It now must not only calculate the lighting and material, but also the way in which the light/materials reflect or refract and what will be seen as a result. As a side note, you will notice that adding a reflection layer and/or a refraction layer will cause an increase in render time because of the increase in computing the machine is asked to do. Otherwise, the computer will try to calculate this difference, but be unable to (think of it as dividing by 0) and freak out, resulting in a black output. As a result, any object that you apply a material with a refraction layer to MUST have a thickness. The light waves are deflected or change angle between the top surface of the material and the back surface. But to review, refraction is the visual distortion that occurs as a result of a transparent or translucent material having some level of density to it. Hopefully this helps! As always, please leave a comment or let me know if there’s anything that needs clarification.įor those who aren’t keeping up, I have gone through a brief explanation of the differences between reflection and refraction in my previous post. Don’t worry fellow Rhino and 3D Max users, the next tutorial will talk about how to pull this out of sketchup and into another program. Because of the past connection between Google, Google Earth, and (formerly) Google Sketchup, this technique starts and is fundamentally rooted in Sketchup. Needless to say, I’m not typically a sketchup user, but I do have to say, this technique is VERY helpful. I know that a number of you have heard my rants on sketchup and for those who haven’t I’m sure it’ll come up in the future. Fortunately for me, I remembered a technique that I learned a while ago, using buildings from Google Earth (and more specifically the Google 3d warehouse) to bring into sketchup. Recently I’ve found myself needed to create a number of very quick context models for various project sites. I’ve created my first video tutorial this evening.

3d warehouse rhino 6