Attached Link: http://www.spectrumglass.com/Stocklist.html

I have the greatest glass texture site check it out!

Nah, there's no veins or anything. Just trying to get the best look that really expounds the look of glass. More precisely a look of crystal. Which is strange, because I thought I had this material set to a refraction of crystal, but didn't. I'm re-rendering now with a refraction of 188, MUCH better. I'll post it up when done. Cool link, I hadn't seen that before, thanks! AgentSmith

I'll be honest: he looks like he is made of plastic, rather than glass. can't wait to see the re-render.

Exactly, way too plastic. AS

Looks like polished copper to me, is he supposed to be see thru?

Yup, but with a flat black background it's more difficult to pull it off. It actually looks fairly close. Been using one of my girlfriend crystal cats on a black background for reference... AS

Attached Link: http://www.warpedspace.org/CGArt/Eidolon.htm

That's a sweet copper texture!

The first picture is a very good approximation of "The Visible Man" which was a model kit that was popular when I was a kid. It had a skeleton, internal organs and transparent plastic skin, so you could the organs inside, it was meant as an aid to teach anatomy to kids (I thought it looked cool, I didn't know it was supposed to be educational, or I wouldn't have liked it so much. :^) ). And just like this one, no genitals. LOL Anyone else old enough to remember "The Visible Man"?

I remember the game "operation". BZZZT Sorta the same thing but in a "not at all" kinda way.

The first one - not so good. the second one very close. Set a lightsource behind your object to let refraction work for you as opposed to letting the forward light, which will tend to show mostly reflection, do most of the work.(?) - TJ

tjohn: I had one of those model kits once....I never got around to putting the thing together, though... Agent Smith: second one looking much better, although it is hard to tell due to the background. copper on third looks great.

The Visable Man still exsists, ususally in specialty stores. I'm in the process of tweaking the second one now, the eyes and mouth aren't showing up correctly. In fact the head itself didn't originally "refract" like the body did, so I had to increase its refraction to 275 to make it look similar. AS

Have you tried rendering in a "room" so you can see your reflections, refractions and transparency? For me, these things define what makes glass look like glass. Or are you planning on making a pic in space or something like that and are working to get a glass texture in that type of environment? BTW, I feel like an idiot giving you advice, AS. I've seen your work. :^)

My visable man right (post#17) is the result from rendering in a room, so yeah that does come out better. What I'm trying to do now is just tweaking Bryce until it can emulate the results of higher end programs. (call it my hobby) If I can (eventually) find a good base of settings to start from, all the better. And, here having no background cuts out the technique part (having a room) and just focuses on the actual settings of refraction, ray depth and TIR. Ambience also plays a big role in this case. Check out the link in post #9 if you want to see what I'm trying to get Bryce to match/emulate. p.s. - Don't feel like an idiot, there is ALWAYS something someone else will knows that you (I) don't. No matter how far along you get. AgentSmith

Oh, one point. My first two pic posts (#1 & #6) actually are in a "room". You can see the reflections in the chest and abs. But, I defintely wanted a black background, so if you ever want to do this...wrap the global image (fake HDRI) either "spherically" and turn your texture 90 degress on its Z axis (Int he Material Lab Editor)or, just wrap it to "object front" either way, until you get the desired effect. (black behind your mesh) AgentSmith

Agentsmith I think I see what the problem is. Try rendering the man fully wrapped in your HDRI and then composite it to a flat black background. That appears to be what the artist did that you are trying to emulate. If you notice there is no flat black reflection in his model while you can see the flat black reflected in your render.

Nevermind, I'm probably wrong. though it looks like the other guy has his reflection map offcenter (to the upper left of the render) instead of straight in front of the model.

according to me is the light from up-behind the most important factor. Put there one (better a window as lightsource) I hope it could work. Also the POV might be important, try , play and have fun! Great work BTW.

If you look in the glass presets, I think some of them do say that they have reflective properties even though the reflection is set at zero. I'd like to know why this is. Seems that it would have something to do with the refractive properties, I'm not sure why, probably some half-remembered Physics lecture about the properties of light (I did study this, I know). I wonder if you'd still get that reflective effect, AS, with the refraction at zero, too. Since refraction is the property of a substance to bend light as it passes through it (I may have this definition a little off, but I think it is basically true, I would have thought that refraction would be hard to impossible to see in an object that is tracing no "rays" from another object behind it. In other words, if there was nothing behind the guy for you to see when you look "through" him, how would you see the effect as distortion of the object behind him. A single thin pane of glass for instance, would bend the light very little, but a sphere with increasing refractive properties would bend the light so much that the image of what is behind it eventually flips completely upside down. Is any of this making sense?

Yeah, I understand, lol. I'm not sure Bryce's glass follows the exact properties of real world glass. It obviously doesn't with its cautics, so perhaps this reflective weirdness is another Bryce trait.

Yes, of course they're both fakes. I have tried to make a lens object in Bryce, and have been able to get a slight magnifying effect, but nothing like the real world optics. I understand some of the higher end apps can do it (not the second ant pic, though). The great thing about Bryce (besides being less expensive), is that with a little practice and patience, you can fake almost anything you can think of. BTW, these were 100% Bryce renders. They aren't fakes in the sense of postwork.

P.S. I love the smell of formic acid in the morning.

I'm not exactly sure how this relates to the discussion, but it might be why you're getting the reflection. For some reason Bryce does something involving the ambience and diffuse on transparent objects even when they are both set to zero. Try this as an experiment. Render one bryce transparency with diffuse/ambient set to zero and the color set to white. Then do the same thing, but with color set to black. I think I might be onto something, but don't quite know what it is. This may also be the same with some of the other channels like mettalicity, etc. Hmmm...