Is it possible to use the KS8 nested dielectrics workflow on an opaque material/liquid in a glass or plastic container or is it strictly for transparent materials/liquids? I often need to place opaque materials in clear containers, a milk shake in a glass, for example. I still use the "old" method of earlier versions of Keyshot, but it would be great not to need to take all those extra steps. Does anyone know if this is possible? I've tried a few things, without any success, but was wondering if anyone has had luck doing this.
I made a candle last night using nested dielectrics, seemed to work as expected.
So, I think you should give it a shot!
The first attached image shows what I was getting.
After contacting support, I found out a couple of things I didn't know.
- Nested dielectrics don't work with advanced materials. I was using a downloaded polypropylene material that was an advanced material type.
- Caustics must be turned on to properly illuminate nested dielectric materials
The material of the cup was changed to a cloudy plastic and then I turned on caustics.
So here is an odd thing. When allowed to render in the Keyshot window, the results were starting to look good. I let it render for 32 samples, then saved a screenshot (2nd attached image). I then sent it off to render on the network for 300 samples. The 3rd image is the result of the network rendering. There are some odd things going on in the cup on the left side. The mottled appearance when looking through the plastic and some orange spots, too.
Turned off caustics and re-rendered using the same settings. This looks like what I was expecting, perhaps I don't need caustics, after all, at least when the material is opaque.
Hey, thanks for doing these tests, they are very informative and I totally appreciate how thorough you were.
I generally try to avoid turning caustics on, but in some cases, it is necessary. Interesting that they told you caustics HAD to be on.
Also, will get different results with interior vs product mode. BTW the end result looks great!
The final image on the right... what materials were eventually used for that?
Totally guessing for fun, I say Cloudy Plastic