Does anyone have any suggestions on how to render expanded metal for the grill of a heater. The comany I work for has had a big problem and now they are spending thousands of dollars on models because they are afraid of using a 3D model to create images for the packaging. I would really like to prove them wrong and show them that the image of the heater I render will look exactly the same as the one they take a picture of. The only thing I ma having trouble with is the grill. Any suggestions. Unfortunately because its still not on the market, I can't show what it looks like, but this is an example of a heater with an expanded grill.
http://imagethumbnails.milo.com/011/873/449/trimmed/11873958_21593449_trimmed.jpg (http://imagethumbnails.milo.com/011/873/449/trimmed/11873958_21593449_trimmed.jpg)
You could model the grill. See my wire speaker grill here:
http://keyshot.com/forum/index.php/topic,2482.msg10109.html#msg10109
You can also experiment with the KeyShot materials that have opacity maps. Look under Materials > Metal > Chrome > Chrome Horizontal
for example. You can make your own opacity map to match your particular grill pattern.
Ed
I have tried to model the grill and wasn't to successful. I will try the alpha channel approach and hopefully get something that will work.
Thanks for the info and the post.
http://blog.keyshot.com/how-to-use-opacity-maps-in-keyshot/
does this help ?
So I figured it out. It was pretty tricky, for me atleast, but I think it work really well. Since I have been fortunate enough to get a lot of things of this forum, I figured I would through something back that people might one day need.
The first image is using just the opacity texture only, which made the image really flat and since I need some depth it wasn't working. I decided to add a bump map which worked really well and that is shown in the second image. Also I have attached a seemless texture, bump map, and opacity map.
If you see anything that might make it a little better, please let me know. Hope you enjoy these maps.
Can't realy tell, but it looks inverted to me ... could just be me ... how does it look if you reverse the bump height from + to - or from - to +
Yeah I agree, hard to tell though.
Thanks for posting the solution, it was exactly what I needed!
Nice work - it looks good. And thanks for posting the materials.