Making Transparent Glass Surfaces
| Okay, I'll be honest, I'm using the Glass Tutorial from my 'Caligari trueSpace 2 3D Modeling Construction Kit' book as the basis for this, but since the book is very hard to find, this is my twist on it. | |
| Open tS or delete any objects currently on the screen. Left-click on the primitives panel and create a sphere. | |
| Now, right-click on the Paint Face tool to bring up the material panel. You can leave the color at the default grey or choose a light version of any color. I'm choosing a light blue so that it shows up a little better in the screen captures. The intensity slider is right next to the color cube, drag the slider all the way up. |
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| Move over to the Shader/Maps panel and left-click on the Metal Shaded button. The only other button that should be selected is the AutoFacet one. |
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| Now, move over to the Shader Attributes slider panel. Drag the Ambience slider up between the top two spheres, and the Shininess, Roughness and Transparency sliders almost to the top of their scales. You can put yours higher if you like. |
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| Next, we'll set the refraction amount. Right-click on the Shader Attributes panel to bring up the numeric panel. The default refraction is 1. If you leave the setting at 1, then light will go straight through the object without bending. Change this setting to 1.08 and press <Enter>. Notice that the Refraction slider moves up a little. Maximum setting for refraction is 2. |
The numeric panel usually pops up above the slider panel, but I moved it for convenience. |
| It is now time to paint our material onto our sphere. Left-click hold on the Paint Face button and choose the Paint Object tool (funnel). Ooh, pretty! |
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| Now we need something to show the refraction through the glass. Left-click on the Primitives button and create a plane. Right-click on the Object Tool (Arrow) and set the size to 8 in the X and Y fields. Right-click on the Paint tool (should still be the Paint Object one) to bring up the Material panels. In the Shader/Maps panel, left-click on Phong shaded. Next, left-click on Use Texture Map, then right-click on the same button. In the Texture Map panel, left-click on the button that says 'checker' and choose a texture map. I used 'Coral' but almost any will do. If you have texture map that has a distinct grid you'll get a good refraction. Select the Paint Object Tool to apply the texture to the plane. | |
| We don't want to render the entire tS window so left-click on the New Perspective View button. Use the new window's Eye Move tool to bring the sphere in and almost fill the view. Go on, we'll wait .......... Ready? |
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| Remember that refraction can only be seen when rendered using raytracing. In the new window, right-click hold on the Render Object button and let up on the Render Scene button. The Render Options panel will come up, left-click on the little box next to Raytrace. If the panel is in your way, you can now close it. |
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| Time to render! Left-click hold on the Render Object button and choose Render Scene. This may take a minute...... See how the coral texture is refracted through the glass? |
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| Here is the same scene rendered with a textured box behind the sphere. You can see the refraction of the box through the sphere where the arrows are. |
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| I noticed here that the sphere is a little
rough, so I decided to see what would happen if I used the Smooth Quad
Divide tool and here is the result. I didn't change any other settings.
One more thing, make sure you turn off the Raytrace option before you go on. |
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| You are now ready to create your own glass textures. Play with the transparency, roughness, ambience and refraction and see how they affect the glass. If the scene around the glass reflects too much onto it, change the shininess to lessen the reflection. Good luck! | |