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Toolbag 4 transparency problem

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modimist polycounter lvl 2
In Toolbag 4 no matter which renderer I use I'm not getting any transparency in my renders, meaning the transparent material in the scene has no alpha. Ideally, I'd like to get the same transparency results you'd get with the default glass shader in Toolbag 3, but with the quality of ray tracing in 4. Like I said I'm getting nothing in either renderer in Toolbag 4 but with raytracing theres an added issue that it seems like the sky HDRI is reflecting back from the inside of the material? Not sure if this is a bug or a limitation, which I hope its not the latter considering 3 was capable of this. Any assistance would be extremely appreciated.

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  • NhodgesVFX
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    NhodgesVFX triangle
    @modimist your using refraction correct? I don't think marmoset supports rending refraction to alpha.  as far as the hdri reflection back this is how refraction works, not just in marmoset but everywhere, its intended. Additive transparency is fundamentally different than refraction as such the results are different. As a note those black spots in the render could likely be removed by increasing the transmission rays. 

    Last but not least I really like the 2nd one in tb4 it feels like an mini ocean planet.


    here is example with blender cycles which show what normal refraction and transparent refraction look like and how its different from additive transpacery

    Regular refraction

    regular refraction alpha

    transparent refraction

    transparent refraction alpha

  • modimist
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    modimist polycounter lvl 2
    @NhodgesVFX Hey thanks for the response! Been nearly 2 weeks I've been trying to get answers from all over the place. Including Marmoset themselves.

    Okay so I'm confused about "as far as the hdri reflection back this is how refraction works, not just in marmoset but everywhere, its intended." because of your "transparent refraction" examples. I think it might just be hard to spot the HDRI in those, but also the transparency is there, which you're saying is a limitation in Toolbag? Meaning the "transparent refraction" examples are impossible in Marmoset, yes?

    As far as I can tell additive transparency has been removed? I only see Dither and Cutout. Having tried both renderers and all settings I'm aware of (hoping I missed something), I can't get transparency at all. Do you know if it's possible like it was in Toolbag 3? Just realized I'm not even sure how to get transparency without using Refraction in the Transmission settings.

    Yeah it kinda does lol. So far the only fix I've found which defeats the whole purpose of transparency is to add a plane behind the sphere. Still kinda has that mini planet look just with less HDRI. A solution I hope I don't have to resort to!


  • NhodgesVFX
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    NhodgesVFX triangle
    @modimist in the transparent refraction blender uses a threshold to determine what is transparent and what is refractive, this is primarily used for compositing purposes. Without the above feature in marmoset it probably wont be possible to get a an alpha from the refraction. It might be possible to do a custom alpha in a shader though.

    Yes, I think additive transparency has been removed as well. The best solution to your problem would be to write a custom shader. Other than that you could play around with refractive index to get a closer look. I also noticed with raytracing off refraction looks kind of similar to additive transparency but its not great. Other than that there's the plane method you suggested.

    earthquake might be able to add more suggestions.
  • modimist
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    modimist polycounter lvl 2
    Well. Thats a bummer. I unfortunately have zero programming experience, but maybe somebody will put out an addon one day. I sill haven't heard back from anyone at marmoset but maybe they'll have more info, like it's a feature thats coming or at least an explanation why they removed it. Or like you suggested another workaround. Plane method for now I guess.

    True, we shall see. Thanks again for the help.
  • fuadkarim
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    fuadkarim polycounter lvl 4
    additive refraction has its advantages. For example, I want to get this kind of result (Marmoset Toolbag 3). But at the moment, without additive refraction (Marmoset Toolbag 4), I cannot get it. It's a pity ... Can anyone tell me how to do this? Maybe you have any solution?...
  • EarthQuake
    fuadkarim said:
    additive refraction has its advantages. For example, I want to get this kind of result (Marmoset Toolbag 3). But at the moment, without additive refraction (Marmoset Toolbag 4), I cannot get it. It's a pity ... Can anyone tell me how to do this? Maybe you have any solution?...
    Try using the Thin Scatter model in Transmission
  • fuadkarim
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    fuadkarim polycounter lvl 4
    fuadkarim said:
    additive refraction has its advantages. For example, I want to get this kind of result (Marmoset Toolbag 3). But at the moment, without additive refraction (Marmoset Toolbag 4), I cannot get it. It's a pity ... Can anyone tell me how to do this? Maybe you have any solution?...
    Try using the Thin Scatter model in Transmission
    But Thin Surface is not transparent...


  • EarthQuake
    fuadkarim said:
    fuadkarim said:
    additive refraction has its advantages. For example, I want to get this kind of result (Marmoset Toolbag 3). But at the moment, without additive refraction (Marmoset Toolbag 4), I cannot get it. It's a pity ... Can anyone tell me how to do this? Maybe you have any solution?...
    Try using the Thin Scatter model in Transmission
    But Thin Surface is not transparent...


    Sorry, I should have said try Thin Surface with a Scatter value of 0.

    Also, I realized that in raster mode in the 4.02 build Thin Surface will be somewhat opaque with a value of 0. This is fixed in our internal build and will be included in the 4.03 release. For the time being Thin Surface will be fully transparent when scatter is set to 0 in ray tracing mode, but not raster.

    4.03 will include an option to use Refraction and set the distortion independently from the reflectivity as well, which may be suitable for this type of effect.
  • fuadkarim
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    fuadkarim polycounter lvl 4
    fuadkarim said:
    fuadkarim said:
    additive refraction has its advantages. For example, I want to get this kind of result (Marmoset Toolbag 3). But at the moment, without additive refraction (Marmoset Toolbag 4), I cannot get it. It's a pity ... Can anyone tell me how to do this? Maybe you have any solution?...
    Try using the Thin Scatter model in Transmission
    But Thin Surface is not transparent...


    Sorry, I should have said try Thin Surface with a Scatter value of 0.

    Also, I realized that in raster mode in the 4.02 build Thin Surface will be somewhat opaque with a value of 0. This is fixed in our internal build and will be included in the 4.03 release. For the time being Thin Surface will be fully transparent when scatter is set to 0 in ray tracing mode, but not raster.

    4.03 will include an option to use Refraction and set the distortion independently from the reflectivity as well, which may be suitable for this type of effect.

    Thank you for your answer. When will this version be released?
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