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Print at Dec 18, 2025, 6:09:54 PM

Posted by Phoenix_Bedlam at Feb 22, 2014, 5:27:42 PM

Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
I've been using SH3D for about a week now (and LOVE it!), in the house design I'm doing, I have lots of fixed panel windows running internally throughout the house. I want to be able to use glass textures as stained glass feature windows in rooms, but when I go to change the Furniture.obj to the pattern I want, it just changes the frame of the fixed panel window and not the glass itself.

Is there a way to make the glass in the frame textured itself? Or is it going to have to be shrinking a box.obj down to .1 thickness and using that as a "glass fascia"?

Any input would be greatly received from more experienced users of this program.

Thanks from a noob biggrin

Posted by okh at Feb 23, 2014, 2:49:54 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
Depends on the model you are using. Sent you an example. ok

Posted by Phoenix_Bedlam at Feb 24, 2014, 3:59:02 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
Awesome....thanks very much for that, I've been using .1mm textures as a fascia, which is a bit fiddly :D

Posted by okh at Feb 25, 2014, 9:11:09 AM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
Glad you liked them. Both textures were easily created with the Gimp. One based on a picture of a window in Catalunya (fake, made of foil), the other one just squares, colourised, tiled and flipped.

Put in a ticket in case someone else needs them:
https://sourceforge.net/p/sweethome3d/d-models/290/

ok

Posted by Puybaret at Feb 25, 2014, 9:30:18 AM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
Very nicely done okh smile

Thanks for sharing.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator

Posted by Phoenix_Bedlam at Feb 25, 2014, 1:09:26 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
Kudos on the share....now just to finish off (probably about another month or so solid work) and try and figure out how to do a 3D virtual tour.... :/ (and how light sources work as well! (Eek!)

Posted by condo at Feb 27, 2014, 11:35:44 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
I have been fiddling with translucency for quite some time but with no success.
Could you please enlighten us how you created this semi-transparent glass?

I have imported your object into blender, discovered that the material is set to Z transparency but the values set make no sense to me. I have also played with semi transparent textures but to no avail, objects appear in SH3D either solid or transparent. Too bad PS Elements won't let me add an alpha channel.

I have made my own windows, that is not the problem. I want to create semi-transparent, translucent vertical blinds.

Posted by okh at Feb 28, 2014, 9:06:50 AM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?

I have been fiddling with translucency for quite some time but with no success. Could you please enlighten us how you created this semi-transparent glass?

Both png textures were made semi transparent with the GIMP - one from a photo (perspective adjusted and cropped), the other one just from squares and GIMP effects. Same effect can be achieved with other image editors as well.

In addition, transparency was specified in the .mtl file as discussed in this thread: How to import model of a cabinet with transparent glass panel? Just adding transparency in the .mtl file means you do not have to figure out how to do it in Blender or AoI or whatever smile

ok

PS. I fear any advise I would give on how to do this in Blender would be more confusing than enlightening as I keep getting confused myself...

Posted by okh at Feb 28, 2014, 11:17:14 AM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?

.. png textures were made semi transparent... + ..transparency was specified in the .mtl file ...

I should add that finding the right balance between png transparency and mtl transparency is tricky. Especially with several transparent layers (curtains, window pane, lamp) - and even more so for evening rendering. Some experimenting is needed for the right effect to work for you (and I suspect that a different graphics card could produce different effects).

I added semi-transparent curtains to the model in the Sourceforge ticket (second post) (sorry, didn't have vertical blinds in stock smile

).

Good luck - and consider sharing, I guess vertical blinds are quite common many places.

ok

Posted by hansmex at Feb 28, 2014, 12:29:19 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
Vertical blinds
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Hans

new website - under constuction
hansdirkse.info

Posted by condo at Feb 28, 2014, 9:35:24 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
Thanks for your help. I guess I do know how to make transparent semi-transparent stuff in blender, the problem is that once it is rendered in SH3D, it is no longer semi-transparent.

This is an experiment I did:
left blind: solid, 2nd: alpha 1.0, 3rd: alpha 0.75, 4th: alpha 0.5, 5th: alpha 0.25

top: SH3D preview bottom:hires render
http://www.imagebam.com/image/2df9b9311156561

Hans, thanks, I'm already using one of those models. Wanted to improve it and make it translucent or make my own

Posted by okh at Mar 1, 2014, 12:40:56 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
You don't mention whether you use a texture too. Maybe that would help. Possibly a png with a mix of opaque and transparent pixels?

ok

Posted by hansmex at Mar 1, 2014, 12:58:00 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
I converted a model from the Sketchup Warehouse in such a way that the vertical blinds now have two sides.
You can apply a different texture to each side, including (partially) transparent textures.

2-sided veritcal blinds

H
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Hans

new website - under constuction
hansdirkse.info

Posted by condo at Mar 1, 2014, 6:17:01 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
okh, thank you for your attention. I have tried both. I did some tests today with the glass textures of your stained glass windows, with unsatisfying result.

