Hi all, Struggling to get a material right, I'd like to know if someone can point me to a link where I could get a list of refraction indexes of materials in the real world. What I'm trying to get is a semi transparent plastic material for a chair, and though it looks fine in C4D, it looks pretty bad in Vue. No maths, please, just figures!

Attached Link: http://www.renderaid.com/infoDetail~p~d~id~1027~sid~1005~f~Resource.aspx

Now, thank you so much Cheers! No plastic though! Lol! Guess I'll have to try different settings for that!

Ok I need glasses, plastic's on the list!

My pleasure, mate :) Cheers

Notice that the most dense common (well, not so very common) transparent material, diamond, has the highest index of refraction. meaning the it bends light the most because the speed of light through diamond is the slowest.

And the index of refraction is relative to the speed of light in a vacuum, but the speed in air is pretty close to the same.

I was wondering what it was that makes the index of refraction different for different frequencies (causing rainbows and such). A gentleman at the alt.sci.physics newsgroup informed me that materials have a frequency dependent electric "resistivity" and magnetic "permeability". Light being electromagnetic energy is therefore affected.

I've know for a long time that light is EM radiation, but never before knew an example of it acting "electric". An "aha" moment for the geek in me.

Message edited on: 09/14/2005 19:28

That's a useful list.

Burrowing around the web (looking for an index for wine - anyone know? - I never found it), I made a note of a few others that I came across. Might be useful to somebody so I'll post them. I can't vouch for their accuracy (I'm no natural scientist), but they came from optics/physics/materials science sites.

salt (sodium chloride) 1.54
ashphalt 1.635
flint 1.7-1.98
lead 2.6
sea water 1.341-1.36
vinegar 1.305
malachite 1.655

Now salt and vinegar are pretty useful, jb!!! In a salad, that is! lol! Interesting though that sea water has a higher index than unsalted one.

I bet wine is close to vinegar. These indexes are interesting, and might be a good starting place, but i sure would change them if they didn't look right, lol. Poetic license, art and all that - unless you are making a physics simulation.