Model and render this: Glass brick/block

[solo]

Just a whim of an idea to kick start an easy challenge, model and render a glass block, sounds simple right?

And it is, but there are many ways to do this and lets see which works best and looks best.

Feel free to try anything, go simple, or go crazy detailed, have a simple clear one or patterned, choose heavy glass, clear glass or even frosted glass, just have fun.

[solo]

First go, I did this with just mesh, no bump, used Artisan to create inside warped mesh.

Quick Thea render, crepe myrtle tree behind used to show glass warping effect.

Click on image for larger view

[chedda]

Looks excellent Solo. Although they do repeat. You also need the mortar around the block.I guess my other thread is my submission for this challenge.

[oganocali]

...

[solo]

Ogan, Those are great but they are not glass blocks, but glass panes.

These are glass block sizes:

Inch sizes (actual dimensions, in inches)
5¾ × 5¾ × 3 7⁄8
7½ × 7½ × 3¼ or 4
7¾ × 7¾ × 3 7⁄8
9½ × 9½ × 3 1⁄8
11¾ × 11¾ × 3 7⁄8 or 4 inches

Metric sizes (nominal dimensions, in millimeters)
160 × 160 × 30
190 × 190 × 80 or 100
240 × 115 × 80
40 × 240 × 80

[oganocali]

Oppps sorry.
Here is 160x160x30 mm version. vray bumpmapped pure glass with texcloth.

glassbumpmap.jpg

[Cyberdactyl]

Hi everyone. As you explore refraction with your rendering software, I urge you to look at it deeper than merely the image you want from behind the glass.

[Hieru]

That's really interesting and gives me an idea for a scene/model/render.

[chedda]

Here you go Solo, i polished it up a little but i still see geometry in the corners, meh good enough.

[Hieru]

Looking really good

You know you've been overdoing it in Sketchup when the first thing you do when looking at a render is try and orbit to get another view - doh!

[chedda]

Thanks Hieru , CG produces strange effects in operators, I get quite introverted I need the radio to stay sane. I had strange scenarios in the outside world after too much battlefield (PS3)

[jpalm32]

Pittsburg Glass has SU components & SW for this.

[dale]

Took a stab at it, and it had some definite challenges.
But it was fun.
Glass block via Artisan. Rendered in Thea.

[stefanq]

I did a render long time ago, but I didn't used a glass brick model. It's just a wall( probably out of scale) but it worked for me. Here is the rendering, and the textures I used:

[chedda]

Looking good Dale ! Stefanq also good considering it's only textures, is it just 2 faces or do you have internal faces ? Thanks for the textures.

[Hieru]

I'm still working on mine - I got distracted modelling this - but there are some really ingenious texture only solutions over at the Thea forum.

[dale]

Thanks chedda.
I also played with this diamond block, but abandoned it as I wanted to "suggest"the figure in the shower, and the diamonds just refracted the image too much.
Even the one posted above is not quite subtle enough.
Too me this is where it got interesting as using a straight thin glass was too clear, and using a clear glass material had mixed results. I ended up adding a thin film layer in Thea.
Hope I get more time to play on this as it is an interesting challenge depending on what you want too see through the refractions.
Here is the diamond block image, and the .skp if anybody can ever use it.

Glass block diamond 1.png

Glass Block Diamond.skp

And here is the wave style.

[dale]

I'm still working on mine - I got distracted modelling this - but there are some really ingenious texture only solutions over at the Thea forum.

Seriously cool lamp! Hope you finish the model.
I wonder how using textures v/s modeling mesh alters refracted images behind the block. hmmmm...
Hope to get some time to play.

[solo]

Another one, this time I used a scene provided by TomDC, first is the original render (Thea BSD) with only one light source (open door) HDRI and second is when a wall is replaced with Glass bricks, incredible amount of light gets sucked through glass wall.

[TomDC]

The first one has issues (then, so do I ), but the second one looks great. How long did these render for?

[solo]

The first one rendered for 12 minutes plus some change at 1200x600 default BSD settings
The second was 33 minutes with a different preset (one of my optimised for thick glass interiors)

[TomDC]

I'm rendering this interior with TR1 as we speak. At 6000 pixels wide and supersampling set at 'High'.

Wonder how long that one'll take. Ah, if only unbiased rendering were fast -we'd never have to worry about thresholds and the like again.

[solo]

I'm rendering this interior with TR1 as we speak. At 6000 pixels wide and supersampling set at 'High'.

Yikes dude! That's an overkill, I'd suggest rendering at size needed and at normal super sampling, that will give a great result, or even high super sampling if you want perfection, but 6000 is crazy.

Unbiased is fast, if you have enough cores or a render farm.

[TomDC]

Yikes dude! That's an overkill, I'd suggest rendering at size needed (...)

That is the size needed. It's a test to see how fast TR1 can deliver me images for printing. And er, you're speaking to someone who's rendered as wide as 20000.

[solo]

Yikes dude! That's an overkill, I'd suggest rendering at size needed (...)

That is the size needed. It's a test to see how fast TR1 can deliver me images for printing. And er, you're speaking to someone who's rendered as wide as 20000.

Have you got one of those pesky 24 core 100 plus GB ram rigs? as 20000 wide it beyond anything i could imagine, planning to put a render on the side of a building?

[TomDC]

Nope, same old Mac Pro. A test I did a few years back.

[Hieru]

The other week I tried a 6000px by 3000px TR1 (high supersampling) render for a 360x180 panorama test. I gave up after 12 hours and realised that I needed to get my head around biased render settings.

Luckily your interior with thick glass preset worked really well Solo. And back on topic - really nice scene. Would be perfect if you randomly rotated and reversed some of the blocks for variation.

I can't wait to get back on track with my scene, but this week has been hell .

[notareal]

I'm rendering this interior with TR1 as we speak. At 6000 pixels wide and supersampling set at 'High'.

Yikes dude! That's an overkill, I'd suggest rendering at size needed and at normal super sampling, that will give a great result, or even high super sampling if you want perfection, but 6000 is crazy.

Unbiased is fast, if you have enough cores or a render farm.

Supersamling high is good if you are going to render something to HD sizes or smaller. Not much use with high resolution renders used in posters or if you going to down scale them later. Perhaps some high precession printing can benefit from it.

[Hieru]

I still haven't had chance to do much work on this, but here's a quick teaser of one of the elements I want to use in conjunction with the glass blocks.

[sepo]

Very nice feel to the render...but what happened to caustics? Shouldn't be some on the floor, right?