Dec 18, 2025, 11:34:19 PM
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Sweet Home 3D Forum » List all forums » » Forum: Wishlist » » » Thread: Lighted Asian orb lanterns assistance request » » » » Post: Re: Lighted Asian orb lanterns assistance request |
Print at Dec 18, 2025, 11:34:19 PM |
| Posted by Jonnie63 at Apr 2, 2019, 12:14:55 PM |
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Re: Lighted Asian orb lanterns assistance request @ianjolin You probably want a quick practical solution. The following is definitely not that - I include it only for interest. There is a rendered called Mitsuba - it can be loaded as a plugin to Blender. It is capable of some very special material effects, it can deal with multiple optical layers so you can for instance define a gloss transparent layer on top of a reflective metal. Mitsuba requires a little effort setting up a scene, it can be driven without Blender and does have a GUI but that requires writing the scene script yourself which is fine for a single object but probably a bit much for an entire scene, I used to use Mitsuba for rendering objects and found it very powerful for getting a material to look "just right". Mitsuba was a research project and is not developed but it is maintained to some degree - it is stable and very well respected, well worth a look if only for interest - the PDF doc is worth a browse pages 101 onwards where sub-surface scattering materials are covered, this renderer offers the user a great deal of power in terms of being able to design multilayer surfaces and realism to optically complex materials but there is a big price to pay in terms of getting it all to work and learning how to use it. t This is the direction you would be heading in for translucence as light scattering within the material is what distinguishes translucent materials from semi-opaque ones, you will also see a variety of materials representing frosted glass and you can go a lot further than that. https://www.mitsuba-renderer.org/releases/current/documentation.pdf See pages 61 62 for frosted glass pics See pages 101 102 for translucent examples Pages 41 and 42 offer some hope here, there is a plugin for Mitsuba (standalone) that enables Mitsuba to import OBJ files ( which SweetHome can export ) containing multiple objects, it can interpret the mtl file that comes with the OBJ file to deal with simple surfaces BUT the user can over-ride that mechanism for specific objects or rather the materials that those objects use - so in a nutshell you would be hoping that Mitsuba could easily handle the simple materials automatically but for a small number of key items you would take another path. I think I will take a look at this - I have not used Mitsuba since leaving the world of windows in favour of Ubuntu a year ago ( did not like forced updates from MS ) - I have found it difficult to get Mitsuba working on Linux. As far as I understand it the process would be .... 1. Export your entire model from SweetHome to OBJ 2. Examine the associated MTL file in a text editor and see if you can get a handle on the material used for the light shade - you just want a name or ID. 3. Write a simple script for Mitsuba which simply loads the OBJ and then provides alternative materials for the key items you want more sophisticated materials for - eg your light. If I can get something working that is a reasonable method I will post working examples here. I may have to re-enter the world of Windows10 - not so keen on that bit !!! Jon |
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