I need to be able to change a UVMapped Texture into a glass-like mat - but I need to retain the original texture since it has a design on it.

How can I do that?

Here's the table just behind 'Don' that I need to make look like glass:

Can anyone suggest anything to make it look more glass-like?

Here are the glass settings I have at the moment:

and the under surface:

some translucency , some specular and a bit of transparency (maybe).   There are some free glass materials that may give you a starting point.  renderosity and runtimedna freestuff.

none of the native poser 5 shaders were physically correct IIRC. 

try to fix it so that sum (diff+spec+trans+refl+refr) <= 1.0.

for thick glass,  refract and reflect node plugged into edge blend node (if P5 had those) plugged into alt_diff channel might look o.k., compared to fresnel set-up we now use.  for thin glass, edge blend node into trans channel and reflect node into reflect channel or alt_diff channel may look o.k.

coloured glass is more difficult, but maybe varying edge blend colours would work as simplified gem/thick glass shader in P5, which I've still got on an old computer but I dread using it.  I just tried P4 on it and nothing went wrong, but P5 was unstable (trying to recall the nightmares of 10 yrs ago in whatever OS X was current, something like cheetah, named after tarzan's crazy chimp), whilst P4 was not.

I think you could lend more of a feeling of animation to the character if you posed Don's right arm, hand, and fingers a little more. Also, you might consider trying some contrapposto with his shoulders, mid-section, and legs. it would lend more of a sense of weight to the figure. Try enabling inverse kinematics on the legs and tweaking his hip rotations and then adjust his shoulder, chest and abdomen orientations. Above is a rather sorry preview render of what I'm talking about.

If you're already aware of these things then please disregard my blathering...

markschum said:

Quote - some translucency, some specular and a bit of transparency (maybe).   There are some free glass materials that may give you a starting point.  renderosity and runtimedna freestuff.

Please see settings screen cap. (P.S. can't find any glass mats for Poser5)

Miss Nancy,

I've tried your suggestions but it just looks even worse, trouble is I have no idea what to try and which setting/channel controls what. Especially as Poser5 seems so different to anything else I normally use. There's nowhere to put a fresnel of 1.53 or 153.  Transparency doesn't seem to make anything at all transparent - just misty.

I'm despairing.

Dear primorge,

I'm really sorry - after all your effort - but I need to get the glass right - I couldn't care less about the figure - it's naff and plastic, and anyway I hate using figures, always did - I didn't have dolls as a child I had a lovely garage that my dad made - immensly more fun than dolls - but I just need it to scale things by, and unfortunately I'm not having fun with Poser5 - I hate it, but it's all I've got.

I just need to get the glass looking okay, then the figure will be deleted and the file saved with just the glass table. (the lanterns and even the street will be deleted, leaving just the table).

That's all I want.  Sorry.

Here's the state of the table so far - to me it looks a lot worse:

I See.

I'm a little confused, what glass table? All I see is a melted plastic table with some childrens scrawlings on it.

Oh...Yeah. Disregard the above.

good luck.

and have fun please ;-)

yea, ima's glass looks pretty good for P5 IMVHO.   IOR and glass is complicated in P5 and later, due to its failure to calculate entry and exit correctly for thin glass structures.  my advice for P5 is to try various IOR until it looks as good as possible, depending on whether it's thick (e.g. 1.5) or thin (e.g. 1.05) glass.  the advantage to using trans (thin) vs. refract (thick) is that the latter may produce non-intuitive shadow fx.

I'm wondering if there's some fidgetting I need to do with the lights?

I did not see anyone mentioning it. But to be able to see ima70's material setting you need to have raytracing enabled with a a minimum of 3 raytrace bounces and you need to render with firefly (not the P4 renderer)

wimvdb,

Aha!  No, no one mentioned that before, but enabling raytracing and the number of bounces - has certainly made a difference.

(I was already rendering with firefly)

This:

is better but the colour is rather more faded than I'd like and the black 'scrawlings' are no longer black and are indistinct.

ima70's result still has the colours bright as well as the glossy reflective look of glass, I'd like to get a bit closer to that if possible.

Is there anything else I should have enabled?

First of all - you need to have something to reflect - behind the camera and possibly a roof. Esxample: If you look at a mirror, what you see in the mirror is what is actually there. In 3d it is the same - you need to have something to be there to see it otherwise it will use the background color (which is the black in the reflect node)

Getting the scrawlings back is a bit more complicated.
The refract node acts as a transparency map. You have to use either the transparency or refract. Refract is more accurate for glass. So turn off (set to 0) the transparency channel

Now you need to decrease the amount of refraction where the scrawlings are. You can do with the map which is now in the transparency channel. I can't see in your screen shots how they look like, so I am not sure what is needed. In most cases you would need to inverse that map. You do that by creating a math node, make it Subtract, then set value 1 to 1 and set value2 to 1, then plug the transmap in value 2. Then you would use the endresult and plug it into the refract value in the surface node. This will give you less transparency - more color - where the scrawlings are.

But this is a bit of guess work since I can't see the actual texture and transparency maps

Sorry for not answering before, but I'm at work, wimvdb has helped you a lot :-)

For reflection I loaded BB EnvSphere deleted all nodes of its material and plugled a latlong env map directly to the alt difuse channel.

now for the color try to increase the difuse value and decrease the refraction value, always trying to keep the total of the value in 1.

of that dosent work for the dark decoration try pluging the texture to the refraction value since they are very dark (near to zero) they should lead to no refraction.

Sorry my english but I'm in a hurry at work.

Post your results please :-)

Having followed ima70's settings there is now nothing at all in the transparency channel.

& I have set it to 0 as instructed.

