How to make it glow on both sides of the plane?
Jonstark
Posts: 2,738
I'm not even sure how to ask this, as it's difficult to describe, but I noticed if I put a vertex object plane into the scene and I set the texture to glow, it only glows on one side of the plane, the other side doesn't glow (even if it does show the same texture map). Is there a way to make it so that the mesh glows on both sides?
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
The reason it does that is because their is only 1 face/poly when you use a plane. Try using a very skinny box which will then have 2 faces/poly and that should do the trick.
Sorry, I should clarify I'm trying to texture and light an existing model (Ironstar, from Kibaretto at the moment, though I've run into this problem with lots of other models from other vendors too) and the problem is that some surfaces are apparently put together so that the actual poly 'face' is on the 'other side of the wall' (so to speak). Is there no way to just flip a switch somewhere so that it glows from both sides?
One sort of rough and time consuming solution would be to cut out that portion of the mesh, insert my own plane, texture it, and put it in place where I want it with the correct 'face' pointing in the right direction, but I'm looking to find out if there's perhaps a simpler/better way.
I guess if I used the right terms I might find more information, after googling a bit I guess the actual 'face' of the polygon that is 'real' is called the Normal. Some older forum posts about how to reverse normals' might be instructive, but sadly the problem is that most of the normals on the model are facing the right direction, and apparently the reverse normals command will reverse all the normals, therefore while it might fix the parts I'm trying to texture to glow correctly, other parts (view screens, etc within the ship) that I want to also glow will no longer glow. I'll keep searching hopefully there's a solution somewhere for this.
if its a matter of reversing the poly just take it into a mapping app and fliping the normals. I could be misunderstanding though. Is it a box with poly on both sides or just a plane with 1 poly? If its jsut a plane can you duplicate that plane and reverse the poly. If its part of a bigger set you can open that new obj in carrara and save that wall out seperately and make sure the material is the same. Once you bring it back into DS load it and apply the mats for that prop. It will apply the one texture cause its the same material name.
I know IRay has a "double sided" checkbox for emissive shaders, but that's not much good here. What I'd do (or at least try) is go into the vertex room and select the polys you want to be double sided. Then Cmd/Ctrl-D to duplicate, and reverse the normal on the copy. Now you've got planes facing both ways.
Yes, thats how I normally do it.
Tried it, but the option to duplicate is greyed out, maybe something to do with object already being rigged or something, sadly.
I next simply imported the .obj file into the scene, selected all, then clicked on 'reverse normals' twice and that seemed to put all the normals throughout the ship facing in the right direction. Looks fine when I texture it and all the screens and lights glow like they should (see attached for an example) but of course I have a static unrigged object at that point. I thought I would simply save this as the .obj file in the Poser geometries folder that the Ironstar ship cr2 pulls from, but I must be doing something wrong, because when I load it using the altered .obj it comes into the scene way too big, missing parts, and kind of... exploded (see 2nd render).
Toward aw at shader? http://www.daz3d.com/pose-and-shading-tools-2. ;
Or or try this .... Duplicate figure with fenric tool tree duplicate, de rig the copy
go into model room, select your plane, invert selection, delete, then you are left with a copy of plane hopefully in correct spot,
flip normal, apply glow - assuming you can flip normal in carrara? If you can't try adding thickness to new plane .
Group original figure and new plane .... Or drag the new plane into the figures hierarchy tree
To derig figure ...... I think select model then edit smooth, then debone . This from memory .
Toward away that should say
Sorry - useless post, I just repeated what TangoAlpha said. :)
It's weird that it won't let you duplicate polys on a rigged figure. I just tried it on a G2M and it lets me duplicate and move the polys without any problem. Is the topology protected? Look in the View menu in the Vertex modeling room and see if Protect Topology is checked - if it is, maybe unchecking it will let you duplicate and rotate the polys as suggested?
