translucent blocks

[acdeslx]

I'm really hoping this hasn't been addressed elsewhere in the forum but I couldn't find it if it was.

 

I'm trying to do some pre-viz on a set with 100+ translucent cubes -- essentially an ultra-low res video wall. In my actual rig, I have an RGB fixture mounted directly behind the block and when I turn it on, the whole cube glows. I'm trying to set that up in VWX so that I can drop it into Vision but none of my methods seem to work.

I'm using a Chroma-Q Colorforce-12 (RGBW, 4-ch mode) behind an extraction that I created with a frosted glass texture. I try to port this into Vision and it really gives me nothing useful. The light shows up on the surface that it's pointing towards but really doesn't go through and make the cube glow.

I'm not sure if this is an issue with the texture I'm using or should I be using a material or is this completely the wrong direction to be looking?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks.

 

[Jesse Cogswell]

The issue you are running into is that Vision does not handle translucent textures at all.  So things like glass (frosted or otherwise) don't translate and will come in as solid objects.

 

There are two ways around this:

1. You can make the texture on your cube more of a "scrim" texture, assigning a scrim style Alpha Texture to the cube object.  It won't quite read as frosted glass, but you would get some glow from the fixture behind it.  It's super not a great option, but could theoretically work.
2. You can add a DMX controlled Emissive Mesh to the cube objects.  To do this, select the cube and go to the Emissive section and expand it.  You can set the Device Type to RGB and match the Universe and Channel to overlap with the RGB address of the corresponding ColorForce.  You won't have the amber channel (can you get a ColorForce in RGBW?, I've only used them as RGBA), but then at least when you set your color in the console, the color should match the ColorForce color.  It won't actually cast light since it is just an emissive, but it will get you close-ish, and if you load up on Bloom, it might give the appearance of casting light.

I've put together a small demo showing this built in Vision 2023.  It has five cubes, four set using the emissive method and one with the scrim texture.  The emissive is undoubtedly the way you will want to go.  It's not perfect, but it will give you an approximation.

 

 

 

Cube Demo.vsn

[acdeslx]

Thanks Jesse. This is exactly what I'm looking for.

Is there a way to do automate all of this instead of assigning each emissive "block" the DMX info in one action instead of one at a time?

 

Cheers.

Dave

[Jesse Cogswell]

You can select all of them and assign the universe and emissive settings, but as far as I know, there's no way to quickly assign the DMX addresses themselves.

[acdeslx]

Thanks... 420 emissives to go... <sigh>