A design model in a transparent design model - how can I do it best?

[dawatz]

Hi folks

Just got the chance to put my design from my master thesis in a publication. To make my point clear in a visual way I want to show my designed battery within a standard one. But it doesn´t look good ): Does someone has an idea how to do it better?
I think it´s just important to see the outline of the standard battery and have full details of the new idea.

Cheers
dawatz

[Anindo Ghosh]

You could try applying the Contour material to the outer battery. That will eliminate the refractions, leaving only the edges of the outer battery penciled in.

[dawatz]

thanks (:

that was my first idea as well - but it looked like this:

[designgestalt]

hello dawatz,

first of all, you need to have some sort of idea, what you are really after...
try to find some inspiration pics,  that show, what you would like to achive. Then try to figure out, how you could mimik that effect.

I am quite sure, that you will not succeed with a single image, but rather a set of images that you edit in Photoshop or any other program afterwards...

I have added a screengrab of an animation I did a while back, which will probably go into the kind of direction you are after.
But here I rendered the red material as a single image, than I rendered the helmet with the following materials:
- Toon (which gave me the outline; I added a slight glow effect in post production)
- Dark Black Glass material (that I used for the harsher light contrasts)
- Glass Material (crank up the Global Illumination to avoid dark refractions)
- X-ray

You have to play around with the different blending modes like multiply, soft light, hard light etc. as well as with the transparency of the different layer to achive this kind of effect...

but this could be a start.
lighting is a key element, dont use the standard environment, use something like "2 panels straight" as a start and add some manual lights to bring more finesse to the scene
and put some more love into the materials for the rest of the parts. At the moment they look very dull and flat.

hope that helps for the start.
Post your results, we will see how we can further improve them ...

cheers
designgestalt