render settings - glass/clear plastic

Re: render settings - glass/clear plastic - standard setup - no Photolux

Any suggestions for what people have found most successful for the
colour/appearence/lighting setting would be gratefully recieved -
particularly with the intention to show internal details.

Cheers, Sean

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Sean Kerslake
Dept. Design & Technology
Loughborough University
Loughborough
LE11 1RN

01509 228317

 

: Re: render settings - glass/clear plastic - standard setup - no Photolux
:
: Any suggestions for what people have found most successful for the
: colour/appearence/lighting setting would be gratefully recieved -
: particularly with the intention to show internal details.

The question was posed in a somewhat confused way, Sean. There's a color and
appearance editor which is strictly to define surface colors, ambient colors,
surface patterns, transparency. That's in 'View>Color and appearance'. There's
also a lights menu to setup and save light sources, spots, intensity. That's under
'View>Model setup>Lights'. There's a room editor for setting up the background
image, postitoning the floor, scaling the room to the part. That's also under
Model setup. Maybe what you're referring to is the Render control module, which
seems like an attempt to bring all this stuff together.

However, for transparency, you are back to the model itself and the Color and
appearance interface. Any color can be made transparent through the Properties
section. If this isn't expanded, click on the arrowhead. Then click on the tabbed
page marked Advanced. The middle slider, marked Transparency, is the one to use to
change a part's color from opaque to transparent. When you are at 100%
transparency, the part disappears. Somewhere around 50 to 70 percent, you can see
through and any inside surfaces. If you're cards/drivers are good enough, it will
be a real colored glass
effect, but, if not, the transparency will show as a dithering pattern.

Whole assemblies can be treated this way, with different colors and transparencies
applied to individual components or even individual surfaces to create a 'window'
into a part. The color can be removed by picking component/model/surface, however
the appearance was applied and selecting Clear on the same panel with Select and
Apply. Hopefully, your educational license came with some course materials, one of
which is undoubtedly on rendering. It's complicated enough to warrant taking a
course.

David Janes