How to make a glass window behave like one?!
How to make a glass window behave like one?!
I have a window in a scene which forever stays "grey" even though I have placed the biggest, brightest spotlight shining through it. What gives? I am trying to "let light shine in" and the curtains certainly aren't drawn :P I am sure that I am missing something very fundamental!
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Did you apply a glass shader to the glass?
I actually did... Iray>Shader>Glass, Solid, Clear
But I didn't then touch anything else... should I have?
What are you expecting to see? Is theer no shadow of the walls, with a bright spot for the window, on the floor (or wall, depending on the angle of the light)? Does the window glass have thickness or is it just a single plane? If it's just a plane use the Glass Thin preset.
Is there anything outside to be seen through the window?
There's actually nothing outside to be seen. I just don't feel it's right to leave it as a grey thing... in real life, with bright sunshine outside, the window glass should be brightly lit and not be a dull grey. The window came as a room set, I shall go check if Glass Thin will do anything to it :)
There's nothing outside, just a super bright spotlight that I had hoped would be sufficient sunlight to pass through the window so that it appears brightly lit like in real life. As it is now, just a dull grey thing, it doesn't look real.
Thanks guys... changing the surface to Glass, Thin, Clear had the effect of giving it reflective properties and at least has made the scene much more realistic. Who would think that Glass, Solid, Clear would be such a different beast! It had zero reflective quality and showed up as a grey dull mass :D
That said, assuming I had an amazing looking garden outside and wanted to be able to "see through" the windows towards the sunny garden outside... would Glass, Thin, Clear still work? Or perhaps one would have to toy around with the refractive qualities, etc (still haven't learned these) :P
@drmaximus What you're seeing is just the default Grey Canvas (Brackground) that's filling the Viewport before you start putting a scene in front of it... There are a lot of ways to get something out there to be viewing through the window instead of the Grey Canvas, though maybe slightly limited by the light source you want to also be coming through the window.
Others would be able to better describe using an HDRI in your Render Settings to provide the outside lighting as well as a realistic background outside, but the quickest, easiest and probably cheapest method to start with is using the Environment Tab (or interface if it's somehow not docked for you) and selecting a Backdrop Image. It's not very versatile at all, being a static image that fills the canvas behind the Scene and will not change when you move/rotate the Scene or Cameras in front of it... But it would at least give you an idea of what the glass is looking like with anything other than the Grey Canvas on the other side.
The Environment Window is probably docked as a Tab with your Scene Tab, if not go to:
> Window > Panes (Tabs) > Environment
In the Environment Tab the only option is:
Type: Set to None
Hit the Dropdown Menu where it says None and choose Backdrop
That changes the Background to White and allows you to choose any solid color you like if that were to be what you wanted.
If you Click the little Button with the Down Arrow next to the White RGB Value Sliders, choose Browse.
This allows you to choose any image you like, but another limitation is that the image will be stretched to fill your Canvas, so if you have some set aspect Ratio that you plan to render, you probably want to crop the image to be the same Apect Ratio and possibly even further to have the part of the image that you want showing through the window to be positioned correctly... Like I said, very limited, but could quickly let you see some simple options that could conceivably work.
Another option is to take a similar Background Image and apply it as the Surface to your own "Backdrop" that you actually place in the scene outside the window. This would require playing around with the sizing and placement so that you see what you want to see through the Window without the Backdrop blocking the Light coming through the Window. Totally possible.
To do this, in the Main Menu Bar, go to:
> Create > New Primitive
In the window that opens, use these settings:
Type: Plane
Origin: World Center
Primary Axis: Either X Positive or X Negative
X Pos has the "Viewing Surface" facing Right from a Front View, X Neg has it facing Left. Either way you're going to rotate the Plane to position it where you want, just note that one side is White and one side is Black. The White side is where the Background Image you'll apply appears.
Size: Doesn't matter, you'll be Scaling it to work with your scene later.
Divisions: 1
Click Accept and your Plane is in the Scene, select it in the Scene Tab.
With it selected, go to your Surfaces Tab and highlight "Plane" in the left column. To the right of it, Click the Button with the Down Arrow next to Base Color, choose Browse and select your Background Image.
After that, it's just a matter of moving that billboard of sorts into a position outside the window where it can be seen the way you'd like, and possibly Scale it really large so that you can put it further away and avoid blocking light from coming through the Window. It's also possible you may need to point a light at the Backdrop itself to get the right look, as it may not otherwise have light shining on the side that has the Surface BG Image, etc...
As I said, there's also the HDRI's which basically take care of all of this and more, though you pretty much have to buy them.
Hopefully by the time I've finished writing this, others have already chimed in with other or better ideas, just wanted to mention a couple free options to start to play around with.
Good luck!
@phatmartino: first of all, wow what a generous posting!
So I went ahead and tried the primitive method. As you can see from the attachments, I did install a giant billboard outside of the house beyond the window and also brightly lit it up with a "sunshine" spotlight. You can clearly see the beautiful backdrop sitting outside. But once inside, once again I see absolutely nothing through the glass windows. And if I were to put back the ceiling and block out the "sunshine", the glass windows would become the grey mess that it once was. ps. I rendered under "Dome and Scene".
Adding one more screenshot of the "studio"... it's almost like those windows were built to be opaque or having curtains that are permanently drawn! :(
When I now adjust the Refraction Weight to the smallest degree above 0 (the default), I can see outside towards the billboard...
@drmaximus Hmm, that's odd for sure!
Couple questions:
If you select one of the Windows (this'll be different between the two as one's a single pane window and the other's a divided light window) and then go to the Surfaces Tab, it might say "Window" or whatever that you had to select to apply the Glass Shaders you mentioned earlier... Is the "Window" a collapsible hierarchy with a triangle to see what's under it?
You probably already know this and selected one of the Surfaces under it called "Glass" or something, but figured I'd ask in case you just selected the whole thing without expanding it.
If there is a separate Surface for Glass and that is already where you applied the Glass Thin Shader, then I'm somewhat stumped as far as those particular window's construction and why it isn't responding the way a Plane or even thin Cube (which I just tested both of in front of a "Billboard" and Glass Thin works in either case). Maybe there's some way of making a thin "pane" actually solid as far as geometry...
Anyway, assuming the "Glass" parts of the Windows are their own Surfaces in the Surface Tab, you could actually make those Surfaces Transparent by setting their Cutout Opacity to Zero (or even use the amazingly simple Geometry Editor to delete the Geometry of those Surfaces entirely), then use you're Primitive knowledge to put your own Planes in their place and would surely be good to go. For the Divided Light Window, you could probably just use one Plane the size of the whole Window and position it midway through the "depth" of those dividers...
There is a "triangle"... I think, from what I see haha. And I applied the Glass, Thin, Clear on them both (First Floor Window and Large Window). Without adjusting the Refraction Weight away from zero, no matter what I did, it was opaque.
Great tips on the Cutout Opacity to Zero and the primitive planes usage. I had once considered these when I was thinking in my head of how to create a scene in which an old man's reflection in a mirror is a young version of himself. I still have yet to figure this out since I still haven't worked on mirrors in Daz yet so don't know how they behave. :P There's sooooo much to learn, it's both exhilarating and tiring!