So, Google recently released “Google Drive”. It’s nothing amazing, but it had a cool little animation explaining it, found here. Basically, it involves a large number of glassy boxes, and I think the effect looks really nice.
I care less about the little white icons, but I really like the effect they managed to achieve in this scene. I’m able to model the objects themselves just fine, but I’m unsure how to go about giving them materials to get this type of image.
They clearly used a translucent material so that you can “somewhat see through” the boxes (also more-dense near the vertical edges than in the center), and they used correctly-tinted shadows. In the latter case, it’s important to note that while your eye provides the physically-correct visual interpretation that the shadows are tinted because the light is shining through the boxes, strictly speaking it is not necessary to take the time to achieve the effect in that way: you can get the shadows, then tint them. (Google has unlimited computing capacity at its disposal; you don’t.) The shadowing in this shot does not appear to my eye to be absolutely consistent.
