All posts relating to Maxwell Render 1.x
User avatar
By Ernesto
#362514
Tom,

Here i am posting the last render I did with my version of the material.
It is not totally right, but is the best I could do up to now.

Image

I do not like that the material is NOT tottally transparent, and I do not like the saturated cyan colour, since it should be white in my opinion.
I have to experiment more with the textures.

I tried the scene that you sent me, and it worked ok, because the object with the central light (that covers the ball) was switched off.
(The name of the object is Light_03)
As soon as I switched it on, I experienced the blocking problem described previously.
That was the original reason to uncheck the box Hidden to global illumination, as seen here:

Image

This was Zdeno discovery!

Here I am pasting image again with the previous results:
Image
The lower image shows the blocking problem I am talking about.
You can see that the first and second images of this series, shows one of the lights at each time, but the problem appears when they all are on.
Perhaps this is a more complex problem than just a material. It seems that there are other unknown factors fooling us.

Anyway I thank you for your time, and patience. I am having fun, and I have learned a new thing too:
(I can have fun because this is not a commercial work, and i have no deadline)
You wrote: However, you may fail if you attempt to try creating it from scratch because, I didn't tell something very important, yet. The trasnmittance texture has pure black pixels which is not friendly with this trick because, those pixels will block the light on some parts of the texture. In order to avoid it, use RGB Clamp under texture picker. See, it's now 1 to 255 instead of 0 to 255. ;)
I was not aware of this RGB Clamp, and I found it very interesting...

I wonder if this problem was solved in Maxwell V2.x...
Can you test it, switching that central light on?
(the name of the object is Light_03)

This could help me decide to upgrade...
or not

Sincerely Yours

Ernesto
User avatar
By tom
#362563
OK, follow these steps and let me know:
1) Open the scene I sent
2) Unhide the emitter
3) Uncheck all "Hidden to" flags for it
4) Set trans. color to 254, 254, 254
Ernesto wrote:I wonder if this problem was solved in Maxwell V2.x...
This is not really a problem with 1.x. It's just a lighting design challenge because, what you do actually doesn't exist in reality. Doing so is very straightforward in v2 because, -as I've previously described- ghosting out an emitter nicely works.
User avatar
By Ernesto
#362573
Tom wrote:
"This is not really a problem with 1.x. It's just a lighting design challenge"
I see... it is good to know it!

Here I did the homework:

Image

Unhided the emitter called "light_03", Uncheck all "Hidden to" flags for it, and Set trans. color to 254, 254, 254 for its emitter material.
In the Fig 1 you can see the whole thing with all emiters on.
Apparently we have an issue with the two emiters that intersect each other. The sparks disc is intersecting the Light_03 emiter, so that the last is seen directly in its bottom part and it is seen through the other in its upper part. I have drawn an orange arrow to show the upper border of this poligonal disc.
Both parts are visible, although in diferent ways. The bottom part is seen as if it wouldn´t be transparent at all. I thought that it could be due to the objects properties box, "Hide to Camera" that is unchecked in this sample, so I tried checking it but it showed the same result.
In Fig 2 All the emiters are off except the enviroment light.
In Fig 3 Only the sparks disc which normals are pointing down , is on.
In Fig 4 Only the sparks disc which normals are pointing up , is on.
In Fig 5 The central light Called Light_03 is on. Note that the lens like poligonal model is slightly seen in the upper part and it is strongly seen in the bottom part.

Regarding the subject of the illustration, yes you can call it science fiction, but the effect I am trying to reproduce, can be seen in our phisical world. It is called Corona Effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_discharge
I am sure that the way I am trying to simulate it is not real at all, but I couldn´t find a better way up to now.
Image
The next image is very interesting:
Image
Image
Apparently the helicopter propeller was statically charged by the storm, to a point in which the intensity of the electric current was so high that it generated a corona discharge.
More info here: http://realitypod.com/2011/03/helicopte ... na-effect/
It looked to me so impressing that I thought it would be great for a monster-spaceship!
The next image is a laboratory test to show the effect to students:
Image
Generally the electrodes are metalic spheres (that is why I did a semispheric thing in the middle of the ship)
The next image is a home made experiment:
Image
Not my home at all!!!
Other example for Industrial purposes: http://www.directindustry.com/prod/tant ... 02712.html
And another:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/13/ ... 35/article
Image


Ernesto
Last edited by Ernesto on Tue Nov 20, 2012 8:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
By Ernesto
#362631
I have been thinking if the current issue or lighting/materials challenge could be present in normal nowadays life, and found this samples:

TRANSPARENT TV
http://latesttechnologyhere.blogspot.co ... nt-tv.html
Image

Image

In case a light from another source would be seen through the transparent TV screen as in the sample image, we will have to deal with this challenge.

This next image, shows a similar touch screen being developed in china:
Image

This is another use:
Image
http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/gadget-s ... on-the-way
A viewer obviously transparent that can contain an illuminated image based in leds technology.

Here another sample not so High Tech:
Image
Is a basic illuminated transparent sign, that is used in bars and restaurantes.


All these real life cases, should be easily simulated with a renderer as Maxwell.

Ernesto
Last edited by Ernesto on Fri Nov 23, 2012 2:54 am, edited 5 times in total.
User avatar
By Ernesto
#362731
Now this is getting more and more complex...

Image

And a material that was acceptable became wrong.
The originally slight opacity, seemed acceptable when using a single effect, but now with several other effects superimposing each other, the opacity is very noticeable and makes the image "unrealistic"

Two lightsources when superimposed, should increase the light intensity!
But in this case one of them is BLOCKING the other clearly.
In the bottom part of the image you can see the Material channel. There you can see that the discs with the sparks effect/material is not totally transparent as it should be. In the same image there are really transparent lightsources all arround the ship, but the sparks effects are the only suposedly emiter transparent materials, based in lighting maps.

Image
In this last Image, it is clear that the red light rays are blocking the blue light rays partially depending on the density of the sparks in the emiter image.

I still wonder if Maxwell V2x is able to create a material TOTALLY transparent and with a visible emitter component based in an image?
Such a material would be needed in case of the transparent TV screen by Samsung, and in many other real objects.

Here we have a sample frame from Prometheus (the movie) where the control pannels of the spaceship are transparent too.
Image

Ernesto
User avatar
By tom
#362764
Yes, they behave like 2 separate applications. (Except file extension associations but this is not a big problem I guess.)
User avatar
By tom
#362765
Ernesto wrote:In Fig 5 The central light Called Light_03 is on. Note that the lens like poligonal model is slightly seen in the upper part and it is strongly seen in the bottom part.
Try this:
Pull the central emitter below blue spark emitters and hide it from camera. ;)
Will there be a Maxwell Render 6 ?

Let's be realistic. What's left of NL is only milk[…]