Is there an option for invisible material or component?

[Daniel Kurth]

Hello and I hope I am here in the right section?
I am supposed to render a piece of furniture from several perspectives in a small, narrow room in order to get an overall picture of an apartment. So far so good.
The problem is that I quickly end up with the camera but outside the room or in other parts.
So that I don't see these parts I'm currently experimenting with different materials like "Emmessive", "Area Light", X-Ray or Toon, because you can set these materials to "not visible for camera".
This works partly quite well but sometimes you see lines or boundaries somewhere that shouldn't be there. Or they are completely out of the shadow calculations. What I do not want.

From there the question is if there are other materials that make components invisible but still form shadows with them?
Or actually I would like to have this function for components.
So active in shadow calculation but not visible for the camera.
Here are some screenshots where I would like to have the outer wall and window invisible. The shadows of the window frames or the wall are of course visible.

[INNEO_MWo]

There is an experimental feature called ray mask. This utility can be used for scene like yours. As you can see in my attached screenshot, there is a sphere with a simple diffuse material the is noticeable in the reflections of the metal cube. And it enables shadows as well.

Just toggle off the options the the ray mask node and plug it into the opacity channel of the material you want to hide.

Sidenote: if you want to activate the experimental features you have to close KeySot. Then edit the ks10settings.xml with a text editor. Search for "experi" and set <experimental_features bool="true"/> ("false" is the default)

Then restart KeyShot and you can use the ray mask in the material graph.
But (!!!) experimental features doesn't work in every way. E.g. the ray mask won't work in GPU mode.


Hope that helps

CheerEO
Marco

[Daniel Kurth]

There is an experimental feature called ray mask. This utility can be used for scene like yours. As you can see in my attached screenshot, there is a sphere with a simple diffuse material the is noticeable in the reflections of the metal cube. And it enables shadows as well.

Just toggle off the options the the ray mask node and plug it into the opacity channel of the material you want to hide.

Sidenote: if you want to activate the experimental features you have to close KeySot. Then edit the ks10settings.xml with a text editor. Search for "experi" and set <experimental_features bool="true"/> ("false" is the default)

Then restart KeyShot and you can use the ray mask in the material graph.
But (!!!) experimental features doesn't work in every way. E.g. the ray mask won't work in GPU mode.


Hope that helps

CheerEO
Marco

Hi Marco,
thank you very much for this "secret" tip!
I play a little bit with this experimental feature but also couldn't get the result which I want.
The first picture shows excelent shadows, but as you can see the edges of the components are visible.
For the second image I moved the slider to completely invisible.
This makes the edges AND the shadows disappear. 

[INNEO_MWo]

the problem is, when you use the ray mask on solid bodies. When the camera "looks through" different "invisible" objects, you'll recognize the intersections.
 but if you only use a single surface (not thickened), then the camera would look perfectly through the wall, that causes shadows and reflections. So the challenge is to build one surface that represents several materials like glass, paint and metal.


Sorry for the short form.

[Daniel Kurth]

the problem is, when you use the ray mask on solid bodies. When the camera "looks through" different "invisible" objects, you'll recognize the intersections.
 but if you only use a single surface (not thickened), then the camera would look perfectly through the wall, that causes shadows and reflections. So the challenge is to build one surface that represents several materials like glass, paint and metal.


Sorry for the short form.

aha, that's it . Instead of the components, I have now put surfaces that roughly correspond to the window frames in place and set with the "invisible" material. And look, it works great!

Thank you again Marco!

[INNEO_MWo]

glad, that this solution helps with your scene.


CheerEO
Marco

[cameraman!1]

Hello and I hope I am here in the right section?
I am supposed to render a piece of furniture from several perspectives in a small, narrow room in order to get an overall picture of an apartment. So far so good.
The problem is that I quickly end up with the camera but outside the room or in other parts.
So that I don't see these parts I'm currently experimenting with different materials like "Emmessive", "Area Light", X-Ray or Toon, because you can set these materials to "not visible for camera".
This works partly quite well but sometimes you see lines or boundaries somewhere that shouldn't be there. Or they are completely out of the shadow calculations. What I do not want.

From there the question is if there are other materials that make components invisible but still form shadows with them?
Or actually I would like to have this function for components.
So active in shadow calculation but not visible for the camera.
Here are some screenshots where I would like to have the outer wall and window invisible. The shadows of the window frames or the wall are of course visible.

You are definitely in the right place. Hope you can get your problem solved as soon as possible.Oh, and thank you for sharing these photos!

[Daniel Kurth]

You are definitely in the right place. Hope you can get your problem solved as soon as possible.Oh, and thank you for sharing these photos!

Hi,
if you look at the last picture, I would say that my problem has been solved. 

/edit
and today I experimented again with the ray mask node.
With it, I have virtually "hidden" an entire house page.

PS: This was probably also done with the "cutaway" material. Since the wall I wanted to hide was not drawn in, I simply traced a panel and used the ray mask node.