Attached image uses identical materials for both objects. On the left is a "glass" made of a boolean operation with another cylinder on the inside made of default water. On the right is the Vue whiskey bottle with a cylinder made of default water inside. As you can see there is a HUGE difference. The boolean glass is full of blue badness while the whisky bottle is full of crystal clear goodness. Can anyone enlighten me as to WHY this happens and how I can keep it from happening again? Image rendered in Ultra with quality turned to highest level. (A very confused) MN

Check the textures applied to each part of each boolean section. Sometimes Vue doesn't display the material you think it should. I'd wager that one of the booleans is colored in the default blue water, rather than the clear.

This is occuring simply because of the three layers (on each side) in the glass object. What you're experiencing was commonly known as "The Dreaded Blue Gunk" back in versions 2 and 3. Mostly fixed for version 4, but there are still occasions when it shows up, like this one. Cure: open the material editor for your glass and liquid materials. Set the fade-out colors to white (for the light one) and to black (for the dark one). You'll notice an immediate improvement in the render appearance of all glass objects, and it will erase the blues from this one. :)

The blue gunk strikes again,eh? I, too, thought that problem had been fixed, especially with the latest patch installed. In any case, I followed your suggestions, Varian, and here is the result. 1st image is the default Vue Whiskey bottle with the 'crystal' material. Inside is a cylinder of the default clear water. It renders fine, as does a boolean operation of nested and one stretched cylinders to make a glass (my most common method of making glasses...) Everything looks good so far. In the second image I copied and pasted the interior cylinder and dragged the Whisky liquid's material onto the new cylinder, which was compressed and slightly reduced in size so as not to be completely coincident with the inside of the boolean. As you can see, blue gunk abounds. The third image shows what happened after applying Varian's trick. I changed the fade out color of the crystal material and changed the color of the water to white. It looks much better, although I still don't think it looks especially realistic. To me it appears that the water is almost glowing (and it shouldn't be) like there is a translucent material between the glass and the liquid. I really hadn't had this problem until I applied the latest patch (Vue 4.2). I thank you for your reply, Varian, and especially for not saying "Check the backroom" for that was what I did before I posted the question. (Always check the faq first, right?) MN

1st image. No liquids

2nd image. Default water inside of boolean

Final image. Materials tweaked slightly. Looks beter. Not perfect, but better. Thanks. MN

I think this has something to do with the reflection off of "back-facing" polygons that were created by the Boolean process. Somehow the smaller cylinder is catching the reflection of the backside polygons in the Boolean. If you create a semi-transparent material with NO reflections, you shouldn't have this problem. (Both glass and water have reflection built into them that can't be turned off) SMT

My two cents here... Varian's solution is the best, but sometimes also you can try making an object 'one sided only'.. I remarked that in certain cases it helped attenuate the 'gunk'. Vue is limited in the number of reflexions/diffractions... if the bottle is a sweep it has only one external mesh, your glass has a double mesh ... so maybe... for what it's worth.. cheers Paul

I found my above explanation confused so here attached an illustration of my theory... from the left : --first glass boolean of two cylinders of standard glass plus one short cylinder added inside with clear water --middle glass idem but 'cut' (external) cylinder made 'one sided' in its mat editor... --third glass idem as first with only 'cutting' (internal) cylinder made 'one sided'. I did not touch the 'fade out' settings in any of the cyls. Hope that helps. Paul

Thanks, Paul. That makes things much better. I suppose that there are fewer "surfaces" to refract the light with the cutting surface made one sided. MN