is there any way of getting a ray transparency depth setting larger than 10?
i have been doing some tests with glass tubes. (both internal and external surfaces - ie the shape is “thick”) anyway… it means that the rays have to pass through 4 layers per object. ( twice for each double walled surface) so if i line up 3 of the objects the light doesn’t make it through all 12 surface layers. and the back tube appears opaque.
is there a workaround?
I personally can think of a good workaround (esp. if it’s for animation)… but perhaps it wouldn’t be too difficult to change the limit in the source code and then build Blender.
An example of similar changes is Kai’s build:
Ahh thanks but im no code wizard. I don’t understand the compiling diff blender versions thing… seems like it could be handy. i have read of all these neat features in the different builds etc. (personaly i think its terrible that it has to be so separated like that. it sets up barriers for people like me) No, i have to deal with the standard release from blender.org and whatever scripts i can find…
Well, various features are being developed by different coders … so it’s no surprise that most of these builds have one thing and not another (they’re kept separate for good reason, e.g. tracking down bugs for one). It’s not really a barrier, though. It actually represents early accessibility that isn’t found in other development models. When ready for inclusion in an official release, everyone has access to all of the features in a unified system.
What can be confusing though, is keeping track of all the new tools as they become available … but using any of them at that stage should be considered as a sort of beta-testing, and aren’t recommended for use in actual production work, anyway. For those who learn how to patch and build Blender, multiple development projects can be combined, so that they’re no longer separate.
Can you provide more info on your project, primarily whether it’s for a still image or animation? Maybe there is some workaround that will help, depending upon the specifics of what you hope to achieve …
Thats a good point, and you are right… it is like beta testing i guess… heh… still sucks that i cant get my greedy little hands on all the new goodies… oh well… i have the capacity for patience.
as far as the project goes. its not really anything. i was simply doodling to learn blender and i noticed that i was getting an issue with transparency… i posted a render here
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=140103&highlight=screenshot&page=4
you cant really see it there but in other renders it was at a different angle and many of the tubes were in alignment and you could see that the rear ones were opaque. i mean… i could technically just composite it in different layers or something… there probably are a number of ways of faking it. i was more interested if maybe there was a way to do it properly and that i just didn’t know what it was. (im pretty new to blender and don’t know a lot of techniques)
Ah, I see …
BTW: I posted a couple of links in the thread you mentioned.
Thanks for your helpful comments Cire.