Traditionally you can't add or remove vertices etc in a rigged figure in carrara , maybe you can in 8.5 , I'm using 8.1 .
i should have said in my post, after you detach the rigging in the duplicate model, drag that model out of the bone hierarchy and delete the uneeded bones , sometimes this will make carrara crash, so do it first before you do more stuff ;)
Yeah - 8.5 doesn't seem to have an issue with it. I duplicated a section of G2M's thigh, pulled it about a foot away and then went back to the assembly room and both the thigh and the duplicated piece were there and both were still textured. I didn't try moving or reposing the figure though, so maybe it would have an issue at that point. :)
I always thought that the adding or removing vertices restriction only applies if you are creating morphs that you intend to load back in DAZ Studio. You will get some odd texture distortions if you make too big a change, but just duplicating a section shouldn't be a problem. If it is then you can copy the duplicated section, delete it, go back to the assembly room and add a new vertex object to the scene and then past the copied part in there to create a whole new object.
Thanks guys for the useful advice, it's a bit complicated, so I'm working my way through understanding the procedure recommended to make sure I understand before I give it a try :) Headwax your approach sounds logical to me.
If nothing else, I suppose I can just figure out how to rig it in Carrara, there aren't that many moving pieces (turrent rotates, seats swivel, ramps/doors lower/open, etc).
MDO, thanks for the idea, but I actually already checked and it's not protected topology like the Genesis figures are, so it can't be that (1st pic). I can select the problem polys that have normals facing the wrong way but I have no way to detach them from the rest of the mesh, in fact nearly every option is greyed out (2nd pic). Very weird. But I am thinking I can simply take Headwax's idea and run with it, import a .obj mesh, delete all of it but the relevant polys for that spot, then make the original mesh in that area tranparent/inivisible and parent the new polys to the mesh in the same spot (that's not exactly what headwax suggested, but a close approximation that I think will work...)
The goal here is to create both a Carrara-shader version and an Octane4Carrara shader version and then see if the creator wants to add them to the store, to give the products perhaps a broader appeal. I'm going to be doing the conversions anyway for my own use, so I figure why not? I doubt the vendor will be offended at the idea of simply adding a few new carrara-friendly versions of the product and it might get the vendor a few extra sales.
I forgot that I actually have this plugin, it probably would work, but if I want to put a shaderset together that would work for other people who might not have that plugin, it isn't the ideal way to go. Nevertheless, this does seem like it would be a quick solution for sure, thanks for the tip/reminder about it's existence :)
I struggled with this for quite a while, because while it seemed like the method would work, I just couldn't make it match up, and when I did the normals would reverse themselves randomly, yada yada tons of troubles...
Then I remembered another AWESOME Fenric plugin: the 'Unlock Figure' command.
Went back to square one, selected my Ironstar figure, then used Fenric's Unlock Figure. Sure enough all of a sudden all the modeling options were available and no longer grayed out. Then it was just a matter of going through, selecting the polys for which the normals were facing the wrong way, and using the 'Reverse Normals' command. It worked, and I didn't have to re-rig a thing :)
This explains the issues ironstar was giving me with emitters in octane, yes got it working but never thought to check the normals.
While I was irked about this when I first encountered, there is actually a bright silver lining and I have realized I can use this to my advantage.
I have run into otherwise excellent sets (I'm thinking of some from 3DC over at Rendo off the top of my head) that were great in every way except one: they didn't have a separate shader domain for the lights. Meaning the texture map had whilte colored strips on it that corresponded to the lights, but also other textures for the floor/walls etc. So if you made that shading domain an emitter, it just wouldn't work out, because everything that used that texture would glow, not just the lights. But now, knowing this technique, and thanks to Fenric's awesome plugin, I can simply go through and select the shading domain in question, reverse the normals for everything but those sections that are actually polys for the lights in the scene, and voila: perfect accurate lighting, coming only from the lights and nowhere else :)
Thank you Fenric again for this awesome plugin! :)
yes I can see that advantage too
i often need to create separate mesh lights if all one shading domain or a new domain in the vertex room
well played Jonstark,
Fenric to the rescue again :)
He's made my carrara work flow so much better, he's a one man development team :)
daz really should hire him to work on carrara