Lines in transparent materials

[David Bearss]

I am experimenting with a rendering techinique and want to include transparent and translucent materials. I have created some different transparent materials with different transparency and color and then I have created some tree forms from slab tool and applied a transparent material to get desired effect. Sometimes the trees show grid lines acros them. When I apply the material to a large slab or wall there are no lines. Am wondering if the complexitiy of the tree form is causing?

[Dwight]

Nope.
Dwight would say, if you have to make a cartoon tree, make it a translucent ball on a stick.

[David Bearss]

After sleeping on it Dwights advice sounds good. The materials work on simple form cartoon trees. Only becomes a problem when the forms get real detailed and complex. I think the simple look is best and ties in with the sort of artistic look I am after. I am just planning on using them as a simpl tree wash background. I am balancing this creation with the multitude of other "emergencies" and will post some images for comment soon. Thanks for all the advice everyone.

[Erika Epstein]

David,
By any chance could the lines you see be shadows lines from nearby objects?

I happened to view the trees I did from when several were in a cluster and because of the translucent material setting, you see lines which are the edges of the trees behind.

[David Bearss]

Erika,
No shadow lines as these objects are the only things visible in the project. I think what I am going to try is to open the project on another computer with a different hardware configuration and see what differences that may make.
Thanks for your curiosity.

[Robert Fuchs]

David wrote:
After sleeping on it Dwights advice sounds good. The materials work on simple form cartoon trees. Only becomes a problem when the forms get real detailed and complex. I think the simple look is best and ties in with the sort of artistic look I am after. I am just planning on using them as a simpl tree wash background. I am balancing this creation with the multitude of other "emergencies" and will post some images for comment soon. Thanks for all the advice everyone.

The word "cartoon trees" reminded me of a project I did a while back. We did master planning for a local community college and this is one of the images we used to convey our phasing. I call it my Monopoly look. I used a Google earth image for the ground along with a jpeg of our ArchiCAD colored site plan and my lollypop trees.

[Erika Epstein]

Some of the trees, as well as the plants in pots, in the AC library have three 3D settings levels. These have a SIMPLE level in addition to OFF and DETAILED.

The one deciduous tree might work. You can adjust the crown for that lolipop look.

Rboert, Nice site

[Dwight]

It is trees like that what cause unrest.

If you go "real" the tree should have texture and a controlled irregularity - each individual has differences, but they appear uniform along a street, say. The Archicad trees Erika shows remind me of scale train model sets....

If you go "cartoon", the Irish marble look is too harsh. The opacity and saturation of the foliage ball should be low enough to seem insubstantial.

[Erika Epstein]

I had wanted to show what is available in the AC library.

The attached show the Archicad tree on simple on the left, and also the right with the crown resized to lolipop.

the middle is the archicad sphere on a column.

All 3 have the same translucent foliage material and trunk material

Dwight, why the camouflage look?

[Dwight]

It looks like OpenGL backface cullling confusion. Now that Archicad has transparency in OpenGL, maybe they don't have that worked out so well yet.

It is better if you use the sphere object or spin a complex profile.

[Link]

Robert wrote:
The word "cartoon trees" reminded me of a project I did a while back. We did master planning for a local community college and this is one of the images we used to convey our phasing. I call it my Monopoly look. I used a Google earth image for the ground along with a jpeg of our ArchiCAD colored site plan and my lollypop trees.

Wow, that's uncanny. Check out the quick model I made during a design charrette in Georgia. Didn't cause any unrest there, in fact quite impressed the client given the time restrictions.

Cheers,
Link.