OTOY Forums

I noticed that transmission is not documented for the diffuse material of Octane. In my tests, it seems as though its purpose is to strengthen the bouncing of environment light off of that surface. Is this assumption correct? Right now, it seems as though this property does not apply to any other type of light source, and the transmission property on the specular node behaves similarly (except that it determines base color of the reflected surface and reflected light)

I know I was told to use it when I was trying to make some LEAFS on a tree. I can imagine it's similar to Translucency in Native LW. Will be interesting to hear someone else with more knowledge describe it's use and usefulness.

3dreamstudios wrote:I know I was told to use it when I was trying to make some LEAFS on a tree. I can imagine it's similar to Translucency in Native LW. Will be interesting to hear someone else with more knowledge describe it's use and usefulness.

I've already determined that it can be used to balance the light of an otherwise dark interior to eliminate excessive noise in dark corners, this combined with the imager node can get high contrast results without the noise. At least that's what i've found it to be useful for... as I struggled with interior scenes that were lit exclusively by daylight environment, and windows only being present on one wall.

I'm not sure that this kind of "cheat" is the diffuse surface transmission's true purpose, however.