mR Dielectric Question?

[silvia]

I have also had fights with the dielectric, and with similar problems to what you describe. You can take a look at my little tutorial I wrote at

silviapalara.com/mayatips/fireball/fireball_1.html

The things I learned from experience are:
- Dielectric transparency doesn't behave anywhere like that of a normal material with transparency set. If you have 2 dielectric surfaces, like looking through a sphere, the objects behind them are NOT visible (like objects behind the sphere). Only 1 dielectric surface is transparent (like something inside the sphere or behind a plane).
- Always remember to assign to the shading group BOTH the dielectric material and dielectric photon shader.
- Use dielectric with light sources that emit photons. Even better, attach a MR physical light shader to your light.

I hope this helps, unfortunately the documentation out there is very scarce.

[Quantium]

Thanks silvia, your little walkthrough helped. Although it did not produce the results I was looking for, it's good information since like you said, finding any decent info. on correct dielectric use is like a lost art these days I guess. Anyways, here is the most recent test render trying to produce a good watery look in Maya.
http://features.cgsociety.org/gallerycrits/187903/187903_1152830850_large.jpg

[silvia]

Wow it is very nice! What material did you use, at the end?

[Quantium]

Hehehe, actually in the end I did end up using the dielectric. Mostly it was just a matter of tweaking the lighting and rendering settings. Eventually it just came down to going berzerk with the FG and RT settings. :thumbsup:

[Sully]

Did upping the trace depths help with the rendering? It did with me a little but its by no means what I was expecting from this material, Im sure the dielectric is scale sensitive in as much as the colour values have to be set apart the amount of thickness of your mesh or something like that....Im having alot of problems getting enough light to pass through the material and im sure that its something to do with setting the material to the thisckness of the glass/water etc, I know about IORs and that this setting bends the light in and out of the mesh but I think getting the material to work correctly is all to do with setting the colour up correctly, I could be totally wrong with this theory but it would be really nice if an expert could explain how this bugger works...

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.