odd environment background switcher glass panel reflection

[SgWRX]

hello. i have a environment/background switcher as my environment, inside i have background as a environment/background camera map and reflections from environment/chrome ball with a bitmap.

 

both background and reflection probe maps are photos i took on site, one facing one direction and one the opposite way. they are not hdri, they are not even 180 or 360 panos. however, i have the reflection set to spherical environment mapping, i've tried screen too.

 

i have a box that's .25 inch thick, and the glass solid mentalray arch&design preset material on it. i get this strange circle. if i switch the a&d material to solid, (which uses IOR) i get this circle. if i switch to thin-walled can use single faces, i get no circle. i've tried different IOR's and the circle gets bigger with low (close to 1.0) but smaller with higher IOR (15).

 

any thoughts? this is also version Max Design 2014 with latest updates. thanks.

 

oh, also that circle is actually the background showing through - the other glass panels behind this one are thin-walled.

 

thanks,

[Francisco Penaloza]

kind of wondering if since you are using a single photo and mapping it as spherical the stretching of this one is what is creating that circle. If it is a regular photo and camera is not moving(in animation) you should use screen.

 

When you change the IOR of the glass you change how much reflection and how much distortion the translucency will create.

Can you post a screen shot of your scene setup, I still do not understand what you are trying to recreate.

[SgWRX]

i never tried high IOR on glass before, it's an interesting effect. so it's like translucency then? is it still physically accurate (not that it matters much to me typically).

 

so what i'm doing is taking a photo of an opening in a reception area of an office. that opening is currently wide open, no glass doors or anything. they want to see what it would look like with glass panels and doors covering that opening. so, not only did i take a photo of that opening area, i also walked to the area, turned around and took a photo of the actual entrance figured i could use it as a reflection map to add interest to the new glass.

 

i'm using the env/bg shaders, chrome ball for reflection (tried both screen and spherical) etc...

 

i'm at home now, i might just use thin glass, i was getting decent results with that. maybe on a glass railing or glass wall like this, it's not needed to use "thick" glass? except i think that solid rather than thin walled gives better distortion where two pieces of glass butt up against each other due to the IOR.

 

i'll look at it again tomrrow and get screen shots for you - thanks.

[SgWRX]

i switched to 2015 max design. i just seem to get weird results from ANY "solid" glass option in the arch&design materials. just using a JPG in the environment map and setting it to screen or spherical etc... then creating a thin box, 3ftx5ftx1inch and hitting render yields crazy results in the reflection of the box. i'll do some more testing and research and post any updates.

 

but yeah, basically, i want an environment background with screen using a jpg. then i want to place a piece of plate glass with "solid" enabled and have the plate glass reflect a different spherical mapped or possibly screen mapped jpg. seems like it should be easy deal. but i'm just missing something somewhere...

[SgWRX]

i think i got it. like i said, i was using a jpg as the environment background, used "solid" as the glass material type in the a&d settings, and i'd get that circle.

 

i solved it now by setting up a simple plane behind the glass panel and putting matt/shadow/reflection material on it with the camera mapped background set to: environment/background camera map, and within that, my jpg as the map - i instanced it from the environment background switcher.

 

no more circle and i'm using IOR and "solid". sweet!

 

EDIT: so i also have to turn off receive shadows in the background matt/shadow object and i turned off cast shadows as well. but it appears that receiving illumination isn't detrimental.

Edited March 6, 2015 by SgWRX