Glass + liquid rendering...

[ReinaDelSur]

OK, I just flipped the normals for the hourglass's inside (not with as a nifty method as yours, LAR111, but I still managed to do it.)

Now you're saying something which intrigues me about materials not being linked to meshes. I think it's my fault really, as I got it into my head that I wanted to link the materials to the objects and not the meshes, so maybe that's what f***s it up big time and assigns diffuse gray to everything. I'm going to try and link the materials back to the meshes.

@ DAVEC: Why is the hourglass 11 meters tall???!!! It's 11 Blender Units tall, I'll grant you that, but I never knew 1 BU = 1 m (I actually tried looking that up on the Internet and found a website where they said BUs were totally independent of any measurement, that's why I modelled such a big hourglass: it was more convenient to work with...)

So this 1 BU = 1 m... Is it a Blender convention (in which case the website I read was utter crap) or is this a conversion made by Indigo?

[DaveC]

Go to the material settings for each of your objects. Under Links and Pipeline tab, click the ME button to assign the material to the Mesh. Now apply the correct material to each object's mesh. Now Indigo will export your materials.

And, yes, 1BU=1m in indigo. It is an indigo/blendigo thing. It can be adjusted with the world scale feature.

EDIT: Looks like you said what I said before I said it. Merry Christmas!

[ReinaDelSur]

I think Blender or Indigo (or very possibly both) want me dead **sigh**

I have solved all the normals problems thanks to you guys' advice. Now when I render here's what I get...

The glass doesn't refract the wooden stick and actually doesn't render (even when I ask for a preview sphere from Blendigo: I only see the cast shadow) even though the IOR is 1.5, and regardless of whether I choose Glossy Transparent or Specular. Gain is 0. Precedence is 1. I don't get it.

As to the water, it is only remotely red, even though the RGB gain is 10 (!) It doesn't render red at any gain anyway (I tried 10, 5 and 1.5) The preview sphere works OK though, so I don't get why the picture renders incorrectly.

Last but not least, there seem to be black edges to some parts of the liquid... Could this (again) be a normals problem (though it seems to me that they are all facing the same way now, I kind of made sure of that earlier) or is it just where the liquid should be overlapping the glass and it becomes problematic as no glass is rendering at all...

**tired**

Ari ;o)

[DaveC]

set precedence for the glass to higher than 1 more than the red liquid. For red, set gain to 100.

[ReinaDelSur]

You solved it, Dave!!

Thanks a bunch, and Merry Christmas to you too.

I'm just going to let it render overnight... Here is the beginning of the render...

Ari ;o)

[Kram1032]

Even if it's solved: I think, there are still confusions.

First of all, Yes, you checked bth MTL and Hybrid. PT is, when you uncheck both
As soon as Hybrid is selected, MTL gets ignored, though. So you don't use MTL but Hybrid.

And regarding the precedence: You should never set precedence to 1, as Indigo's Air holds that number.
But your hourglass isn't a solid glass thing, but has thin glass walls. That means, you should set it's precedence to a higher value than the liquid has.

The liquid only needs higher precedence, if the glass is a big solid block, which entirely would remove the liquid. That was required, once, with a very extreme example of usability of precedence: A Galilean Thermometer.

Last thing: There's still a bug remaining in your mesh: you should add an edgesplit modifier, so that the normal smoothing errors get fixed

[ReinaDelSur]

Hey Kram,

I'm not sure I understand what I have to do with the precedence setting. In the render you see, precedence was set at 2 for glass and 100 for the liquid. What I think I understood is that I shouldn't distance the liquid's precedence from the glass's so much. So I've launched another with precedence for glass remaining 2, and precedence for the liquid being 3.

As to PT, Metropolis, Hybrid and the like, what do you think would be best for what I'm rendering? I've read somewhere (most likely in a tut or in the manual) that eventually they all converge toward the same "perfect" render, so does it really matter? Could you maybe point me to some place where they quickly go over the different options and their results? (or tell me quickly about it?)

I've added a couple of EdgeSplit modifiers, after marking some edges as Sharp. I didn't even know those existed, so thanks for the heads-up.

Still, something seems strangely off in that picture. The lighting, I guess, definitely, but I also think there's a problem with both meniscuses (if that word ever had a plural...) They're way too big compared to the hourglass itself, so they just show too much against the glass body.

Anything else that you think I'd have to fix?

Thanks for your help.

Ari ;o)

P.S.: Here's the second version rendering, with difference precedences and edge correction.

[DaveC]

Regarding the precedence system. You have it back to front. It has nothing to do with how far one precedence is from the other. It's whichever is higher gets rendered. In your case, where the glass and the liquid cross over, the glass should have higher precedence so that it gets rendered. So you should set the liquid to less than the glass. Air has a precedence of 1. Everything else should be higher than air. So, set your liquid to 2, and your glass to 3. That should also sort out the meniscus problem.

[Kram1032]

regarding PT MTL or Hybrid: Everyone has his own philosophy, in that case...
You have an outdoor situation. Many would choose PT...
You have a complex Light situation with the glass and the liquid.. Here, Many would choose MTL...

Hybrid is a bit different... It is supposed to combine NTL and PT in their advantages. But it seems to be slower...
I dunno. Many choose it, not matter which sort of scene...

You need to test it for your own.
For now, use it, as is. When ever you like, you can test it