Do I have to use math to invert the trans map?  Can I not invert it in PhotoShop instead?

I'd prefer to avoid math if at all possible so that it still works in higher versions of Poser.

Here are the various images I have so far for the so called 'scrawlings' that primorge was so kind (???) to designate them:

Does that help any? (each colour is in a different layer)

Black is Zero, no refraction, white is 1 full refraction, if you plug a color texture, it will be considered as a grayscale, and P5 math nodes will work in higher versions.

Can you please post a capture of your material?

As in70 said - black is no refraction, white is full refraction. So plug the bw picture into the refract value. You can set the refract value itself to 1. Now it will not do any refraction on the black areas. No need to invert the picture

You can raise the value for the diffuse channel as well to increase the texture and contrast

But a screenshot of the material would be good to see now. That way we can see if other changes need to be made

Post the texture? I just did.  The purple colour with the black designs (bottom right) IS the texture.  I have just the black designs on a transparent background, (top left), or the inverse of that, white designs on transparent background or on purple background, (bottom left)...

So... should I try white designs on transparent background in the refraction ... colour? or value?

Oh (P5 maths working in higher versions) that's the oppostite to what someone else said to me.

(confusing)

But okay - let's go with that then...

Now I've gone back to what wimvdb said but I'm a bit confused by it: like - creating a 'math node' - attached to what?  or can you create a math node totally disconnected to anything?

Oh, yes you can... only I can't see how to create a math node and set it to subtract - that doesn't seem to be an option - the options I get are:

blender

edge blend

component

math_functions

colour_math

user_defined

simple_colour

colorramp

Um... I'm a bit stuck. #

I should have said screenshot of the material room while the material is selected. This shows all the nodes.

First the math function: Create a new node by right clicking on an empty space in the material roomm - select New node, math, then math functions. Now a new node is created. Click on the arrow in the node and you can select Subtract (or any other you need). You either put a value in value1 and value 2 or you can put another node in it. The left top of the node can connect to another node's input values - it will draw a line to show what is connected to what

Now what is needed: The scrawlings have to be seen and not be transparent. So we want to connect a texture which has black for the scrawlings and white or grey for the rest. If the texture is the other way around, you can connect the texture to the subtract node to create it. But you have a correct onel. So what you need to do is to connect the texture with the black for the scriblings to the refract value - this one is in the surface node directly below where the refract node is connected. Connect the texture to that value. Set the value to 1.

Now the texture controls what part of the table is transparent and which part is not (it controls the refract node)

If you have that - post a screenshot of how everything looks in the material room and a render. Then tell us what you want changed

Don't use transparent in png format for poser, since poser don't "see" them as transparent as Blender 3D or maybe other aps does.

Quote - I should have said screenshot of the material room while the material is selected. This shows all the nodes.

First the math function: Create a new node by right clicking on an empty space in the material roomm - select New node, math, then math functions. Now a new node is created. Click on the arrow in the node and you can select Subtract (or any other you need). You either put a value in value1 and value 2 or you can put another node in it. The left top of the node can connect to another node's input values - it will draw a line to show what is connected to what

Now what is needed: The scrawlings have to be seen and not be transparent. So we want to connect a texture which has black for the scrawlings and white or grey for the rest. If the texture is the other way around, you can connect the texture to the subtract node to create it. But you have a correct onel. So what you need to do is to connect the texture with the black for the scriblings to the refract value - this one is in the surface node directly below where the refract node is connected. Connect the texture to that value. Set the value to 1.

Now the texture controls what part of the table is transparent and which part is not (it controls the refract node)

If you have that - post a screenshot of how everything looks in the material room and a render. Then tell us what you want changed

 

Okay, here is the Material room for the top of the table:

And here's the Mat Room for the Under Surface of the table:

And here's the render:

What I'd like is the purple colour to be darker - less lilac and more purple.

The black designs are now looking correct - so with no colour in the top now - I'd need to adjust something in the under surface - yes? No?

There are a couple of things here which define the color:

In the under surface you you drive a color map into a node which also has a color (diffuse map). The 2 colors are multiplied - making it darker

The other thing is the specular node. This one is the color of the texture - so make it a bit less dark in the specular places.

The third one here is the color in the translucence channel - this color is added to the colors present, this makes it a bit less dark as well (every bit is added, so even adding a very dark blue adds more light to the pixel). The translucence value defines how strong this effect is.

So you have to manipulate those values and colors to get the color you want. I can't be of much help here since I have no idea what purple or lilac is (in terms of color)

The under surface does not have glass like behaviour. It is just transparent. The transparence map is translated to a greyscale and then multipled by the transparency value - so the grey area is half strenght in this case. Making it all not very transparent. If you want it the be glass, do the same trick as in the upper one (using the edgeblend, reflect and refract nodes with the transmap modifier for non transparent areas). But I am not clear what the under surface really is (the mesh), so not sure if you want this

The setup in the material room for the upper part looks fine. All nodes are connected where they should

Hope this helps a bit

IIRC, has it been noted that translucence does not work correctly in P5? 

Tray Difuse_value+refraction_value=1 this seam to work better, and why are you using a diferent mat for the undertable? I think that if all table mat are the same it shoud look way better.

Quote - IIRC, has it been noted that translucence does not work correctly in P5? 

In P5 times, I did some use of translucence chanel and it did what it was supose to do, maybe there was a confusion between translucence and SSS :-S

hbo, she's got translucence zeroed out (black), hence it's not a factor.  as you noted, if it weren't black it would make the surface glow in P5.

one other tip on the upper surface: don't use both specular and alt_spec channels if poss.

to invert the img map, plug it into the lower subtract node channel.