Courtains material (mr)

[McCloud]

Hello guys,
There is one problem that concerns me.. I am not able to create a material for curtains/lamp covers.
I already tried different materials and combinations, but never achieved desired effect, that the curtain is 100% opaque, altough light passes through it. Also I couldn't find anything on the net.

Here's an image, for better illustration:
http://www.florencedesignacademy.com/bedbig1.jpg

Would be very nice, if u could help me, or make some short tutorial on How to make curtains or something similar.

Thanks a lot :)

[dan]

Welcome to the DT community, McCloud! Have you taken a look at the Shader Recipes - Translucent Materials in Maya (http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?pid=306)? While it is in Maya and not 3ds Max, it's still using mental ray so the technique can be ported over. You may also find the Using Subsurface Scattering in mental ray (http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?vid=4767) helpful if you decide to go that route to build your translucent materials. Hope that helps!

[green]

Hi McCloud,
The effect you are describing is commonly referred to as Translucency - where light can pass through a surface even though it's not really "transparent". This effect can be achieved in 3ds Max using the mental ray Arch & Design material.

In 3ds Max, create an Arch & Design material and do the following:
1. Enable "Translucency" and set Translucency Weight to 1.
2. Set the material's Transparency to 1.
3. In the material's "Advanced Rendering Options" rollout, enable "Thin-walled" mode.

Good luck, hope this helps

[McCloud]

Ah, thank you very much
It works now... only problem is that the light pass is too sharp and doesn't kind of 'spread' on the curtain fabric.. so the edges of the courtain, that are behind wall, so there's no light-passing are almost black. Here is quick render for illustration (translucency is here on .9 so the courtain is able to cast a little shadows)
http://i54.tinypic.com/2rxa1qh.jpg

Is there an option that will allow the light to spread over the surface a bit as it hits the courtain and doesn't go straigh through it? (so actually the dark areas would be then indirectly illuminated by the light spreaded over the courtain surface)

Cheers

[smokedogg]

Although I am a Maya Mental Ray user, I would also like to see how this done. AND not with a standard lambert, but with a mia_material with a fabric texture.

I dont know why the majority of ALL your maya mental ray courses, all use a mixture of the materials. For mental ray, they should use all mia_materials. Thats the only 1 thing I cant stand about DT. Too many tutorials using the non realistic, out of date, standard materials.