I know others have had this problem but I can’t find what’s wrong with my file. I’ve just started using 2.5 so perhaps I’m not looking in the right place.
The sun light outside the building does not seem to go through the window (glass on layer 10). With Ztransparency I can see the outside scene, but with Ray transparency I can see nothing. I must admit I’ve always had problems with glass.
lights.blend (851 KB)
Turn off Ray Shadow for your lamp.
Bill
If I do that I can see inside (but with no shadows of course) but not outside. Is there any way to see both inside and outside, with correct shadows?
I’m re-reading through Alan Brito’s Blender 3d:Architecture, Buildings and Scenery. I created simplified models for his chapter on lighting. It is possible of course that he doesn’t have glass in the windows of his building, but that is not an intuitive solution.
You need to enable “receive transparent” on all the materials INSIDE the room: the walls, floor, couch, chairs, etc. (I admit it isn’t all that intuitive, but it works!)
OK, I did that, and here’s the result:
The sphere outside the window is not visible. Is there any way to make it visible? I’m using Ray Transparency here.
Here’s a render with no glass in the window.
Ideally I’d like it to look like this with glass, except perhaps for some added reflections of the interior.
The gloss setting on your window is too high. Set it to 1, or 0.95 if you’re feeling daring (right now it’s set to 0, which means anything through the window is blurred like crazy).
Thank you!! That’s fixed it.
Actually, it hasn’t quite fixed it. There are shadows on the back wall but not on the floor, even when they have the same material. I’m guessing it’s because the back wall is parallel to the window and the floor is orthogonal to it, but I can’t work out which setting i need to change to get shadows (and light) on the floor.
ETA: Fixed. I deleted the floor and replaced it with an identical plane with the same material and now it works. Tearing my hair out.
Did you select the transparent shadow option for all objects. This includes the large floor plane which cuts through the floor of the room. You could also move it down just below the room floor.
Hmm, strange. If the floor is at z=0 it won’t show, but if it’s as z= 0.025 or higher it will show. Very strange.
It’s working for me without having to adjust the z at all:
(Gloss on the glass is around 0.95)
For more advanced lighting techniques using the Blender Internal renderer, you may want to study the render posted here: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=184555
The author kindly provided a blend file that shows his lighting setup (using a simpler scene). On post 39 I break down all the lights that are used in the scene. Download the blend and play around with it; very very instructive stuff.
Check the clipping distance on the light. That may be why it only shows at a certain level.
Also I like to set things up in layers and have lights illuminate on specific things.
Example scenario to get you thinking:
Have the window glass on a separate layer. Have them transparent and lit with a light you have set up to only illuminate objects on the same layer and have that light on this layer with the windows.
Have one light on the layer with the wall that has a hole in it where the widow is. Set this light to shadow only and set to work only on this layer. This will only cast a shadow though the holes. Set up other lights in this same way. A light just to cast ambient light in the room and so on. Any objects that need special lighting you can set them up on a separate layer in this way.
ok confusing a little here!
can you upload a sample file for this effect
thanks and happy new year man
Thanks for that link, the scene looks awesome and I’ll have a good look through the file.
Just solved my floor problem. Seems I forgot that I had a ground plane, and that the floor has to be above the ground plane. Doh!!
Sorry. Are you talking about what I just said?
My first-blush reaction to this thread was … “why do you need, or want, glass in that window?” Now, of course, there might be all sorts of compelling reasons to have a transparent plane there, e.g. if you are building a game or something. But, “because there’s glass there in real life…” is not one of those reasons.
This is not “the real world.” There’s nothing “real” about it; nor does there need to be. It just needs to have the visual characteristics that suggest reality … and in particular, to have nothing about it that “doesn’t ring true.”
I happen to do a lot of compositing in the things that I do, so I’m thinking a lot about what things look like, versus what they physically are. In other words, I’m not going to put a piece of glass in that window if I don’t need such a thing in my calculations, or if it will slow those calculations down (as it will). But if I need to give the appearance of there being “glass in that window,” then I’m going to think about just what that visual cue to the viewer’s eye would actually need to consist of. And then I’m going to make something-or-other that creates that appearance, and “comp it” into the shot.
You describe “reflections of the interior.” To me, that’s basically going to consist of “a picture of” that interior, shot from a camera that’s positioned out the window, pasted onto a plane occupying the window area, maybe flipped in the X and/or Y axes, with a sharp falloff of alpha, maybe comp’d in with a blur filter, and so on and on. All put together using a final node-network (“in post-production”) that lets me manually tweak the effect until it looks just right. “Looks ‘natural,’ don’tcha know.” This technique will let me get the shot that I want, and to adjust it, cheaply, until it is the shot I want.
They might call it “cheating a shot,” but this is a good form of cheating.
If you can “wing it” with Photo Shop go for it. The advantage of 3D is that if someone wants different point of view, you can just go render it. Problem with manual illustration type approach is that if you want to tweak the view, you start all over from sketch.
Real reflection is tricky thing. Here is model I worked on few years back in C4D. Yes, there is a glass in the window; an old handmade wavy glass. Waviness can be faked with bump. Color can be added. Translucency can be played with. You can “see” the glass and reflection.
I’m not against cheating when appropriate. Just exploring at the moment.
