Hi Pibuz I'm not DalePibuz wrote:Back with another smart remark!
I usually did diffuse transmitters by setting a colour in Sketchup, giving it a certain amount of transparency (low) and reverting the shader back to diffuse if it was automatically converted into specular.
..lately I was considering that this procedure caused very dark diffuse transmitters, and only a few minutes ago I took some time to check the exported material hierarchy. SkIndigo at the moment converts my "simple" diffuse transmitter into a BLEND material, which mixes two sub materials (exactly as I knew it). The two sub materials are a DIFFUSE MATERIAL and a DIFFUSE TRANSMITTER MATERIAL, and that I can't understand. In the Indigo GUI, I manually converted the blend material into a straight DIFFUSE TRANSMITTER MATERIAL and that did the trick.
..only thing: I cannot change the diffuse transmitter material's opacity from the indigo GUI, or at least I wasn't able to find the property...
Is this a material conversion bug or something?
Thanks Dale!
Take a diffuse material, add a little transparency and there will still be a diffuse component scattering light back: that's the benefit of blending a diffuse with a diffuse transmitter. In this regard the material conversion from SkIndigo sounds correct.
The diffuse_transmitter material itself does not have a transparency parameter. There is only its albedo to multiply the transmitted light with: white and the colour are unaltered, just scattered rays and black: no light passes through, as if it was fully absorbed.
Knowing that the blend material should make sense, granted that you started with a simple diffuse material wich does only scatter light back.
edit: I'll be more specific: the diffuse transmitter alone is an ideal transmitter: it does not correspond to a real material because light is never bouncing on it (always passing through). It was meant from its conception to be blended with other materials.
It is reasonable to imagine that exporters can use the diffuse transmitter by blending it without exposing it directly to the user.