Stained glass in Iray?
Connatic
Posts: 282
How can I make a convincing stained-glass window to render in Iray? I want the sun to shine through it and project the colors filtered through the glass so that the design is illuminated on the floor or whatever else is within the light-ray.
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Comments
Use the appropriate iray glass shader and get the lighting correct. There are a number of iray glass shader products available. You can also use one of the Daz iray uber shader glass versions andxadd your own color.
I used the 'thin glass' and glossy channel in this thread...
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/58220/stained-glass-window-in-iray#latest
I have not tried this in the current version so I can't be certain this method still works.
Thanks to both of you! The linked thread has the appropriate info.
You will get better results with glass by turning Thin Wall to Off -- almost all of the canned Iray glass shaders follow the Glass Thin Wall Daz example, and this leaves something to be desired for anything but really basic glass materials. For this to work, the glass needs a thickness -- it can't be just a single polygon thick mesh.
This example doesn't show stained glass per se, as it's just smoked glass, but it demonstrates better behavior of both transmission and reflection of light, and it will properly transmit the light in color. The "glass" here is made by starting with a cube primitive, and squishing it down, rather than with a plane.
I have been getting some good results with a combination of prixat's and fastbike1's suggestions. I am using a building figure several years old, which I have had to apply Iray shaders to. Simply applying the uber base did not result in a surface which showed the projected light well. I then tried a wood Iray shader on the floor and it worked very well. So I have a basis to experiment from. Now I will try substituting the plane with an image mapped to a similar-sized squashed cube as Tobor has suggested.
I am learning much about Iray by experimenting with this concept. The "scatter" and "transmit" functions in particular are topics I need to get an understanding of.
@Tobor "You will get better results with glass by turning Thin Wall to Off -- almost all of the canned Iray glass shaders follow the Glass Thin Wall Daz example,"
Not necessarily true IME. Here are two examples with Destiny's Garden Art Glass Shaders. The primitive is 1cm thick.
Left image has thin wall off(default for shader), right image thin wall on. Otherwise just selected the surface and double clicked the shader. The Thin Wall example rendered much faster.
I finally was able to get the effect I was after.
That looks good.
More than a year since that last post, that was a very long render!!!
Do up a tutorial on how you did it? I'm sure that would be popular.
Dana
great job! if it's not too much trouble, how did you do this effect? I love how the color of the stained glass is evident on the model.
I promise that I will write an outline and maybe a detailed tutorial on how I did this. For the next few days I am very busy.
totally understandable =) thanks for even considering it
I have received an amazing amount of help in these forums, so if I can contribute anything I will try my best. I am installing some content right now, but when it is done I may try to open the file and cover my material setup. It is fairly simple.
Here are the material settings for the plane which I used for the stained glass. I lit with Sun-Sky Only. I find it easiest to aim the Sun by creating a camera and selecting it in the SS Sun Node pull-down. This makes the sun follow the aim of the camera (keep Dome Rotation and Orientations all to ZERO). Aim the sun through the window. It is easy to adjust the sunlight with the various SS Sun controls. The defaults should give a good result. Spectral Rendering works, too. It makes the glass look different. I need to experiment with the materials to gain an understanding and control of using it with the glass.
Next experiment is to add Atmo-Cam and try for colored beams.
Amazing! Can't wait to try it.
Thanks so much
Here I am to resurrect this thread over a year in its grave. And why you may ask? It's simply that important. I am grateful to Connatic for sharing his insights and settings. He inspired me to create some of my greatest work yet, and I'm sharing it here so you may know what is possible entirely in Daz Studio with no post work whatsoever.
What you need to know: Connatic's settings for stained glass outlined in this thread, Sickleyield's many godray tutorials for Iray (quick and easy one on deviantart worked best for me), sun-sky only for gray effect. Not all sun or camera angles are equal. Sometimes camera as sun node would not work for me from a given side of the dust cube no matter what I tried. So, in the first image, the light from outside is a camera set as sun node and in the second image I used the global coords/date/time settings to produce the sun at the desired location. Also, colors in godrays are not always equally visible from every camera angle. Experiment a lot! @Connatic - THANK YOU!!!
@Wanderer - Beautiful work! I am happy that my info has been a help to you. I get a lot of help from the forum members.
@Connatic - Thanks! No man is an island is a thing. Thanks for giving back to the community.
Speaking of great use of light! Love the stained glass! Beautiful streaming light. Putting this on follow! Lots to learn here!
-Brian
@Rakuda - This information is well worth keeping track of. Been working in the background with some ideas, and if any of them come to fruition, I'll post more here. (and thanks - means a lot coming from you.)