I start to wonder wether I'm having a renderer issue (driver?). I'm on a iMac 2011 with ATI Radeon 6970M. This is the result when I tried the model from hansmex (left: normal, right: mirrored, both stretched by 50% in length):
http://www.imagebam.com/image/3ecc9a311334028

The goal btw is to have the vertical blinds glow when the sun shines into them, but maybe this is simply not possible.

this is how the real thing looks like and what I'm attempting to simulate one way or the other:
http://www.imagebam.com/image/4e32ca311339068

I also own some furniture with frosted glass, haven't been able to recreate this as well, it is simply transparent like eg. a window.

Posted by okh at Mar 1, 2014, 6:43:02 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
Oh well, transparency is tricky... And your ambition level is fairly high smile

You may be right that your graphics driver/card is playing tricks on you. I seem to remember that Puybaret suggested something to that effect when a model of mine behaved strangely. If you post the unsuccessful file, maybe someone else is willing to try it on different configurations.

Frosted glass, however, should be possible. If you look at the stained glass at the origin of this thread (linked above), it behaves reasonably well in different rendering and light situations.

Please post if you (or someone else) succeed - and I shall keep your issue in mind when I next need something transparent. Good luck.

ok

Posted by hansmex at Mar 1, 2014, 7:40:50 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
@condo

Well, the rendering isn't too bad: I applied a 100% transparent texture to one side, and a "bl&w" tiled texture to the other side, where the black (or white?) squares are 100% transparent. That explains the "strange" look of the blinds in the image: it's pretty much the same as it looked on my computer.

The reason I made the model, is that you had a "vehicle" with which to experiment, not to provide a turn-key solution, because I didn't know what kind of result you were after.

Also, there is a problem with SH3D's rendering. Light doesn't bounce like it does in real life. This improves rendering times, but reduces the real-life appearance in some cases. A few months ago, someone provided some images with adapted (improved ?) rendering, using different settings for the rendering engine in the form of a small file. I can't find the original post/thread, but I uploaded the scripts. The links are below. Hopefully these are of help. Put them in the directory where SH3D is, and double-click them to start SH3D with the settings of the file.

Even if they don't solve your problem(s), they serve to show that the rendering engine is quite flexible and accepts all kinds of different parameters. However, beware of rendering times. See this link for some examples of what is possible with the Sunflow rendering engine that SG3D uses.

Hans

default
high
optimized #1
optimized #2
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Hans

new website - under constuction
hansdirkse.info

Posted by condo at Mar 1, 2014, 7:53:53 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
I forgot to thank you as well, hansmex, for all your efforts which was unintentional. I will try those settings tomorrow.

The problem as I see it is that in the 3D preview, it looks all fine but in the rendered image, it looks plain wrong. I'm totally aware of the fact that secondary lighting (glowing of objects after receiving light from a primary light source) is not available, I was just hoping to make the vertical blinds glow as a visual effect, not as a source of light.

I have conducted some further testing, the results look more or less all the same no matter what mtl or alpha png translucency setting I'm using.
It's not the end of the world, I have achieved a lot more then I could have ever imagined.

Once I find suitable webspace, I will upload the testroom that I have created today.

Posted by hansmex at Mar 1, 2014, 8:08:08 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
Forget trying the files I shared, because they won't provide the reflections on the shades you are looking for.
A better guess would be the Sunglow website I referred to, and make a study of what is possible...........

Have you checked out the examples of the SH3D photo render contest? That's about as good as it gets using SH3D. Quite impressive in my opinion.

H
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Hans

new website - under constuction
hansdirkse.info

Posted by gmann001 at Mar 28, 2014, 3:16:14 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
New to the 3d rendering world and I too was wondering if my graphics driver/card may not be adequate. I am trying to make an object (lamp shade on a pendant light) to be semi transparent, but all I get when rendering is full transparency.

I have tried creating a photoshop PNG file (white square set at 90% opacity), and it still comes out as full transparency.

I even set the object to a solid color and tweaked the MTL file so that the materials "d" setting was 0.9 (thinking 0 was full transparent and 1 is opaque), but that too comes out as full transparent.

It seems to me that I can either have full opaque or full transparent. That's why I am wondering if my machine just can't handle. Is this a correct/good assumption?

thank you in advance

Posted by Puybaret at Jun 13, 2014, 1:12:30 AM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
For your information, I improved the rendering of transparent texture in version 4.4.
Hope this will work better now...
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator

Posted by neguan at Jan 9, 2017, 9:35:11 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
I know this is an old thread but just in case someone is still trying to find a way to create stained glass windows.

I needed to create them for a project and it was much easier that I had anticipated:

I chose the window I wanted to use and placed it. Then I clicked over it to go to the "modify furniture" dialog. / Then you can go to "Color and Texture" and chose "Materials:Modify". In the next dialog chose the glass planel, right now is grey and unchanged. Select "texture" and put anything you want. I personally created the final texture before (as a simple jpg) so I imported it. Leave the Shininess to Matt. This way can see the stained glass texture in both sides.

Then in the photo rendering you can see how your window still looks like glass.
If you place small white light sources (from the "furniture - lights" section) right in front of the windows you will see the light shinning when you take an advanced photo.

https://s27.postimg.org/kyezibkmb/small_windows_outside.png

https://s30.postimg.org/skqm1pktt/small_windows_inside.png

Very very very simple.

Posted by BettyGreene at Jan 11, 2017, 2:06:56 PM

Re: Help!! How can I use textures as stained glass?
Interesting. Thanks.

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