how cast light thru raytrace surface

[Rich Joyce]

Not sure if i understand the question. do you want to avoid modelling all the holes and opacity map them on? if so, then you'll have to sue raytraced shadows from the light - its the only way of doing it.

if you are modelling the holes, then you may as well use a shadow mapped light - you'll get quicker render times and you'll be able to control the strength of the shadows a lot better (soft or hard lines).

anyway, i'm not sure if i've answered your question or insulted your intelligence here, so please write more ;)

Rich

[cuzz]

sorry was not clear. I'ts very late here

1) Can I cast light thru an opacity maped raytrace material?
this question not so important now. I have cheated but I'm curious.
2) I cant get the reflection to stop appearing in the holes. and I cant control how refective the material is. I can only blur it!
I'm using a raytrace material.

3) I need a stainless like material with blured reflections with thousands of holes in it. I tried using scanline. It blurs the way I want it but It's slow. Im trying with brazil but still no luck.

this is the effect I want but maybe with some sort of fallof. Problem is the raytrace is in the holes and It renders fairly slow. see attachement

hope this is more clear.

[coffeepenguin]

In order to cast light through a ray trace material you need to use a raytrace light. If the light isn't going through the material with an opacity map your probably using shadow mapping, swith it over to raytrace.
For blurring the reflection I remeber there being a way that you could render out the reflection on a surfave from max. I forget how but render that out as a video file and blur them in preimier the put that blurred video file in the reflection chanel.

[cuzz]

the lights I'm using are raytraced and Ive been able to cast light thru a a standard material but not on the reflective raytrace material.

[halo]

its working fine here...perhaps try and rebuild your raytrace material

[cuzz]

I eventually got light to go thru the holes at 5:30 this morning after rebuilding it many times. maybe that might have had something to do with me not getting it!

I still have the problem that where the hole is it is also reflective I tried alphas in the refective slot to mask out the hole but no luck.

I'll post screen shot of my material in about an hour

If anyone has an alternative method to achieve a soft blured reflective stainless surface with holes in it that allows light to pass thru. I'd love to know?

It must refect the scene around it so cant map it and it must render with max radiosity.

[Knut]

I'm not sure if this helps anything, but:

You are making the holes by using an opacity map, right? But you still get reflections on the holes? Then you need to make a blend material where one map is the reflecting metal, the other is the transparent map (the holes). The transparent map must have no reflections, glossiness or specular level. The map you have used to make the holes (the mask) must go in the blend map slot.

Hope this helps.

[cuzz]

That sounds pretty good to me I hadn't gone down that path yet, I thought it might have been simpler.
Well I guess thats pretty simple.

I'll try it out!

Thanks for help Knut!

[cuzz]

That worked out great thanks for the that!

[Knut]

Thats good. Glad it worked!

:thumbsup:

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