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#1

For the past couple of months I have mainly been focusing on my writing since I am an aspiring novelist. But I couldn’t resist the call of Blender. Instead of finishing the Blender course that I am following I decided to work on my own project. I combined two things that I love: my pet bunny Shadow and Starfield. Meet Shadow, the cute but deadly space bunny :slightly_smiling_face: and Constellation’s newest member.
I still want to create a booster pack and weather the space suit.

I noticed that in the renders with an HDRI background, the glass part of the helmet is rendered nicely. But when I combine the render with a background image (Starfield wallpaper) through Composition the helmet is not rendered properly anymore. Can anyone help me with this problem?
Thanks.

I will try to get back to my course asap. It would be nice to finish it before the end of the year.

ConstellationShadow_View1
ConstellationShadow_View11920×1080 378 KB

HDRI_View2b
HDRI_View2b1920×1080 154 KB

HDRI_View2c
HDRI_View2c1920×1080 170 KB

HDRI_View2d
HDRI_View2d1920×1080 143 KB

HDRI_View2e
HDRI_View2e1920×1080 146 KB

7 Likes
#2

Great job, a very cool space bunny! Don’t worry about taking a step away from the course, projects like this are how we learn the most.

For the helmet problem – what’s your compositor setup? Rendering with transparent film and then using an Alpha Over node?

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#3

Yes, that’s exactly how I did it. A transparent film and then using an Alpha Over node.

#4

Hm, difficult to say without more information. Are you using a Transparent BSDF for the helmet? What is plugged into the factor of the Alpha Over node?

If you show some screenshots we can try to solve. :slight_smile:

#5

Hi Myn,

I have made some screenshots of the BSDF of the glass material and Compositing Nodetree.
Thank you for helping me out. I really appreciate it.

Compositing
Compositing939×537 47.6 KB

Glass_PrincBSDF
Glass_PrincBSDF385×574 41.3 KB

2 Likes
#6

No problem. The first thing to try is plugging the Alpha output of your render layer into the Fac of Alpha Node:
image

If that doesn’t work then I can suggest a different glass material which works better with transparency, but try that first. :slight_smile:

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#7

Hi Myn,

I tried it, but the result was just the same.

I also tried a different approach. Instead of using Compositing, I used an Image Texture for the World background. This preserved the transparency of the helmet as can be seen in the added picture.
I am still willing to try a different glass material since I assume that the Compositing approach will be easier for animations, right? Can you please tell me which other advantages there are for using Compositing instead of imposing a world background image?

ConstellationShadow_BackgroundImage2
ConstellationShadow_BackgroundImage21920×1080 346 KB

2 Likes
#8

Yeah, Image Texture is probably the best approach here. Strange that the transparency isn’t working though. You could try mixing a Glossy and Transparent shader to create some glass instead, which should then work with the Alpha into the Fac.
image

But if Image Texture does what you need, definitely go with that to keep things simpler! :slight_smile:

Someone else would be best answering the Compositor advantages question, since I’m still learning a lot of the Compositor and I always ignored it until a month ago. However, I find its strength is to add in some nice after-effects (like colour changes or softening edges) and to make changes without needing to re-render the whole image. For example, if you spent an hour rendering that image and then decided to change the background, I would have to render it again. In the Compositor, it would take a few clicks.

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