Needing a good solid glass texture

I’m trying to render this scene with the ball in the middle being glass and the other 4 chrome/steel. I’m using an HDRI for the lighting and background reflection. I’ve got the reflect settings for the glass pretty damn low w/fresnel turned on. Most the people I’ve shown this to, say the middle ball looks too much like the others. So any suggestions you guys could give would be great.

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BTW: I know the string - ball interaction isn’t right..that’s being saved for later when I try to animate using Reactor.

have u try to play with the IOR ?

yeah, this is with it set to 1.47 which is roughly glass. So I dont know if it’s actually looking like it should or not. I still need to find some type of real life reference. Gonna try some pet stores (glass beads they sometimes put in tanks), Garden shops (for fountains I’ve seen glass balls used), etc… Can anyone think of more places? Right now these are on my list to check..

Pet Store
Garden Shop
Crystal Shop
Toy/Hobby Stores

thanks

if it’s glass shouldn’t the reflections get turned upside down?

/Thomas

if it’s glass shouldn’t the reflections get turned upside down?

I think the reflection would only get flipped if the reflection is on a concave surface, regardless of the material.

I might be wrong.

I cannot see clearly but I think the image is flipped… :? I suggest to make even less reflections for the glass, or try some other HDRI image where the foreground/background is visibly different

Can you post your glass settings?

Gonçalo

To percieve it like glass it should be more transparent. and then what you saw through it should be upside down because of refraction, but may be this is not necessary to actually happen unless you are a purist :stuck_out_tongue:

As mentioned before, reducing reflection strengh may also be percieved as some kind of transparency…

Fermí

Are you going to animate it?

That’d be worth seeing!!! :smile: :smile: :smile:

Fermí

Is the environment set to “screen”?

I think the trick that our eyes are playing is due to the fact that it’s over a highly reflective surface. If you look at the glass ball in the reflection it looks more correct. The metal surface is making the refraction symmetrical so it doesn’t look correct.

--Jon

Here is the glass material I’m using and also included the HDRI map. Well, included the map definition for the material editor. But it’s just the Kitchen.hdr which I’m sure everyone has anyway. As you can see the reflection is WAY down as it is.

http://home.pacbell.net/freywald/VRay\_Glass.mat

on a side not in regards to the hdri.. I have it being used in a VRayHDRI map type which is apparent when you open the library. And I’m only using it in VRay’s environment rollout in the render dialog. Not in the envronment dialog of max’s. I have it instanced in both the environment and reflect/refract boxes in VRay. Overriding max’s environment.

Try changing the camera position.

--Jon

Is there anything I can do in Vray to make it work correctly? I’ve used a different camera position (2 camera’s in scene actually) and it more or less looks the same. i can post an image with the other camera position in a bit.

I ve checked your glass material… I wonder if you check “fresnel reflections” option with a white reflect color and change the IOR to 1,56 doesnt work for you?

If you have a light in the scene you should check also “Affect shadows” option too…

Gonçalo

That sounds like it makes more sense. Will be interesting to see how that little caustic turns out once Fresnel is checked

--Jon

the hdri / background looks like its been mirrored, or it is a very symetrical image,
hence why the refracted sphere looks just like the metal ones.

OK, here’s with your suggestions GoncaloP. It still looks wrong somehow though.

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and J_Bug’s suggestion of moving the camera. Same scene and mat settings.

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looks totally different to me. the 1st image there is a brown cabinate behind the camera reflected by the steel balls, but there is none in the glass ball.

Hi,

First post here, but try setting the IOR to just below 1 (.999), this will give you slight refraction and more transparency.