Transparent materials are half black?!

[LithiumDesign]

I have been trawling the forums to try and find an answer to this for weeks, I cannot work it out!!

I have a single box of glass/clear acrylic with IOR of 1.52/1.33 respectively, 4-6mm for the glass and 10mm for the acrylic. I set up the standard studio scene, plenty of lighting and no black areas to reflect (or not reflect?) export to maxigo then render and what do I get...

What is going on!? I get the same results when I try to make glasses to hold liquids, even without the liquid in I get black areas around either the top or the bottom of the glass

I have checked all of the normals, edited them, unified them, broken them... But still these black areas occur!
I am 200% certain that it is a closed volume, I cannot understand this and I desperately need help!

Thanks, LithiumDesign

[ENSLAVER]

What do you have the precedence set at for each material?

[LithiumDesign]

What do you have the precedence set at for each material?

I've had the precedence range from 1 to 100 with no change in results

[CTZn]

Hi LithiumDesign, the setup you are using with specular materials is not clear to me. Could you give us more details ?

also,
- wich exporter are you using
- wich Indigo version
- rendering mode (bidir I assume)
- did you touch an advanced rendering setting (such as depth) e: from within the exporter ?

[LithiumDesign]

Hi LithiumDesign, the setup you are using with specular materials is not clear to me. Could you give us more details ?

also,
- wich exporter are you using
- wich Indigo version
- rendering mode (bidir I assume)
- did you touch an advanced rendering setting (such as depth) e: from within the exporter ?

The materials I have used are both the standard maxigo 'Glass' preset and also my own specular .igm material!
Maxigo exporter, 3.0.17, bidir is correct I believe and no I'm not sure what you mean by 'depth' I am a new user and haven't ventured far into the advanced settings!

Here are some other examples; Here I tried to make a Bic/Staedtler Biro pen
Here again is the sheet of acrylic/glass
Here and here I made a simple glass with all the correct normals and closed volume!?

I do not understand what is going on

[suvakas]

Scale issue maybe?

[CTZn]

Mmh that's weird, it's like there is something wrong that you keep reproducing over your scenes.

Until it is identified we'd need you to share one of the scenes so we can seek for the mistake, both in your host application native format and PIGS format (saving it from Indigo) please. More users will use the pigs file to see but the native scene will give more details to your peers.

Note that glass acceleration will perform as expected only with flat panes, it should not be used with curved surfaces normally.

Are you modeling at the right scale ? ah suv was faster on that one

[PureSpider]

I think the problem is the angle used for shading...
In C4D thats the "Phong Tag", I don't know for 3DS max.
Try reducing the angle for phong shading, that might help

[LithiumDesign]

Mmh that's weird, it's like there is something wrong that you keep reproducing over your scenes.

Until it is identified we'd need you to share one of the scenes so we can seek for the mistake, both in your host application native format and PIGS format (saving it from Indigo) please. More users will use the pigs file to see but the native scene will give more details to your peers.

Note that glass acceleration will perform as expected only with flat panes, it should not be used with curved surfaces normally.

Are you modeling at the right scale ? ah suv was faster on that one

Okay, I think I scrapped the scenes in a moment of frustration but i'll try and reproduce this error I am sure everything is to scale as it is part of a scale model of a chair I have designed for my A Level coursework!
I will post the .3ds file and .pigs files later this evening!

Thanks for all for the help!

[CTZn]

Okay, just help yourself LithiumDesign

Just in case, try PT (with GPU eventually) instead of bidirPT. Even though that may seem to fix the issue there would still be something fishy that we should find out.

About scale, by default rays below 0.2mm in length will be igored by Indigo. Hence the scale concern.

I think that PureSpider was referring to the geometry normals (what else ? I'm not familiar with Cindigo), but since you are presenting us with two different cases (glass: normals expected to be smooth, glass panes: normals expected to be hard) I don't believe that it is the issue here.

[LithiumDesign]

Okay, just help yourself LithiumDesign

Just in case, try PT (with GPU eventually) instead of bidirPT. Even though that may seem to fix the issue there would still be something fishy that we should find out.

About scale, by default rays below 0.2mm in length will be igored by Indigo. Hence the scale concern.

I think that PureSpider was referring to the geometry normals (what else ? I'm not familiar with Cindigo), but since you are presenting us with two different cases (glass: normals expected to be smooth, glass panes: normals expected to be hard) I don't believe that it is the issue here.

There is something definitely not right!!

I decided to test an existing scene so I opened up the "Erotica" scene by Oleg Bogattke, and this is what I got instantly...
This is with bidirPT and to clarify, *my previous renders were bidirPT also, I forgot to mention!!*
With regards to the normals issue, I have not smoothed the glass plane so i'd expect the normals to be correct and 'hard' as you say!
I really don't know what is going on!!

[CTZn]

No more wonders, it is a bug specific to Indigo 3.0.17. I reproduced it hands off.

Please update your Indigo version from the Indigo News and Announcements forum.

3.2.5 is the latest beta (doing fine on my behalf), but your exporter may require an alternate version.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[LithiumDesign]

No more wonders, it is a bug specific to Indigo 3.0.17. I reproduced it hands off.

Please update your Indigo version from the Indigo News and Announcements forum.

3.2.5 is the latest beta (doing fine on my behalf), but your exporter may require an alternate version.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Thank you so much CTZn!! that's not a problem at I'd rather have to upgrade than never be able to render glass!! Thanks again