The Global ARCHICAD Community

[Daniel Smedley]

I'm trying to get an effect to match the attached image. It's a multiwall polycarbonate. Obviously the appeal is the fact that is glows with internal lights on. I can get a material to glow using pipeline but it is a bit uniform. Can't get the effect of the lights on inside and the distortion due to the high level of refraction. Need to also get an impression of the structure behind.

I'm doing this in ArchiCAD with Lightworks. Any help would be much appreciated.

[Dwight]

You'll need to apply a scrim of tiny white dots to your glazing - a masked image. The combination of bright dots and transparency at a small scale creates the diffuse translucency you need.

Of course, the success of this depends on your internal lighting quality.

[Kate_d]

Hi there,

I'm also trying to do the effect of this cellular polycarbonate material using Cinerender...could you please help?
The product is 16mm Danpalon...

Any help would be most appreciated,
Kate

[Erwin Edel]

There is a transparant plastic preset material surface you can add to your project, you may want to change the colour a bit. To add this go to your surfaces dialogue, click 'new...', 'new from catalog' and search for 'plastic'.

You would need to model the two layers (at least) of the panels and give them the plastic surface finish.

For lighting inside you can add a General Light and disable the light decay over distance. Set a strength value in lumen or candela. This should evenly light up the interior.

[Kate_d]

Thanks a million for your reply, I will give this a try now

[Erwin Edel]

This is a very short starting point, since things are dependant on render settings, lighting etc etc

The 'glow' effect also exists, but you might as well do that in post production (photoshop or similar) since it doesn't give any actual light to the scene, just gives the suggestion of light. So no shadows etc. It also increases render time a lot.

Not sure how much time the render should take and how real it should look.

We generally want our renders to be fairly quick, since the client will want to see them throughout many design changes. For this purpose the standard library of cinerender surfaces is allways a good starting point.