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Glass


stusutcliffe
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Is it possible to render any sort of refracted glass in 3dCoat? If not, is it being thought about for the future. I managed to sort of make something see thru,but when it rendered it did not appear to let any light thru to what was behind.

  I was using the Keyshot demo last week,I am sure 3dcoat has the potential to do what that can do.

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I was using the Keyshot demo last week,I am sure 3dcoat has the potential to do what that can do.

 

It would be fab if the render room got the update it's long been needing to allow 3DCoat to become a more complete system.

 

In the meantime why not export out to Blender Cycles which plays very well with 3DC?

I've just created a video on getting your color vertex maps out from 3DCoat or Zbrush to Blender here:

 

You'd get your glass effect in Blender an instant and could select what you wish it to reflect.

See here under HDRI Maps

 

The trick is about using the map not as a replacement of the existing lighting environment, but as a source of reflections for our objects.

http://www.chocofur.com/2-environment.html

 

Keyshot is fantastic for getting fast results as long as your computer has enough poke to handle what it needs to work fluidly.

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Thanks ,I will take a look at your vid.

 

I had some time with blender a while back, but didnt get on with it. Carrara does glass fine.

I have been looking for a "one stop shop" but I guess there isnt one . Every single software I use has something missing from it!

Been asking about refracted glass at Pixologic.but my forum posts just get ignored...its like they are in denial that glass does not actually work in zbrush!! Now, I am not discounting operator error...that usually is the case  when I do stuff.

I did a tutorial and checked all the numerous buttons that are in a multitude of places....it just does not render for me.

I have a bee in my bonnet about this,even though I hardly want to use it ,I just wanted to do some mouth gloop and a proper eye ball.( I challenge you to render a crystal ball in zbrush......then tell me how to do it.hee hee)

 

I had the demo of keyshot for zbrush last week ,it runs fine on my 7 year old computer,but its a little bit pricey for me.Maybe if it goes on offer again.

 

Just watched the vid. This is what I want to do with carrara,but it does not do vertex colours. But it does do fbx...maybe I have missed something.

Its like you say in the vid, I am just trying to avoid all unwrapping shennanigans.

 

As soon as that screenfull of "nodes" appeared in your vid, my eyes just glazed over. They have that affect on me.

Maybe its  time to take up crown green bowling as a hobby....

Edited by stusutcliffe
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Hi Stu,
getting glass in ZBrush is more akin to a transparency effect tinged with graphical reflections.
Illustratively though it can work effectively for glass details on characters such as spectacle lenses or spaceman helmets :-)

That'll be why you your refraction question remained unanswered I'm guessing.

 

For transparency you must turn on the BPR Transparent Shading switch in the Tool > Display Properties sub-palette. The Transparent option must also be turned on in the Render > Render Properties. Reflections: Render Settings: increase details slider to 2 if your reflections are jaggy

Lighting wise you can add gobos to lightcaps to give you a graphic kind of lighting reflection.
To create a gobo mask for the light >lightcap>alpha - to make a window effect use a square and change hdivide. Lights can shine both a texture and an alpha as a gobo

Lights >Background (image) - inserts a reflection image controlled by a materials slider Env Reflections - you may need to retouch the Env Reflections if you have adjusted the lights background image.

HDR images (imported first as a texture) lights >background image  to turn this to a reflection image for a lightcap turn on Reflect.

Out of interest Lightcaps can also be turned in to Matcaps.
Good use of Lightcaps can really enhance your ZBrush lighting and renders particularly with multi pass render. Avoid lightcaps for fiber / hair renders for the most part. I would use reflection and specular material passes to blend in photoshop for best control rather than trying to set it all up in one render with ZBrush. In many respects good BPR renders using Multi Passes in ZBrush may suit your style better than KeyShot.

I've attached two videos that may help in general.
.

ZBrush 4R6 Standard Material Creation by Eric Keller

"Everything in ZBrush is a kind of a fake to make things look good "



ZBrush Lightcaps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMM7yV-dbBc

With regard rendering your vertex color in Carrara why not decimate copy of your vertex painted mesh in 3DC - import this lower rez decimated mesh back in as a retopo mesh and bake a texture map with a uv'ed mesh to use as an import in to Carrara? It's adding one more step.

It would be easy to do this in Blender too but if nodes give you the jitters I can see why you are attracted to going the KeyShot route as the Carrara rendering engine is looking somewhat tired. For the most part I guess you are using diffuse materials in Carrara? The node set-ups for these in Blender Cycles are far easier than you might imagine - the node in the video is at it's most basic is merely the vertex color plugged in to a diffuse for that material. I felt the same way about nodes when I first saw them :-) Sent me in to flat spin and panic they did .

Setting up Blender to a 3 button mouse emulation mouse mode with left click makes it far easier to work with.
I've created a video for that with a neat addition as well as a video for setting up the camera easily just as you might in Carrara. I've not uploaded but if you interested to poke some more in Blender I'd upload it especially for you :friends:.

 

From what you've eluded to your one stop shop may be Blender with the proviso of relearning some stuff - hair etc and basic nodes.

If Carrara would update the quality of it's rendering engine + allow vertex color imports then all would be well and you would be at peace.

All the best Sir.

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  • 1 year later...
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Hi there Mr Kid,

I just found your post here whilst looking for something else , I must apologise for not responding to it on the grounds of not ever seeing it!!! ( I dont think I did...)

Anyways ,Im still plugging away at all this stuff....sometimes I wonder why, Im really not smart enough i decided. Today are be mostly experimenting with the 3dcoat rendering. I had a few problems but slowly getting there .

Hope you are still doing nice pictures, I dont believe Ive seen many recently, do you have another outlet?

stu

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Well, that's transparency, not refraction. And according to my experience, 3DC has problems rendering nested transparent objects. :) From real-time engines, I believe only Unreal Engine has some decent out-of-the-box support of faked refractions. However, it won't invert refracted environment, so it's not perfect. This probably could be tweaked by a person with some shader programming knowledge. Do you know any? :D

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Thanks, took me a while to figure out they were located at the abnranger link and not on the "resources" page. Some really nice shaders there ,maybe they need advertising more or putting on the resources page....or did I miss them being in a really obvious place?

I just checked they were in a really obvious place.....I dont really look at many other threads just the Beta one! You live and learn....thanks again for the help with this.

Edited by stusutcliffe
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