There is now another general form of transparency restricted to shadow rays (and path tracers):
Code: Select all
scene.materials.glass-right.transparency.shadow = 0.85 0.85 0.85
Note: it accepts only a constant color, not a texture (this is intentional and due to some performance consideration).
The result is:
From left to right:
- a normal glass sphere;
- an architectural glass sphere;
- a normal glass sphere with a shadow transparency of (0.85, 0.85, 0.85);
As I wrote, this is a general material feature:
Not only it works with glass and all other types of glass materials (i.e. roughglass, etc.) but even with solid materials. Note as the red sphere doesn't cast a shadow. Indeed, this is the obvious proof that it is a fake and breaks the energy balance so it has to be use with some care or you may hand with some totally fake/unrealistic rendering.
This feature is intended to resolve the "dark juice" problem, this is a normal rendering:
and this with shadow transparency enabled for the glass:
It looks quite good without the need to have to render SDS paths or other complex and expansive solutions.
Note: as I wrote, BiDir ignore this property, it is valid only for path tracers.