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Frosted Glass


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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Vision does not support transparency/translucency textures for meshes/geometry. However, we do support alpha mask images which we have leveraged to get the most out of Vision.

 

If I had to get creative texture wise to do a frosty glass, I'd probably do something like we did for the skrim in our 2021 demo file (included with every Vision 2021 install). This technique gives you a color (in this case, most likely white for frost) but uses alpha masks to put "holes" in the material, allowing some light to pass through (depending on the size of each "hole" and the shadow/light quality settings). You can play with the image used for the alpha mask to adjust hole size. You can also leverage Vision's texture scaling.

 

Getting transparency/translucency in Vision is definitely something we'd like to get done. It does take a fairly large reworking of the rendering engine. Hopefully, this little tip will help you in the meantime!

 

(Part of what we are still performing in regards to transparency/translucency is competitive analysis as well as better understanding how our customers want these things to work. If you want to be able to shine a white light through a stain glass window, in real time, and get a stain glass beam of light on the other side of the glass... that gets really really expensive and I'm not even sure would be possible in real time if there were hundreds or thousands of stain glass windows.)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thanks for the help. The skrim idea isn't really want I'm after. 

 

What I'm trying to do is make a space light style light which would glow. (not the same as the photo but its the kind of idea. but instead of it being a ready made fixture it is made up of 4x ARRI 360s) 

 

Thanks 🙂

spacelight.jpg

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
12 hours ago, JonnyC said:

What I'm trying to do is make a space light style light which would glow. (not the same as the photo but its the kind of idea. but instead of it being a ready made fixture it is made up of 4x ARRI 360s)

 

Hmm, interesting! I'm not sure if this would work for you or not...

 

You could create a new layer in Vision, and insert (or drag'n'drop) 4 ARRI 360's into the new layer. You will need to position these so that the light "points" in the proper direction. You could then add a cylinder to the newly created layer from the previous step. If you flag this cylinder as an RGB Mesh, it will "glow" (like a lamp shade), and its color will be based on the DMX values being sent to it. (If you do not need it to be DMX Controllable and simply want it to glow; give the mesh a texture/color and simply check the Force Emissive checkbox.)

 

Note: You may also need to set the cylinder's Cast Shadow flag to Do Not Cast Shadows. This will allow the rest of the document to continue using shadows while allowing light to "pass through" the cylinder.

 

If this works for you, you can select the newly created layer from the steps above and Copy/Paste more "instances" of this custom fixture.

 

Here are some screenshots of an attempt I've made at an RGB controllable "glow" with 4 S4 50degs "inside". I've tried to attach a V3S (no textures, so no folder needed) that you should be able to load to see how I achieved all of this.

 

Screen Shot 2021-02-09 at 11.11.30 AM.pngScreen Shot 2021-02-09 at 11.11.17 AM.pngScreen Shot 2021-02-09 at 11.10.44 AM.png

fixture.v3s

 

EDIT: I may have found a bug related to copy/paste. It may still work for you, it's just that the Scene Graph will not be organized as you might expect. I will investigate this issue and see if I can find a fix.

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Hey,

 

This is almost what I'm after. Is the only way for this to say light up a room and push the colour onto walls to have lights on the inside of it like you have it? As I have noticed if you just turn on the cylinder it just lights up its self and doesn't effect any objects around it. 

 

Also is there any documentation about the RGB mesh stuff as when I try to make it myself in another document I cant work out how to "flag it as a RGB Mesh" 

 

Sorry I have just started using vision so just getting used to it.

 

 

Thanks

 

Jonny

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
12 hours ago, JonnyC said:

Is the only way for this to say light up a room and push the colour onto walls to have lights on the inside of it like you have it? As I have noticed if you just turn on the cylinder it just lights up its self and doesn't effect any objects around it. 

Glowing textures in Vision do not give off light. However, increasing the dimmer on the fixtures "inside" of this custom fixture will give off light and this light will "hit" a wall as you'd expect.

 

12 hours ago, JonnyC said:

Also is there any documentation about the RGB mesh stuff as when I try to make it myself in another document I cant work out how to "flag it as a RGB Mesh"

https://app-help.vectorworks.net/2021/Vision/index.htm?#t=2021_Vision%2FVision%2FThe_Properties_palette.htm%23TOC_Object_and_fixturebc-2&rhtocid=_0_6_1_1

Take a look at the Emissive category of a mesh object. This category contains Fixture Type, Fixture Candela, Fixture Universe, and Fixture Channel. All of these must be set to proper values in order for the emissive (or glow) mesh feature to work.

(Note: The Cast Shadows setting I mentioned prior is also documented on this help page in case you need it.)

 

12 hours ago, JonnyC said:

Sorry I have just started using vision so just getting used to it.

Not a problem at all! Vision has it complexities but it can also be deceivingly simple at times. There are a lot of features inside of the software. It's usually just a matter of knowing where to look!

(Note: We've tried to do a really good job at ensuring that all supported features are documented in the help. I'd definitely recommend trying to reference it whenever possible!)

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

By the way, the bug I found was related to two layers sharing the same name nested at the same level in the Scene Graph. Vision was seemingly getting confused as to which layer was which and inserting fixtures into the incorrect layer.

 

This was obviously noticed with copy and paste; as pasting a layer next to the one that is copied would result in a layer which is identical in every way including in name (ie; "Forum Fixture").

 

One "workaround" is to copy the source layer, but changing its name before pasting (ie; "Forum Fixture" to "Forum Fixture 1" or "Forum Fixture 1" to "Forum Fixture 2"). You can continue with this process renaming and pasting until you have as many "custom fixtures" as you need. I apologize for this buggy workflow.

 

I've managed to find where this is happening in the code and have a simple fix pending. I'm not sure when it will be able to ship. But know that in the future, this workflow with copy and pasting a "custom fixture" like this will work better.

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