Problem rendering light passing through glass

Hi there!

I modeled a chandelier which is composed of steel and glass. I applied an emission shader to the lamps, but the shape of the lamp is clearly visible, and the glass is barely affected by the light:

Here is the result that I want to achieve (this one was made in 3ds max and Corona):

lights corona

I tried to apply the knowledge I’ve learned from this tutorial, but the results aren’t convincing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWA5o4opLwA&ab_channel=NeerajLagwankar

I also increased the glass roughness, but that defeats the purpose, since the glass is supposed to be clear.

What can I do?

Increasing the number of light bounces will probably help:

default:

full global illumination preset:

Also, make sure your clamping settings aren’t holding things back too much:


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Also, make sure that you have bevels on your glass, if you have sharp edges, it’s much harder to catch the light

bevels:

no bevels:

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Your example also has some post-processing done, such as bloom and light streaks. Usually it’s done after the render and won’t be visible in the viewport.

I believe you need to have something of a diffuse component in order to scatter the light like your reference. It can be via geometry/bump, adding roughness, or mixing your glass material with a small amount of diffuse shader. Your result seems close to accurate for a clear glass lamp.

I tried your methods, and here are the results:

Only glare
glass 01

Max bounces 32 and glare; indirect light 25
glass 02

Max bounces 32 and glare; indirect light 0
glass 03

All the meshes have had bevel since the beginning.

It’s definitely better, but it’s still missing something…

Can you show me some examples?

Are those metallic frames? maybe you could increase the roughness of the frames so it could catch/scatter more light instead of just reflecting it. Your example has metallic frames that has quite a bit of roughness in them.

do you have a wireframe of the glass shade?

from what I can see, it looks like there are vertical cuts, but nothing horizontally. The sample from max has diagonal cuts that scatter the light both ways, like my icosphere example.

Perhaps it is a geometry issue?

Here`s a comparison between glass+translucency > glass+diffuse > glass with roughness > clear glass

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Thanks, that helped me to understand the concepts!

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Yes, there are only vertical cuts. I divided a plane, pushed the odd edges in the Y direction, and applied a solidy modifier:

Yes, there are metallic frames surrounding the currogated glass. I will try your suggestion.

Do you have a bevel modifier on top of that mesh? Round corners carry more light, in a softer way, than sharp ones:

Rounded bevels:


Square corners:


You can play in different ways to get the visual result you looking for. Also keep in mind that the actual geometry matters when you`re comparing things. The lamp in your reference seems to be composed of multiple small spheres, which plays a part on the final look.