Need help with "Clear Ice" and Pearlized materials

[Terry]

We have a couple of plastic substrates that I can't figure out how to create the material for in Keyshot. One is called "clear ice" and is (semi)clear polyproylene with silver flecks embedded in the material. How to show the flecks? The other plastic is what we call "pearl" and has the soft sheen of pearl. Something like a soft metallic look. I tried adjusting metallic colors but couldn't hit it quite right. I've attached some images for reference.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
Terry

[edwardo]

'Metallic paint' material will give you the pearlized look

'Dielectric' material will give you the clear ice look

I imagine you'll have to do something tricky to get the metallic flakes cast inside the clear ice. Maybe off setting a surface,  set to a shiny chrome and use an opacity map to delete everything but the flakes and a bump map to change/randomise the apparent angle of each flake ??

Ed

[edwardo]

dont know if this is on the right tracks...

Iv also attached the alpha map

Ed

[Terry]

Thanks Ed. That seems perfect. I'm totally new to this so I don't know exactly what you did but that's the effect I'm after. If it's not too much trouble could you do a couple of screen shots showing the process/settings you used? I very much appreciate your help.
Terry

[edwardo]

Hi Terry, yes I'll do just that when i get a chance. In the mean time i'll try and quickly explain....

inside the 'clear ice' chip there is another, separate piece of geometry - a flat circular plane to which a separate material can be assigned. This flat plane will mimic the shiny flakes in your chip. I assigned an opacity map to that circular plane (the previously attached black and white image). The black pixels = transparent/invisible, the white pixels = opaque! After that i applied a bump map to this circular plane, this gives the impression that each flake is angled slightly differently, thus some will glint in the light and some wont.

If you want a certain amount of depth to your flakes, you might want to layer a few of these circular planes up (and offset each opacity map so that in each layer the flakes appear to be in different places. I suppose it depends what angle your taking your shot from.

I suspect that good results here will come from the lighting...maybe. Try adding a few small but sharp and bright pin lights. Also spending a bit of time in photoshop getting your opacity map right will help. As you can see I just splattered a maple leaf shaped brush about.

Hope this helps for now

[Terry]

Edwardo,
Thanks for the idea and it would definitely create the effect but if new geometry needs to be added, I can't do that (if I'm understanding what you are describing). The files come from our engineering department and they won't be able to take the time to change their files. And, we have dozens of products (plastic mugs) that would need the clear ice look. I pretty much need to stick with texture or label.

[timb]

Can you try duplicating the mug and apply the above flakes image as a Opacity map (to the duplicate).  You may need to scale down the new "duplicate" geometry by .99999 or just until it can't be seen.  Then try materials as needed.  I attached a quick rendering, it would need a lot of material adjustment.

[Terry]

Thanks Tim, I'll give it a try