Hi, I made this light fixture in Rhino a couple of months back, but it came out a little too faceted-looking, but the other night I went back and fixed it some. I haven't added a chain yet, because I wanted to do a test render in Vue. Anyhow, the point is, I was trying to get an alabaster sort of (I think that's what it's called) look to the glass over the bulbs, but I just can't seem to get it. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears. :) Also, I'm almost happy with the "brass" material on the fixture-- starting with Vue 3's "brass", I lowered the reflections and made them blurry and I think I also reduced the diffuse on the material too. Not quite there yet, but close. And tell me, does this look strange with only four arms. Should the arms be longer and lower? It's supposed to be a breakfast nook type of light. My file name for it is, "Ugly_Nook_Light001.3DS" ;)

So what's ugly Mike? I think it's very nice :). I've always found realistic looking glass to be a bit of a challenge in Vue. The caustics were never quite right. It will look much better in Vue 4 if that's any consolation :) Laurie

BTW, just what are you doing to achieve the "alabaster" look? Do you mean you want more a frosted glass effect? Laurie

Hi Laurue, Thanks! Yeah, I guess "frosted" would be a good way to describe it. I haven't even yet gotten to the bump planning stage, since i wanted to at least try to get the material close first. I actually started with just a blank material and have built it up from there. Strangely enough, I came up with acouple new water materials in the process...DOH!

Hey Mike, that looks good! Four or five arms would work equally well. On the glass, try lowering your highlight global intensity and size. Frosted glass isn't very shiny because I think its actually an acid etching process. Maybe you could try making your bump map and set variable highlights to match the bump map? Rich

ummm varian has an alabaster material ...maybe increasing the transparency on that could give u a frosted glass look? or if u added the snow material to plain glass and made the snow additive? just a thought. I like the lamp tho :)

Thanks for the suggestions and compliments. :) Rich, there are no highlights on it at all, err, at least I don't think there were. I am starting to think that it'll be the bump which determines the effect. WHAT was I thinking? Of COURSE, the bump will be needed! Doh! And Beck, I forgot all about Varian's material, but I want to be able to call this all my own, because after I get the materials right, I want to take it back into Rhino and work on it just a little more, before I put it in Free Stuff. Needs a chain and a canopy, after all. :)

I think Axe555 has it Mike :). I would use a very tiny smooth noise filter for the bump with no shininess. Very blurred reflections too, but set very, very low, possible even none. You want more of a matte finish for frosted glass :) Laurie

I think one of the things which bugs me most about it is the way it's reflecting. I had reflections turned to 0%, as well as the "turn reflective with angle" down to 0%. I wanted to have a certain degree of transparency of course, but not much-- enough to be able to see that there is in fact a bulb under each glass, but it almost seems as if the reflections are coming from within it. I think I approached the whole thing wrong, really. :) For me, glass is one of the things which seems to have way too many variables, and I haven't really gotten into editing glass materials as much as terrain materials. Anyhow, I'm starting to think that the glass, when finished, out to have some sort of bitmap texture applied to it as well, so I'll be UV mapping the whole thing after I smooth out the glass a little more in Rhino. I think I might just end up re-building the whole thing in the end, since the "bulbs" also are just a little too faceted right now.

There's something at the base of the shades that looks like highlights. Must be the bulbs I'm seeing through the glass? Rich

Yeah Rich, I'd like to say that's what you're seeing there, but I just opened it back up and as it turned out I didn't have the highlights turned off completely. What you're seeing is actually more bulb than highlight, but there's some highlight in there too. DOH! Back to the old drawing board.. :)

Hmmm what always gets me with semi seethrough stuff in Vue is that the color, noise or whatever you do to an item always seems to be on the inside, with the transperant or glassy bit on the outside. Now if there was a way to make the stuff the same material all the way through then you could do a better alabaster shade. Pace pace is that the mailman with ... ?

heyas; i think it needs some kind of flare to look translucent. um... i dont know if there is a light flare on the transparency tab. the only one i know of is in the sky/cloud editor thing. to make the clouds flare up when the sun is behind 'em.

There are settings for flare intensity and span on the transparency tab. Rich

I'll have to give the flare intensity and span settings a try-out. I've never really messed with that stuff much either... Vue 4's gonna be real cool, I bet. :) Anyway, this thing underwent some changes today. I just sloshed some colors around in Painter and then applied a "stained glass" filter to it and used that as a texture for the glass, at about 20% transparency with no highlights. That's definitely the "bulbs" showing through. The texture could have been better and it's not a seamless tile because I don't really know how to do that, although I was reading about it in the Painter 6 manual and am planning on figuring it out soon. I can't decide if tyhe new glass texture "clashes" with the rest of the fixture or not! Does it?

It doesn't really clash per say. I would prefer to see the rest of it done in a metal colour tho, maybe a stainless steel? I REALLY like the new stained glass look! :)

Catching up to this late, but I really like the stained glass design, too, although the frosted also looks good. The thing I'd recommend on both is to simply reduce the transparency to whatever it takes to get the right look. It might be 16% or maybe 35% or even 78% -- that's going to vary with the actual material, the lighting, and your ideal. Also, when working with glass, set the dark fade-out color to black and the light fade-out to white. If you have some specialty glass, something else might work better, but I've found that black and white really make a huge difference in helping the glass look like glass. The other recommendation I'd add is along the lines of what Beck suggested, and that is to focus first at the basic appearance of the glass you want -- ignoring the ideas about glass. In other words, ignore transparency, ignore reflection, highlight, etc. Go for the color and the visual texture -- the way it looks like it would feel if you could touch it. Once you've got those points looking right, then move also to transparency. Leave reflection to last, because it usually doesn't take much if any on a good glass. Also -- wow, nice model! :D

You also can try milk material from liquids and make it more or less transparent. Another material, impure glass works less well. The image shows MILK material (reflections at 15%, transparency at 85%) with a small yellow light bulb and a point light in it. :-)Guitta

...forgot to say... highlights at 24% Guitta

Thanks Varian and Guitta for the suggestions, and I'll be trying those ideas out too. And Beck, you don't like my new brass material? ;) Thanks for liking the stained glass, at least! :)

Hey Mike, that stained glass looks good... Reminds me of a modern day tiffany lamp

heyas; it looks very nice. oh, and i forgot to say before: the design is DEFINITELY geared towards making people bash their head onto the low-hanging central piece -- just like real breakfast nook lights! way to go on the authenticity, there, mike :)

heh-heh-- yeah, I have one of those "head-banging" nook lights too. Doesn't look like this one, but close enough. Thanks. :)