Anyone kno how to do a decent crystal ball material?(the glass part, not the base) Mine hav so far come out terrible. I've tryed clouds inside, faint glows, purple mist... I'm fresh out of ideas.

Is this something like what you're wanting? I did two spheres, one just a bit smaller than the first, the outermost with standard glass applied, the inner with the volumn material, rainboweba, applied. I changed the colors in the material lab to a pale yellow, pale blue and pale green (not that you really see the colors). I also put three tiny lights inside, each 1x1x1 and intensity 2. I'm curious to see how others do this...I'd not tried glass in a darkened room yet.

volumn = volume (sheesh....it's been a long day!)

hmm... that's not bad. I'll give it some thought, but what I'm looking for right now is a kinda semi-transparent ball w/ that allows lettering to be seen inside. Sorry i neglected to mention this b4! I can't fiddle with that right now, tho.(I realized how bad that torus in the centre that connects the holder to the stand looks. Giving it a more scaffolding look.

Well, good luck! I don't know if the transparency was increased on the inside texture if it would allow lettering to show or not. Hopefully someone else will have a better solution for you! :o)

thx.... i just got an idea...

heres one i made using radial lights and a sparkly mat inside a heavy glass mat. - also I stuck a 2D of my initial to show transparency - sorry about the really cheesy copy I made of your cryystal ball base I tried to be quick roch222

lol, kewl, i'll be sure to post it when im either done or stuck, but in the meantime, keep these comin! :)

ok, what i ended up doing was putting a surface texture clouds inside the supernova 3 thing in the volumetric presets. i'm gonna go back to tweaking colours then rendering for half an hour, then trying again. Wish i could do it on my desktop computer, but i'm not home right now, and my laptop's soooo sloooooooow.

Here is my version of the crystall ball. I seem to have a problem getting rid of the reflection of a bal inside the ball. Know what I mean?

yeah, i ran into that. i used the glass bubble 3 preset, becuz the refraction was very low, but not quite off, which would make it less realistic.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=216508&Start=49&Artist=tjohn&ByArtist=Yes

"Standard glass" preset, I think. There's a "crystal" setting in the glass presets, but it's a render time hog. Always thought that crystal balls were solid, not hollow, but just because I've never seen one, doesn't mean there aren't any. If you decide to go solid instead of hollow, I'm not sure how the reflections/refractions will work with letter objects inside.

i found that because the refraction is so high in anything other than the "glass bubble 3" preset and anything below, the objects all around get refracted way too much, and all you can actually see is the refraction. Your's worked, because there's nothing level with the sphere, just near the bottom, I think. ..... How did you know my ball was hollow??

"How did you know my ball was hollow??" Without refraction settings higher than 100 (Air), a transparent sphere appears hollow. Solid glass spheres bend light rays as they pass through (refraction). I like the sphere with the purple cloud texture...but you can see that the part of the base behind the sphere is not distorted, so to the eye that says, hollow, no refraction. Nothing wrong with that, and if you are placing objects inside the sphere, refraction would probably obscure them, anyway.