topic Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials in Visualization

Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

Anonymous — Thu, 11 May 2023 09:45:15 GMT

I have seen some other references to issues with plant materials being solved using Physical Render as opposed to Cinerender. I have not yet tried that but my problems seem to be that the "bounding box" if the plant material seems to change the transparency of the window behind it. I also ave noticed that the specific Palm Tree out of the standard library that I am using seems to need to be replaced with each new view as it only seems to be visible in 2D. Attached is an image of the render and the 3d view.

Any suggestions are appreciated....

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

vistasp — Sun, 05 Oct 2014 09:37:15 GMT

I can't seem to replicate your problem jdanosborn. Is the glass a default material (surface) or have you customised it? In my test, the glass transparency/reflection is almost identical in both normal and physical renders.

This palm tree is a photograph. If you change your viewpoint while in 3D, it will show up as a flat 2D object. However, if you rebuild your 3D view, the tree will face the camera again; there is no need to replace the object each time.

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 15:57:12 GMT

The default material is glass from standard windows that have been placed into the wall. I have not used a custom surface material for the glass but perhaps that is where the issue is. Do I need to dig into the settings for each window and change the "glass" surface as part of the window model?

You also mention rebuilding the 3D View, is that done through closing the current 3D View and creating a new window or is their a Command for this.

I have been able to get this to work using "Physical Render but the results are very grainy and not acceptable. It seems in your examples you were able to solve the problem without using Physical Rebder.

I also have customized the Rendering Settings as prescribed by Graphsoft to get window transparency as the attached shows.

Rendering Issues with 2D Plant Materials

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 22:10:51 GMT

I had posted this problem recently but did not get the response I need. As you will see from the attached when using Cinerender the bounding box for the palm tree affects the final render in that it prevent transparency behind the bounding box. While we have solved this with physical render the quality of those images are very graining at not really acceptable as we need near photo realistic results. Another member mentioned that they could not duplicate thus problem but we are stuck at this point. Any suggestions for modifying the rendering options or changing plant materials would be appreciated.

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

Karl Ottenstein — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 02:18:28 GMT

I've merged your new topic with the old as the question is the same. Keep a single thread per topic please. If you don't feel you received the answer you need, just say so in the thread to elicit further comments.

I'm not near a computer, so can't check this issue myself at the moment...

I haven't oticed in the CR settings... But there may be a slider that determines how many transparent surfaces light can pass through, to limit computation time. Your screenshot makes it seem that only one surface is transparent with your current settings. Just a hunch.

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

Anonymous — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 11:22:52 GMT

We have double checked the CineRender Settings as per the attached and have the Transparency Settings as prescribed by Archicad and as we are getting some of the windows to be transparent that seems to be working.

The issue is the bounding box of the plant materials seems to affect the rendering to actually let more light pass through rather than less. We can solve this using the Physical Render but the results were very graining and not acceptable.

The question seems to be do we need to use different palm trees or are there other CineRender settings that can solve this problem without using the Physical Render or other settings with Physical Render that will yield more photorealistic results.

The last option is moving all rendering into Cinema 4D but we are trying to avoid that learning curve at this stage if we can.

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

jameshart — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:12:02 GMT

Hello,

Did you ever find the solution? We have had this problem on our last two projects, and some preliminary renderings today show that we're going to have this problem again on this project.

I don't even know how to describe this problem... it's as if the transparent plane of the tree cancels out the reflectivity of any transparent surfaces behind it? Or the transparent plane of the tree "artificially lightens" the transparent surfaces behind it? The same thing happens when we look through two glass surfaces. (Please see the attached examples. I have also included the .renderingscene file so that anyone interested could try it for themselves.

I do not believe this has to do with the Ray Depth or Ray Threshold;

* For Ray Depth I have tried 500 (the max), but the problem remained.
* For Ray Threshold I have tried 500 and zero, but the problem remained.
* For Reflection Depth I have tried 200 and 1, but the problem remained.

In this particular case the glass being used is the Glass: Clear, Fast*, but the problem happens with the other glass surfaces as well.

Graphisoft Tech Support says "I have narrowed down the cause of the rendering artifacts to the Surface's Reflectance Channel settings for the stair glass., specifically the Layer 1 and Layer 2 configuration settings. I am afraid that you will need to run some tests as to the desired settings, as this goes beyond our brief here at Tech Support." But I don't really understand what that means. In the Surface's Cinerender settings, I have tried disabling the reflectance all together (and enabling the transparency, which was off for some reason), but that had no effect. I have also tried substituting each of the other glass surfaces, but the problem remains.

Please help! Thank you!

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

jameshart — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:14:36 GMT

Same view, but with no trees. Please compare and note the windows are problem free.

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

jameshart — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:16:20 GMT

Same view but in the 3D window with the contours on (so you can see the outlines of the trees.)

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

jameshart — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:18:00 GMT

Different project but similar problem. In this case the areas circled in red are where we are looking through two glass railings.

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

jameshart — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:19:08 GMT

Our rendering settings file (in case anyone would like to take a peek.)

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

jameshart — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 22:26:16 GMT

UPDATE:

Lowering the Ray Depth to 3 fixed the problem with the windows, but then introduced a new problem because some trees now render black.

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

Erwin Edel — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 09:25:48 GMT

Ray depth is about how many layers of transparancy you want to pass through. 3 is the bare minium, as anything with a thickness and transparant material has already two layers. If you have some overlapping trees, ramp up the number accordingly. 200 and 500 values are overkill. For most of my exterior renders I am fine with setting reflection and ray depth around 12. I keep treshold at 0, as this just makes reflections look better for only a slight increase in render times ussually.

I do not use any of the billboard objects, though. I either use 3d objects or the cutout contour objects. The problem is with the alpha channel / mask of those trees. It is just a rectangular picture with a transparant background, but you are still getting bits of the rectangle showing up / messing with things.

I seem to recall this was better or worse with either using physical renderer or not using it.

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

Erwin Edel — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 09:31:59 GMT

Just did a test render with some of those billboard trees, I can't say I am noticing any artifacts other than your typical poor/ugly masking of the picture where you notice white edges.

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

jameshart — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 15:18:01 GMT

Thanks Erwin! Yes, you are correct, bumping up the Ray Depth will fix the problem with the transparent trees, but it causes the problem with the windows. Normally use a higher ray depth, but because of the window problem I don't know what to do.

What are the cutout contour objects that you were mentioning? The object shown in the rendering is Deciduous Trees 20.

Re: Maintain Window Transparency with Plant Materials

Erwin Edel — Fri, 15 Sep 2017 06:48:14 GMT

The 3D contour people. There are no trees there.

Not sure what the problem with the windows is, but higher depth should only make them look more like they should.

If you find it too dark, try putting a general light set to infinite strength inside the building. Don't forget to turn on the light setting in cinerender when using that.