I experimented with glass block walls by taking a brick wall and giving both sides the appearance of Glass Block, all three types.
They read fine in the simple render, but turn to obsidian in the raytrace. Radiosity produces a a a solid black wall.
I dont have a CLUE, any thoughts?
Rick McAmy :
I'm not an expert, but....did you check the properties for the Glass Block. Just to see what level the transparency is set to. Just an idea...
garystan
D'oh! That sounds very feasible, if not too easy . . . I'm on it, I'll report back!
Hi Rick,
When you check the Transparency setting you may also have to change the Specular setting too as the wall is highly reflective. Although glass is reflective the Specular setting should only be 2-10% maybe or it become a mirror.
When you do an Advanced render, are all the walls black or just the glass block walls?
Allan
I went back to an old project to see if this was file specific. I simply added a glass block wall to a tub in an old bathroom of mine.
Specular was set to 1
Emissive, 45, if emmissive means the light that the element emits, I thought IF I got it brighter it may not look so black.
transperancy, 33,
color bleed 50
In the regular render I used the blueish blocks this time, to see if they made a difference.
Same results in advance Render though, solid translucent smoked glass wall, without any of the texture or grout lines of block.
Oh and all my other walls behave properly, just the glass blocks are problematic.
Anyone else have better luck with their glass blocks?
Hi Rick,
I have never used the glass blocks before (only just had a look at them sometime), so I did a test run. I found all of them work OK if you have all the settings off. Specular 0, Emissive 0, Transparency 0 and Colour Bleed 0.
The glass blocks are just a photo, so any appearance has to come from the lighting you throw on them. In my image below the one in the wall on the left is the "BackLit" one - but the light is coming from the front (the lights above) not from outside, so no transparency is needed. The one in the wall on the right hand side is the "Not Backlit" one (in other words it is supposed to be dark outside). Again lighting is from above.
The more Transparency you use the more the block shapes will disappear and become translucent black, as the light is now going through the glass block image. It probably should have no transparency at all unless you want to 'mute' the block effect a little.
Specular will cause reflection of other objects in the room - a small amount may work but again you will lose the block effect of the image, so I personally would not use it either.
Emissive will make the block image glow. This may possibly be used if you wanted to make outside light appear a bit brighter but really this setting is only normally used for lamp shades and light bulbs - to make them look as though they are illuminated.
I think if you set all the image settings to zero, you will get closer to the effect you want.
Allan
Thanks, I'll give that a try.
That would be it, Zeroes across the board. The smallest amount of transparency or specular and they go black.
These are from an image I had of glass blocks.
Thanks for the tips ;)
Hi Rick.
Looking better!
Not sure if you are aware but you can move the texture across the wall so that the edges do not cut through one of the glass blocks. If you go to Properties / Appearance tab and click the texture, you will see a Mapping button. Use the arrow buttons to move the texture across the surface. You can also change the scale of the image if your glass blocks appear smaller or larger than they should be.
Allan