Render this: Stained glass

Al Hart

Thanks for the model WIP. I've been playing with it for a day or so. There are lots of things to play with - like the amount of transparency, translucency, refraction, and daylight processing for the glass. And the lighting outside. Rather than direct sun, I chose a sunset sky HDRi for the sky. It gives an interesting, different effect.

EscapeArtist

OK, here's my "entry. I'm having no end of trouble with the textures, so this is still a WIP. Maybe I'll get around to finishing it, but I have a real window I need to work on.

All SU and Kerky.

Edit: I said I was done messing with this but I guess I lied. I couldn't stand leaving it half-finished, so I kept working on it. First shot is the whole thing, the second part is a closeup of the glass - the far view doesn't show the bump mapping. It's all geometry: Window 9' high, 1/4" thick glass, lead cameing is 3/8" and up in thickness. An absurd 800K polys thanks to the lead came.

arail1

This should be in the 'Renders I've Failed At' or whatever that thread was called but I can't seem to find it.
I'd like some advice on how to get some highlights into the glass itself. I like the brick wall. I like the floor. I like the reflections. But the glass itself is quite dead.

Rendered in modo.

Also, I'm wondering if Solo would have any interest in offering a 'Master Tutorial' about his last post in this thread? I keep looking at that image and I can't imagine how it was achieved.

Any help is appreciated.

solo

Arail

My last post was done using Vue 7inf. Basically I used a customised atmosphere with no sun, I added one volumetric spotlight with soft shadows, selected accurate caustics in render options, and blended the glass photo texture with a cathedral glass.

arail1

That was Greek you were speaking right? Ancient Greek if I'm not mistaken?
Seriously though, I'm familiar with the terms volumetric spotlight and caustics, although I haven't yet experimented with them - I've been working in modo for about 3 weeks. But what is 'cathedral glass'?

richcat

Thanks Mr WiP for the model
Done with IRendernXt, saved out as HDRI tone mapped and sharpened.

I also had ago with a model of the Church by Paul Russam - from a while ago. Still needs some work to bring out the chandelier.(feedback from IRender forum)

Al Hart

I'm making a new post to this thread because I wanted to try out this model with a Volumetric Fog effect:

jason_maranto

Here's one from Maxwell Render -- I used a bit of the Maxwell Simulens effect, but no post:

and here's a bit of post:

Best,
Jason.

jason_maranto

Here's a more traditional window type to show off caustics -- Maxwell Render of course, with a little bit of Maxwell Simulens and post.

I'll let it render longer overnight and post an updated version.

Best,
Jason.

jason_maranto

I added a bit of sss to the colors in MrWip's file that were labeled "translucent" and let it render all night -- this has a tiny bit of Maxwell Simulens but no post work: Maxwell Render - 15 hours

Best,
Jason.

solo

I thought I'd give it a play with this morning. I used a standard photo for a window, used the image as a transmittive layer on thick glass material.

stained glass imageres.jpg

Frederik

Looks great, Solo... Crisp and very clean...
What render app did you use and how long time did it take to render...?

solo

Thanks.

Thea render as usual (love that app), I ran it with TR1 for around 2 hours.

zdesayn

very nice disperse...good job.

andybot

Thanks to Solo for pointing out this thread from the vray forum. Pretty cool stuff! The vray output left me a little unsatisfied, so I played around with the material and found that it needs the map to be put into a refraction slot. Here is the result. I could play around bumps and caustic, but thought this is a good start.

Andy

Roger

Tucson Hebrew Academy

A note about capturing stained glass window images:
The brightness range of a stained glass window is often beyond the capability of film or digital media to capture. Typically some panels will be burned out to white and others will be pitch black. For the window above, I bracketed my exposures and selected the best mid tone exposures, the best highlights and the best shadows. And, I needed another even deeper exposure for the children. Then I cut out all the glass that did not look good and replaced it with the proper replacement.

I remember the Torah was black and the kids were nothing more than silhouettes. The dove and some of the village building s were burned out highlights.

To replicate what the highly sensitive eye sees you need make some technical adjustments.

Roger

@arail1 said:

This should be in the 'Renders I've Failed At' or whatever that thread was called but I can't seem to find it.
I'd like some advice on how to get some highlights into the glass itself. I like the brick wall. I like the floor. I like the reflections. But the glass itself is quite dead.

Rendered in modo.

Also, I'm wondering if Solo would have any interest in offering a 'Master Tutorial' about his last post in this thread? I keep looking at that image and I can't imagine how it was achieved.

Any help is appreciated.

Were you hoping for something closer to this?
5 minutes with photoshop

Nina100

Hi guys!
These renders all look amazing im really impressed!

Im currently trying to render some stained glass windows in a church model.
I have read all these posts put they are a bit over my head and was hoping someone could give me more instructions.

Im using google sketch up 8 with vray and want to create the best effect I can get using an imported stained glass image.
I believe this is what 'Andybot' did and it looks great.

Many Thanks
Nina

Al Hart

There are a few basic approaches being used.

The simplest thing to do is to make the glass in the window the color of the desired color, and then shine the sun through it.

Most people, such as this example using Maxwell, added "Caustics" to the reflective properties of the glass. Caustics causes light passing through the glass to distort. (I you are reading while drinking some wine, this look at the shadow f you wine glass on the table. The caustics cause the interesting shadows.

For the IRender nXt exmample, I also added smoke/haze to the room, so you see the beams of light passing through it.

Nina100

Hi Al,

Thank you for replying to my post.

First rookie error....I forgot to switch on the sun lol!

I really like the caustics effect you have given an example of as my reflections of light are very stiff. But I cant seem to find that option in my vray materials editor. Do you know if this is avaliable in vray?

I love the smoke/haze effect aswell, how did you create that?

After reading posts on here and info from a few other sites I created my stain glass windows the following way. Its prob not the best way but it works and thought it would be useful to share for other beginners

Adding the "stain glass" image to the window as a material.
In vray material editor adding a "refraction" layer
In the refraction layer changing the brdf diffuse transparency to white
In brdf refraction adding a map of my "stain glass" image

If someone can let me know how to upload images onto here I will post the results