My first orchid

[madcoo]

Hi all !

I'm currently working on an Orchid - the problem is, I'd like the light to be able to travel slightly through the petals.
I guess it's all about SSS here: anyone's got any tips about the SSS settings I should use?

Many thanks!


PS: don't worry, I'm going to work on the soil in the pot and add leaves to the orchid too!

[zeitmeister]

For a quick solution, you could think about using a diffuse transmitter material plus your default material, blended in a new one with a factor you have to evaluate by yourself.
If you would like to make an extra texture for the blend material which determines where more light should travel through the petals and where less, you might achieve quite nice results. Think of a greyscale map where white means diffuse transmitter material and black means default material.

[madcoo]

Think of a greyscale map where white means diffuse transmitter material and black means default material.

Cheers ZeitMeister - it would be a great solution indeed: using less of the transparent settings in the middle of the flower, and more of it on the border of the petals, for example.

But...How do you use such a greyscale map? - I mean, in which part of the Blendigo exporter do you type the name of the map, so that Blendigo understands it has to use it?

Thanks!

[zeitmeister]

I am working with Cindigo, but Blendigo should also be able to do this.
Create a new blend material and put your material to the two slots lie this: petals_diffuse_trans material into the first one, petals_phong material into the second one.
Now you should be able to load a blend texture; this is where you place the greyscale map.
Maybe someone else who uses Blendigo could help you better here...

[madcoo]

I'll try this tonight - "Vielen Dank, Meister!!!"

[zeitmeister]

Hehe!
"De rien, vache folle!"

[madcoo]

[CTZn]

As zeitmeister mentioned first, a blend texture is optional.

For leafs and petals, 'lerp' (aka ramp) textures are an affordable option.

the two blended materials should use the same albedo map

[CTZn]

For leafs and petals, 'lerp' (aka ramp) textures are an affordable option.

x =

variation for a leaf:

[madcoo]

Wow!!!!

This looks really interesting - I haven't had enough time to try ZeitM's or your technique, but they look great!

I'll post a reply when I've tried them!

Many thanks again guys!

[zeitmeister]

A quick test with a greyscale map of the given texture, painted the green stuff black and used diffuse transmitter.
There's much to improve, but basically it works.

Free Mesh plus texture from here: http://toucan.web.infoseek.co.jp/3DCG/3 ... delsE.html

[madcoo]

BRILLIANT !!!

I'll try this A.S.A.P !!!

[madcoo]

Hi!

I tried ZeitMeister's technique (blend material) and it's GREAT!


One thing that I discovered, though : when using a blend map, the blend cursor in Blendigo is of no use at all - Blendigo's reference for the mixing and intensity of the 2 materials is the blend map ONLY.
=> because I used a very "black & white" blend map, I ended up having completely translucid parts, no matter how I played with the blend cursor.
(I hope you'll understand what I mean)

I would have liked to try CTzn's technique, but I can't really work out how to use lerp/ramp textures...

[zeitmeister]

CTZn's technique is a way to create such leaf transluency maps when having none; if you already got textures it's of course much more precisely if you create the transluency map from that.

In general: If you use a blend texture in a blend material, all mix values are read from this map... extra values don't make much sense there then; you need to correct the texture till it does what you want. White should refer to the transluent material, black to the other one. If you use complete white, your texture will be completely translucent e.g. 100% translcent material, of course.

[madcoo]

Ok, thanks, got that!!!

Many thanks for your help !