Is there a way to have the refraction glossiness of a material change (as a gradient) from 1.0 to, say, .5? the idea is that with one material, i can have an object transition from a blurred refractive condition to a clear transparent condition.
I see that you can put a map into the Rafraction Glossiness channel, but i am not sure how that is going to affect the glossiness or what kind of map should be used to get the effect that i am looking for.
regards,
sean
Have you tried animating the spinner?
Or you could just use a gradient map and animate a color change or something (if thats possible)
i thought that might happen because of my description. i did my best but obviously didn’t describe it quite right.
i actually don’t want to animate the material. in a fixed view, i want to be able to render a surface so that it can smoothly transition from blurred refraction at one end (setting of around .5) to clear at the other end (setting around 1.0).
sean
ahh ok 
well definitly use a gradient ramp from black to white (or somewhere inbetween), and rotate it as necessary so it goes from top to bottom … you can use show map in viewport to do this properly.
Maybe use planar mapping for the object to make things easier.
Should be quite easy to accomplish. I think i did it awhile ago.
Try it out and let me know how you go.
Or you dont have to use a gradient ramp you can make a texture in Photoshop as well.
thanks for the quick replies. that certainly sounds easy enough. so that i understand what value equates to what - white would equal a value of 1.0 and black would be 0.0?
here’s an image of where the surface is blurred all to an equal degree:
this is where i want it to be able to change back and forth.
thanks.
sean
mmmm yeah i believe thats how it works. 1.0 is white and 0.0 is back and 0.5 is like 128 gray or something
you can even use a blend material with a gradient ramp as mask.
i think it will slow down the render times a bit, but you will have an nice control.
i think blend materials run very slow as it has to calculate everything twice.
But yeah if it renders ok a blend material will also work just fine.
thanks for the suggestions. for simplicity, i’ll give the gradient ramp a try first. the model is pretty complex as it is and there are lots of layers of glass and reflective and refractive materials. so, whatever is more efficient rendering wise may have to work.
if not, i’ll give the blend material a shot.
sean
I used once a gradient map in the reflection slot for the same effect…no problems.
Indeed - if you use a map that goes from black to white to get plenty of information in the gradient and then use the output controls (specifically the output amount control and color map) to set your output levels you get lots of flexibility.
from my findings, using a blend material is significantly faster then a map in the refraction slot. you can use different sample rates for the blurry and the clear material.