Vray glass too dark

[guitarboy]

Hey everyone, im having problems with my vray glass being too dark. Ive heard of others having the same problem, saying there glass is black or too dark, etc. does anyone have any ideas that i could try to fix the problem? ill post a pic of my glass material settings if it will help. its just glass for a window, no fancy curves or angles or anything.

 

any ideas?

[Horhe]

Its the material settings probably. Your map is not reflecting that much and is too transparent showing the inside of your building which is probably dark. Decrease the opacity of the glass, make it more reflective and/or place a light in the interior if you want it to show - of course depends what you want to achieve in your render.

[guitarboy]

my scene is an interior scene tho. ill post a pic. I know i have a dark background in this pic, but thats more to hide the glass colour, it has a black hue to it.

[Horhe]

I know i have a dark background in this pic, but thats more to hide the glass colour, it has a black hue to it.

 

Heh the reason why its dark is because the image outside is dark and the refraction is to low. The fact that it has a black hue to it hints me that youve applied the right black color to the glass in diffuse slot, but as i said the refraction and opacity is too low.

 

Best if you search for a vray glass tutorial on the internet or go download vray library with predefined materials. You can get this for free on various sites.

[Nic H]

that glass should have a near white refract value, and a fresnel falloff map in relfect ior around 1.5ish give take your preference (sometimes I pull teh black value to a very dark grey to get more reflection). I often also put fog in my glass to get a slight blue or green tint like you might find on pilkington low e glass.

[guitarboy]

Here are some pics of my material settings and a pic of my render with a pure white background showing the black hue with the glass.

 

any ideas on what might be causing it, or how i might be able to fix it?

[guitarboy]

Ill test out those few suggestions and let you know how i go, thanks heaps

[Tommy L]

You should do a little reading on how light works in ethe real world. The logic can be applied in a virtual scene in a similar way. The knowledge of real world light is essential with all renderings, interior and exterior.

[guitarboy]

Ive got a pretty good understanding of how light behaves and acts in the real world, and what happens to it and how it changes when travelling thru different mediums from doing tonnes of physics at school. its just more learning how and where to put the appropriate parameters into max. i can be a little overwelling at times, but i can see myself improving slowly, so it is worth it.

[Tommy L]

Well, I dont think you should be able to see any colour at all in that glass. From the the daylight hitting the interior wall, Id say all you would see would be a slight reflection of the inside of the room. The outside view would appear way brighter than it is now. Glass by its very nature is invisible. All we see are the reflective and refractive properties (unless looking through a large mass of glass).

Hope my 2 cents helps.

[guitarboy]

Thats the problem, im not sure what im doing wrong, ive posted my settings on just before, but ive had no comment in regards to them. ive done tonnes of tutorials and stuff, but always getting similar results.

 

One thing i have noticed is that in my render settings for colour mapping, i was told to use exponetial, and when i change it off of this, my glass becomes clear, but everything else in my scene gets blown rite out.

 

Does anyone know if this is my problem??? i dont want to have to go redo everything in my scene again if theres another way around it besides changing exponetial back to default.

[Tommy L]

OK try this:

 

Glass material:

 

diffuse map: falloff

refraction map: falloff - swap black/white swatches

 

Go into both falloff maps and change black to VERY dark grey and white to VERY pale grey.

 

 

But If i were you, Id render a seperate pass of completely reflective material for the glass and photoshop

1 render

2 glass pass

3 background

as seperate entities. The reason I would do it like that is because you have no geometry outside the window.

[guitarboy]

Thanks Tommy, i tried your idea, but still came up with a similar result unfortuently. I tried a different approach tho and did get the glass lighter, but now i have lost my soft edges on my light and shadows. I cant win max is the program you love to hate. haha.

 

In order to get the new result. i put a frensel falloff map into both the reflection and opacity map slot and played with their levels and bit. But now its at the cost of my soft edges which im not happy about. ive posted 2 pics of my renders, one with dark glass, but soft edges, and the other with light glass, but hard edges.

 

im starting to think it might be in my render settings. i might try playing with my vray environment settings as i dont have any of the overrides ticked. im also using exponetial in my vray colourmapping option which i know buggers up my glass to begin with.

[Tommy L]

you need to chnge the vray shadow settings in your direct light. It should be area, then playb with the numbers till the shadow is soft enough