Glass material: which slot determine the glass color

[smr_VIZ]

In MR, there are several Arch & Design preset materials. I have some questions for the solid glass material. I guess in theory, the refaction will determine the glass color. So I gave a color to the color slot in refaction area. But Now I am confused. What is the role for the diffuse color. If I assign a color to the diffuse slot, it will also influence the glass color.

 

Does it mean the diffuse determine the original glass color. The refraction decide the glass color after the light pass through it?

 

Guys, please enlighten me if you have clues.

[Justin Hunt]

yes, if you really want to get into it, look at the advanced rendering tab, there are more refraction options. The max depth colour is great, although you have to change the shadow type from simple to segment to get the full effect. Although keep an eye out for shadow artifacting when rendering with segment.

 

JHV

[MasterZap]

The diffuse isn't related to the *transparency* of the glass, but the glass surfaces diffuse reflectance (if any).

 

Now, which one of these are the "color" of the glass is rather a semantical question. "Depends on what you mean when you say color", basically.

 

Glass may indeed have small small amount of diffuse reflectance, but in general you would have the diffuse amount spinner set to 0 for glass.

 

Glass may, however, often have a little bit of translucency. I generally recommend to turn on translucency for glass, set the weight to about 0.1 and the translucency color to white (wince this is filtered "through" any "refraction color" you put in).

 

The "refraction color" is *normally* the "glass color", but in real, physical glass the "color" of glass comes from internal absorbtion. In most cases (especially uniformly thick window panes) the difference between these two doesn't matter.

 

But basically, you put the "glass color" *either* in the "refraction color" OR in the "max depth color" in the refraction section advanced options.

 

However... since all this is mentioned in the manual.. why do you ask

 

/Z

 

In MR, there are several Arch & Design preset materials. I have some questions for the solid glass material. I guess in theory, the refaction will determine the glass color. So I gave a color to the color slot in refaction area. But Now I am confused. What is the role for the diffuse color. If I assign a color to the diffuse slot, it will also influence the glass color.

 

Does it mean the diffuse determine the original glass color. The refraction decide the glass color after the light pass through it?

 

Guys, please enlighten me if you have clues.

[smr_VIZ]

Wow. All these are great explanations from different areas. I like it. Thank you, guys.

 

 

I generally recommend to turn on translucency for glass, set the weight to about 0.1 and the translucency color to white (wince this is filtered "through" any "refraction color" you put in).

 

/Z

 

MasterZap: In Falloff map, the black color will allow the light pass through it. The white color won't. But you put white in translucency. Are you sure? I will do a small test later.

[Dave Buckley]

zap's method works a treat, that is the method that i tend to use when creating glass materials using the a&d shader, i'm just rendering a couple of examples of a standard wine glass model using zap's technique for colouring the glass, will post them when they are complete.

 

my machine is rubbishly slow and not very high spec, plus i'm at work so should be doing work they won't be too long tho and hopefully you will be able to see how nice the glass can look when using these techniques.

 

the next step for extra realism would be for my to incorporate some hdri into my scene, the scene i have used is just lit with two sky portals as area lights with the opiton to make them visible turned on

[Dave Buckley]

and as promised

 

this is the a&d solid glass preset, with the diffuse set to 0

 

translucency on, set to 0.1, and set colour to white

 

then clear glass has refraction colour set to white

 

and coloured glass has refraction colour set to the blue colour you can see

[Dave Buckley]

and another quick test using the same technique only this time i have used the physical glass preset, and incorporated caustics to see what effect the transparency colour has on the caustic effect

[Dave Buckley]

i've just been playing with the transparency colour to add detail to the glass such as logo's etc, it works, however i feel there is something not quite right about the rendering but i can't figure out what it is?

 

if anybody can spot something to make this rendering better then please feel free to say so

[smr_VIZ]

daveb:

 

I like your small tests. I used to do this too.

 

Did you have a test for architectural glass put in a scene? If you like, how about we share what we have so far? I am pretty OK with VRay, but very basic in MR for now. Since my firm don't have VRay, so I will spend more time in MR.