Kapton / Polyimide Film

[philw]

Hi all - has anyone successfully made a Kapton / Polyimide Film material that looks good? I'm struggling  a bit to make some small electronic sensors that are mostly made up from polyimide and adhesive layers (all only microns thick) - material is difficult (I've experimented loads) and then trying to make the scene "pop" as a whole is a challenge!

Any tips greatly appreciated!

[Speedster]

Challenge is an understatement!  Here's my shot at it, based on Kapton film I have here in the office, which I use to surface the heated build platform on my 3D printer.

I think you have to ignore the multiple layers, and go for the cumulative effect of the layers on color and transparency.

The first shot is just an imported plane, moved above an imported ground plane.  The second shot has the Kapton film plane duplicated and moved a very tiny amount up to add "thickness.  The underside layer is a slightly lighter tweak of the base color.  I used "glass", but single-sided.

The neat thing is that you could add a map to the bottom layer to simulate any circuit traces.

Hope this helps, and I'm sure others will pipe in as well, as this is truly a difficult material!

Bill G

[philw]

Thanks Bill - I'm experimenting with a glass base material too... I have copper traces sandwiched between two polyimide layers (25microns thick each) - held apart by a 30micron clear adhesive layer. The copper traces are only 12 microns thick.

In real life, the copper ends up looking black when in the sandwich...

Even when I get the colours and materials close, the thin nature of everything makes it difficult to light for interest so trying to enhance with depth of field just to make it interesting, otherwise they end up looking like flat artwork in Illustrator.

I struggle to find a HDRI that brings out the best on such scenes...

[Speedster]

Make sure there is a very tiny "gap" between the layers.  Also, increase your ray bounces to at least three or more for each layer.  I suggest trying about 12-18 ray bounces.
Bill G

[philw]

A work in progress...still need to tweak...