I’m creating models to engrave in glass blocks, and I’m a complete novice at rendering.
To get an idea of how they will look when engraved I simply turn on X-Ray in the 3D viewport while viewing as Solid, but this doesn’t match the final result very well.
I would love a set of variables I can change to get a render of what the engraving will actually look like. One method of engraving is “Outline Dotting”, where individual pulses create dots a set distance apart at a fixed layer height along the surfaces of the model. The variables for this would be:
dot diameter
horizontal dot spacing
layer height
A second method is “Outline Scanning” which creates lines instead of dots, so there is no horizontal spacing, but there is now a line diameter:
line diameter
layer height
The third method is “Solid Engraving”. This uses lines and fills in the shape of the object. It has:
line diameter
horizontal line spacing
layer height
For more details on these types of engraving methods and examples of what they look like, you can see this article: https://support.xtool.com/article/2716
I would use 2 objects, 1 for the cubic block and one for the engraved thing. The block with a normal glass shader and the engraving another glass shader but you can play with bump and roughness.
For dots you could try using a noise texture, use a colour ramp for spacing and the scale of the noise for dot size. (not sure what you mean by layer height)
Since the model is inside glass, you will only get an accurate result with a Cycles render.
The way I would do it is by using a simple geometry nodes setup to turn the model inside the glass block into a point cloud, then give that point cloud a glossy material.
Also, Cycles struggles with lighting objects inside glass, so I would use the shadow trick in the material of the glass block to reduce the amount of shadow it casts.
Here is a file with all that. Don’t hesitate to ask if there are aspects of this you don’t understand. There isn’t really any single part that is difficult on its own, but multiple elements do need to work together for this result.
I think the parameters are the easy part. You can do everything you care about in shader or even in geometry nodes. The issue here is that you cannot really just simulate it based on parameters to make a realistic image. I would recommend relying on reference images to atchieve a realistic look. It’s glass, so the look of it depends entirely on the environment(you see only reflections and refractions really) and a nice recognizable scene matching the environment you are used to for viewing the real result in is also essential. Once you match the result to the reference, you can start changing the input to see how different engravings might look. I would start this with some nice high quality photos of some samples of the actual thing.
