Rendering Clear Glass

[Chiefer]

Paul,
it will be difficult to apply the setting to a plane or flat surface, our CA doors and windows are flat. there must be thickness on them.

here is the POV-ray setting;

#declare CHIEFMAT_6 = texture {
pigment { color rgb<0, 0., 0> transmit .72 }
finish { ambient .1 diffuse 0. specular .7 roughness .01 reflection .25
phong 10 phong_size 80 ior 1.5}
}

-Montego

[Night8917]

Hi Paul.

Since he's uses the freestanding Povray the settings are not very interesting for the once that only use the Povray in Chief.

It's a good looking glass but I'm not going to bother learning the freestanding version, I tried once and I didn't like the program. If I want better glass I can always export a vrml from Chief and import to 3DS Max.

Just wanted to show this picture with some water.



Have a great weekend.

[Chiefer]

BTW, change the phong value to 3 and phong_size to 10. high phong value is only use for radiosity. see sample image below. this took 27mins & 17 secs to render.

[Chiefer]

hey!! very nice scene, Lars,

I only tried Povray for this thread, i'm learn somehow. I modeled the wine glass in 3dmax (lathe), exported to Chief to texture.

cheers!!

[pktraylor]

Thanks Chiefer! (*hey How-about using your name?)

Lars, you always have such great feeling for texture and presentation.


Paul

[Chiefer]

I will, Paul. One of these days.

[ank345]

[robbc]

I wanted an easier way to improve my PovRay renderings than hand-editing a file so I wrote a script to do it for me! I can set refraction and caustics (photons) for each individual object by associating it with textures of certain names. My script then uses the internally generated Chief PovRay file (which has data that the export version does not) and:

* Adjusts Light attenuation from Chief's proprietary format to PovRay fade parameters. Requires that the default lights in Chief be adjusted to match a curve similar to PovRay if you want the Chief OpenGL and PovRay to match the new PovRay renders.

* Fixes scale/roughness warnings in the file

* Turns on photons for refraction and/or reflection per object based on the texture for that object.

* Adds appropriate global_setting elements for photons.

* Detects the latest Chief internal PovRay file and processes it, outputting a working 3.6 PovRay file.

This code took a lot longer than I wanted and seriously impacted my hobby time! A PovRay parser, even a simple one, is non-trivia. I probably should have just tested a 3rd party render instead! The upside is I can easily modify a Chief scene, preview it and then render it without having to muck around with POV files or guess which object to modify in the POV file.

The attached are quick scene I generated with Chief and using my Script. Radiosity low, AA normal. Ugly textures but I wanted to see reflection and refraction at work! The refraction and sepcularity is a little low but their is some nice caustic effects and a subtle one at the base.

1st Scene: Pov, 2nd Scene: Chief

[jsimanyi]

It just gets more and more interesting...

Keep us posted. Yours is the slickest solution yet. If you're willing to share your tricks, what did you write your script in? Could you show a similar scene with a clear glass, (my worst-case scenario)?

Of course I'll understand if you want to keep the fruits of your labor.

Thanks,

John S.

P.S. It's also sad that the export Pov file is so bad compared to Chief's temp.

[robbc]

Thanks, it has been a lot of work.

The script is written in Perl. The hardest part was creating a decent tree parser without having to lock in the details of PovRay syntax (a scary idea). But I now have a module that can read a file, locate elements, alter them and write it out. Oh and it retains comments and whitespace which is handy for later hand optimization.

If PovRay can generate the image then I suspect I can get close with a Chief scene. The current implantation sis limited and I am working to improve it. The primary problem is that Chief does not really give me much flexibility in this regard (I want a scripting language in Chief and I want it NOW). basically I have to trigger changes based on the name of the texture. With some luck, and time, I will be able to use the texture name to load attributes from a file, and that should get very exiting.

I am not sure if this will be marketed in any way, that is currently under review. I am not sure there is much of a market for a Chief PovRay optimizer. Especially one that requires texture file names to trigger special features.

In all cases the risk is that Chief will come out with a better PovRay interface (maybe it could be written in that scripting language....) and eliminate all my work. For now it is just an internal tool I am playing. Probably ready for limited BETA testing but not distribution.

[robbc]

It just gets more and more interesting...

Keep us posted. Yours is the slickest solution yet. If you're willing to share your tricks, what did you write your script in? Could you show a similar scene with a clear glass, (my worst-case scenario)?

Of course I'll understand if you want to keep the fruits of your labor.

Thanks,

John S.

P.S. It's also sad that the export Pov file is so bad compared to Chief's temp.

Here is a quick clear-glass (small image for testing), the refraction is a bit high for this shape but you get the idea. Uisng pure Chief output you will have problems with this. Chief scales diffuse to be between 0.60 and 0.84 if radiosity is active (otherwise it scales from 0 - 1). The high diffuse is OK for non-glass radiosity but really mucks up glass.

I had to modify my script to allow a forced diffuse for any texture.

[robbc]

P.S. It's also sad that the export Pov file is so bad compared to Chief's temp.

I wouldn't say so bad ... It does have some limitations, the primary one being the lack of light fade. The problem here is that Chief uses a different algorithm than PovRay and thus a modified povRay is needed to understand this command. In most cases a user would adjust the exported lights bu hand anyway.

It does not, and should not, modify object or textures when generating an export file. Although it would be nice to have an export option that duplicated some of the radiosity adjustments the program does for internal files. But I consider that a feature request.

For the internal file a bigger problem is the automatic adjustment of diffuse. I think that should be a per texture checkbox to prevent mucking up glass like objects. I would also like to see a refraction option. Although this is associated with an object in PovRay I would live with Chief using the highest value (or lowest) set by a texture for the object's refraction (ior) value. Caustics could be done the same way.

But all of this important only when using Chief to generate exceptionally high quality scenes. For normal day-to-day use the default settings are fine.

I am researching if Chief can generate high quality scenes (commercially viable) as part of my eval. Falls under the "hobby" section. Hence the script I have been working on. If it works then VERY high quality photo renders will become available with just a tad extra work by the creator.

[robbc]

Finally found this thread again. Here is my latest example, all done from within Chief then automatically post-processed and rendered in Povray 3.6. Please forgive the poor scene its just a test file to see if photons were working, the floor is partially mirrored as part of the test.

See also:
http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread.php?t=20416

[lbuttery]

amazing Robb, simply amazing ...


Lew

[robbc]

Thank you, but the Povray team gets most of the credit! I just act as a translator.