Tutorial on plexiglas material in max

[rikki1211]

Hi guys

does anyone have any good links to 3ds max material tutorials?
I need a sort of plastik material with a milky white transparent surface where objects behind look rather blurred.
it should look like the vessel on the left in this picture:
http://www.roche-applied-science.com...vice_instr.jpg


has anyone any hints on this or can anybody give me some advice how to achieve this effect?

thanks a lot

[elshopper]

i don't know where you can find a tutorial, but maybe if you try a raytraced material with a white difusse color, a noise bump, and a gray in the transparent you may get that result

[Black]

Or infact a grey dominant noise for your transparency.

But these will only get you a foggy volume... I don't know if the out-put would really suit your needs. You have to noise ramp manage the fresnel.. and honestly I never tried that on Max. See if the transparency works for you first.

[rikki1211]

thanks a lot for ur advices so far,

I´m using max6; would it be easier to try a MR material for it?

[Black]

Mmm actually yes;

Had you been a MaYA user.. it would have been so much easier for me to help you.. Lets see what I can do though.

You see the object you have pointed out is actually Blurry because it has an un-even and bumpy superfacial envelope. (Hey that sounded cool)
So the micro facets reflect things AND refract things a bit diffrently.
Now if you want to create a PlexiGlass effect.. then a simple texture construction such WOULD be efficient enough. But if you want to create a material identical to the image; then there is alot of tweeking involved.

A simple object with a blurry reflection would be posible through a material called DGS. If you have a search for it in your documentations I am sure you'll find more information on adopting it to your projects. The DGS bit stands for Diffuse, Glossy, Specular.. it's a material with all of it baked in one. so you are ale to adjust the blur pul along the U and the V directions to your own desire.
So a way to FAKE the DGS node, you may want to use an Antistropic material with a pale cyan tint as colour as your transparency and play with your specularity settings until you get the solarised look you need.A diffuse of around mid high would be efficient... But it all depends on the settings you go for. Just have to sort of play around with it all.

But in your case you are going to need something more like a frosted material since transparency is invovledn if you want perfect ressemblence.
You have to try and fake something called multiple sub surface scattering (For having a better idea of what you are getting yourself into you may want to skim through this document)
And for how THAT effect can be applied to Max, IS something I shall have to study on before I give you any false guidences.

I hope this wasn't too confusing.