Glass appearance

SquidCoder · December 3, 2002, 9:50pm

I am in the process of trying to learn Blender, so I am going through the tutorials in ‘The Official Blender 2.0 Guide.’

I made a wine glass by following the ‘Spin’ section and then tried making it look like glass by following the transparency section. For some reason the glass has a blue color to it vice a glassy appearance. Any ideas on what I did wrong?

Here is what it ended up looking like:

Thanks.

adyus · December 3, 2002, 10:47pm

first, select the glass and press set smooth, then enable OSA in render buttons.

Check the material’s color, then the texture’s color(colorband).

enable Ztransp

follow the tutorial to the word

ec2 · December 3, 2002, 11:12pm

Here are step by step instructions I wrote in another post:

To make glass:

Model your desired object(s) and scene. (I have 4 spots in this scene, one using energy value of 1.000, the others equaling 1.000. They all use 1.000 for edge softness, and 8.00 for Samples and Softness.)
Apply a new Material (F5). Do not set up any vaules at this point.
Apply a new Texture (F6). Select Blend, then Halo.
Return to your Material.

-FIRST COLUMN OF BUTTONS-
5. Set the Alpha slider to 0.000 ( I set it between 0.000 and 0.200 if using an env map so it will show up on the ‘glass’)
6. Set Spec, Hard, and Sp Tr to the maximum value.
7. Add, Ref, Emit and Amb are all set to 0.

-MIDDLE COLUMN OF BUTTONS-
8. Set Ztransp to on, its just to the right of the Ref slider.
9. Set the Nor to on to use it as your texture cordinates set up in step 3.
10. DISABLE X and Y scaling (this is key).

-LAST COLUMN OF BUTTONS-
11. Set only Alpha to on so your texture affects the objects alpha value.

Render.

Good luck.

SquidCoder · December 4, 2002, 9:24am

adyus - Thanks…I tried following that word for word…that’s where I ended up :-?

ec2 - Thanks…I followed your steps and got a better result. Not sure how much different it should look now, but I am thinking it might be a lighting issue now. Is that what you’d say, or I am I still missing something? Also, if you wanted to make a brownish glass I can just change the material color, right? What about if I wanted to put a liquid in it…are there tutorials on how to put a liquid in a glass kind of thing?

This is what it looks like now…

Thanks.

ec2 · December 4, 2002, 11:06am

You could benefit from using 3 Point Lighting. You can pull your glass out of the environment with the Back Light discussed in that tutorial.

I also forgot to suggest using an env map in conjunction with the glass model, it helps to give you glass a reflective texture.

More objects in the environment, add a bit of realism to your reflections (env map) on the glass. Take advantage, especially since refraction is out of the question for real glass in Blender (although I think a script exists).

Here are two earlier studies I worked on that might help:

Glass Study (older but with great tips from the Blender Community)

Tile Test + Glass Heart (recent)

SquidCoder can you post you .blend file for download?

Hope this helps.

SquidCoder · December 4, 2002, 4:41pm

ec2…thanks for the help!

I tried adding the 3 Lights and this is what I ended up with. Still needs a lot of work I think. I’ll have to play with it tonight.

Here is the .blend file, like you asked.

http://www.squidcoder.net/models/glass6.blend

Thanks for the help.

SHABA1 · December 4, 2002, 5:01pm

THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU.
!!!
I have been looking for a good lighting tute for months. I tried to follow the three point description in both the 2.0 guide and Carstens book but never got my renders to look anything like some of those I have seen in the various galleries
Thanks a lot for the link.

adyus · December 4, 2002, 10:58pm

squidcoder, apparently that’s EXACTLY the way my galass looked, up to the blue background(actually, my light was blue, but it had the same effect)
To get a more accurate glass rim(?), try applying something like a checkered texture to the wall.

BgDM · December 5, 2002, 5:22am

OK, I have been following this thread for a bit now and I feel that I can add something to this topic.

Here is an image that I rendered this morning. I think this is what you are trying to acheive with your glass material.

Here is the blend file for you to look at. Take a look at my material settings on the glass cube. Play with the HSV sliders as well. Also, do not forget that you can also add SPEC colours in the materials, as I have.

http://mysite.iptic.com/bgdm/glass.blend

If you have any questions, just PM me here and I will be glad to help out.

SquidCoder · December 5, 2002, 11:21am

I added more lights, using the 3 Light method and even added a lamp overhead. The lighting looks better, but I am still getting the blackness around the edges of the glass and on the whole bottom of the glass.

Here is the pic with the more lights.

http://www.squidcoder.net/pics/wineglass4.jpg

I seem to be missing some concept here :o Any ideas?

Thanks.

BgDM · December 5, 2002, 11:29am

Did you DL my blend file to see what I had done? If not, take a look. It should help you out.

BgDM

ec2 · December 5, 2002, 1:32pm

SquidCoder,

Nice revision. I downloaded your file and noticed a few things.
First, the light you set up for back lighting was behind your purple wall, so the light is blocked. It’s ‘Shadow’ setting was turned of as well.

Second, no reflection on the glass. Since we are faking glass, its my opinion (I’m no expert) that an env map reflection helps a lot, because glass and most shiny hard objects reflect thier environment. But the environment should be lit accoding to your needs. I’ve read lighting is the hardest part on 3D rendering and animation. But it is absolutely vital for realism (if that is your intention).

Ok enough of that!

I’ve attched my rework of your glass and the .blend file I updated below.
Take a good look at the settings and changes in the file, and play around with it.

Not perfect by any means, but maybe it can help. Last thing for now, everyone will tell you it takes a lot of tweaking to get what you want on all of you 3D projects, what works (settings) in one place may fail in another.

scglass.jpg
scglass.blend