Curtain with transparency

[Zvi]

What material should I use to create a curtain with transparency?

[NM-92]

I reccomend an advanced plastic for quicker render times, though a translucent should be ideal to let some light come through the fabric.

[Zvi]

I reccomend an advanced plastic for quicker render times, though a translucent should be ideal to let some light come through the fabric.

Thank You MM-92.

[DMerz III]

I've done some transparent "fabrics" using translucent with an opacity mask. If you use the "fabric" weave procedural, you can change the "gap" color to a mid-tone grey, and get some nice transparency going. You'll want your two other channels "fabric 1 and 2" to be closer to white though so they're not appearing transparent. You'll have to play wit it a little.

Also, if you want the curtain fabric to have a shimmer to it, I've used anisotropic material to get more glimmer. If you need some beginners tips or explanation on that material type, see Richard's latest webinar on metal materials.

[Zvi]

I've done some transparent "fabrics" using translucent with an opacity mask. If you use the "fabric" weave procedural, you can change the "gap" color to a mid-tone grey, and get some nice transparency going. You'll want your two other channels "fabric 1 and 2" to be closer to white though so they're not appearing transparent. You'll have to play wit it a little.

Also, if you want the curtain fabric to have a shimmer to it, I've used anisotropic material to get more glimmer. If you need some beginners tips or explanation on that material type, see Richard's latest webinar on metal materials.

Thank you.
Can you explain more about using translucent with an opacity mask?

[DMerz III]

I'll do my best. (Apologies if I'm talking above or below what you know, just going to go through the process I used in this test).

For this test, I am using a cloth model I found on cgtrader.com

So if you're using KS6, there are 2 translucent material types. One is named 'Translucent', and the other is named 'Translucent (Advanced)'. I don't know the technical different between the two, but I usually go with the regular Translucent because it gives me the option to turn on 'Global Illumination' in the material itself (which you'll need to use to get the result I have.

While in your material tab, find the tab that says textures. There will be 3 "channels" Transmission, Bump, and Opacity.

Click on the Opacity box. This is the most important part. You don't even need to use Translucent to get this texture channel.

Now, to the top right corner of this panel, you'll have a bar that says None. Click it and select "Cloth Weave". This is a procedural texture, built into the program. I find that the scale here is usually pretty off, you'll need to go super low to get a 'fine' weave. Here I used .0001 on the scale, it shows up as '0' when I hit enter.

The rest of the parameters are up to you to decide, but for these purposes I only changed the 3 color channels. The most important is 'Gap Color', because if you think of what's happening in reality, the gap between threads is what gives that "sheer" look, there's nothing there, so the material should be 'not visible' in the gaps. The opacity channel reads white as opaque (or solid) and black as transparent (or see-through). So I went with something fairly black, like a 10% value, from my experience, it just looks a little better not to go with pure black or pure white in these channels (results may vary). The next two colors are Thread U and Thread V. These are your actual threads, so they should be fairly opaque, light would hit them and reflect, but with 'sheer' curtains, they've got a slightly transparency to them, so make them slightly grey-white, not 100% white.

Here's some screenshots of my settings and results. In order to get the color you're looking for, you'll have to play with properties a bit.