Proximity Driven Backlit Translucent material

Jonas_Grumby · December 17, 2024, 7:25pm

Hello! I have tried to hybrid several Proximity material tutorials together to do this with no luck. SO, I have a UI texture I am putting on frosted glass like a decal. (below is a low res version)

The texture has an alpha so text, boxes and lines appear like a decal on the frosted glass. I modeled just the lines & UI Boxes as a flat plane so I could give it an emission material that I place inside the glass for a cool glow (Blue arrows point at it):

Here is a screenshot of the Emission model. Its just simple 2D boxes.

Now for the struggle. I would like to mix this Emission material with a Transparent material that is controlled by another object. The end effect would be a feathered circle of light, like a flashlight is being pointed at the glass from behind. So any Emission material outside of the Proximity influence would be transparent.

I’d like to use an object to control the position of the light since it would be much more interactive that a texture map of some sort.

I’m guessing I need to rebuild the Emission model in Geometry nodes as some sort of tiny grid to get that level of control. But I am struggling with the best way to do that.

Any pointers in the correct direction would be great. Thank You!

AlphaChannel · December 17, 2024, 7:52pm

Something like this?

Hope that helps

Jonas_Grumby · December 17, 2024, 8:18pm

Hey! Sorry, This is hard to describe. It’s nothing to do with the text.

The above image is my pane of frosted glass with (what I am calling) the “Emission Model” inside of it. That “Emission Model” is just a flat model of the User Interface without text. I gave it an emission shader so it would glow inside the glass.

What I can’t figure out is how to limit the emission shader so it only illuminates a small portion of that model and the rest is actually transparent. Imagine a flashlight shining through the glass from behind so the only part of my “Emission Model” that would be visible is within that cone of light.

and I’d like to control that visible area with the Proximity of something like an empty.