OTOY Forums

Hi,

Just a quick question, is it possible to have absorbtion or scattering medium on open meshes such as planes, landscape objects, sea etc?

Thanks.

Hi Mikla,

While it it is possible to, for instance, enable transmission or SSS on thin meshes, such "physical shading" requires physical-plausible mesh, with thickness/depth. Therefore, any non-plausible zero-depth object will not be viable.
Having thickness/depth will also produce plausible results when rendering, regardless of whether it is for object/edible/character SSS, a liquid container, refraction and so on.

With surfaces without thickness, like leaves and so on, you can use the Transmission channel in Diffuse/Universal materials to simulate sss:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=54391&hilit=money+t ... on#p276883

Whit sea, the things are slightly different, since the ray doesn't change IOR until hits another surface, you can use a simple plane without thickness to simulate the sea/water with a Specular material, and use both Absorption or Scattering nodes in the Medium pin.

ciao,
Beppe