Diamond Material and light setup?

[winnabago111]

I have a diamond but I want it look photo realistic. Like this one done in indigo:

http://www.indigorenderer.com/node/350

What would be the best light and material setup. I'm not sure how a diamond refracts light and if a lamp or emitter would be better thanks.

[Doug Armand]

Well for starters use the diamond material in the Material Database and make sure your diamond is the right size/scale for a diamond.

Smartdens image looks like he either used a HDR image of studio lights as an environment map or some used rectangular planes with an emitter material attached?. Start from there maybe?

[winnabago111]

First off thanks. I'm just coming back into indigo and blender after taking a break for a while so I don't remember how to use a material. Secondly, what is an environment map. Thanks for the help.

[Doug Armand]

Well first download the diamond material from the material database to somewhere on your computer - it's in the Indigo material format of .igm.

In blender assign your diamond object a material.
Then in Blendigo select the material tab and select your material from the drop down list. From the Material dropdown select 'External' and then point the filename to the diamond material you downloaded.

As to environment maps - they are just an easy way of getting realistic complicated lighting
Basically they are High Dynamic Range images of an environment normally 360 degree. For examples and some more info check out this forum thread that has links to some free ones and how to use them
http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... f=7&t=2454

Indigo can only use .EXR ones but you can easily convert the ones there. For your diamond shot I would try this one
http://www.debevec.org/Probes/building_probe.hdr

To use an environment map again go to Blendigo and choose the Environment tab and select 'Environment Map' from the Environment Type drop-down. Then just point it to your .EXR file

I would also recommend that you set your tonemap to Reinhard initially as this will autoexpose your image for you.
Hope this helps

[winnabago111]

I added the environment map and assigned the material to the diamond and yet my diamond object comes out black. Do I have to add light to the env. map somehow or am I using the mat. wrong.

[Doug Armand]

No need to use any other lights with an environment map unless you want to for creative reasons.

Was it just the diamond that turned out black? like the examples below? if so maybe the normals on your diamond are flipped.

Diamond with normals flipped

diamond_flipped_normals.jpg (18.58 KiB) Viewed 12920 times

Diamond with normals OK

diamond_ok_normals.jpg (43.25 KiB) Viewed 12923 times

The setup used here is just a plane with a white material and the diamond siting on it with the diamond material from the database and the following HDR used as the environment map. Nothing else.

jpg of the HDR from Dosch Industrial collection (note this is just a small jpg of the HDR - do not use as your environment map!)

INDREF-025SX.jpg (29.45 KiB) Viewed 12923 times

Hope this helps

[winnabago111]

Oh ya, I completely forgot about normals. I flipped it and it worked the only issue is that the diamond has a green color and reflects green light. It still has a diamond look but its green tinted. My settings are reinhard Burn: 4.0200 PreS: 4.000 PostS:1.2

Could it have to do with Env. map. I have the gain at 1.0 and its on spherical with a width of 640. Thanks.

[Doug Armand]

Oh ya, I completely forgot about normals. I flipped it and it worked the only issue is that the diamond has a green color and reflects green light. It still has a diamond look but its green tinted. My settings are reinhard Burn: 4.0200 PreS: 4.000 PostS:1.2

Could it have to do with Env. map. I have the gain at 1.0 and its on spherical with a width of 640. Thanks.

Depends on your HDR environment image - does it have a lot of green in it?

If it is a spherical one then Spherical is fine. If not then use LatLong.

Gain at 1.0 is the default and should be fine.

The green tint may also be because your scenes scale is too big? A diamond is usually only a few mm in size - is your Diamond scaled down that small?

Also leave it a while to render as it tends to render cleaner, purer after a time and most of the greeness goes away

[winnabago111]

So I did about a 5 hour render.


http://i325.photobucket.com/albums/k365 ... tigs-1.pnge mo

It looks good for the most part but I have a black plane for the ground but it comes out white and almost multi colored is there anyway to fix that.

[Borgleader]

So I did about a 5 hour render.


http://i325.photobucket.com/albums/k365 ... tigs-1.pnge mo

It looks good for the most part but I have a black plane for the ground but it comes out white and almost multi colored is there anyway to fix that.

You ground material is black ?!? What type of material is it?

[Doug Armand]

So I did about a 5 hour render.


http://i325.photobucket.com/albums/k365 ... tigs-1.pnge mo

It looks good for the most part but I have a black plane for the ground but it comes out white and almost multi colored is there anyway to fix that.

Use a diffuse material if you want it black or reduce the shininess of your current one. Looking good though