept blend (or other solid geometry) as the host for the curtain. Assign a material setting of Air to this geometry so that it will appear completely invisible when rendered in Enscape. In some cases you could also model a Void and paint the material on one face of the Void.

2. Use the paint tool to assign the solid color or material to only one face. Use a parametric paint assignment to allow for quick material changes.

3. Adjust the transparency of the curtain material. A little transparency goes a long way. The curtain in these images is 0%,10%, 20% and 30% transparent.

Family download here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qg9uh9dxfvxpake/Curtains%20Family.rfa?dl=0

[medmonds]

Great tip on the air + one-sided painted material application!

[phil_read]

The technique is useful in other ways. Applying a parametric material with the paint tool to both side of glass simulates colored glass, frit patterns and more. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/colored-glass-transparent-materials-privacy-glazing-revit-phil-read/

[kris_dewinter]

One other good way is to use SKP standard fence material;

make it much smaller and decolourise it as you like