Transparency Adjustments

This article explains some of the rendering differences for transparent faces between SketchUp and IRender nXt and some of the Transparency Adjustments made by IRender nXt to compensate for it.

White Material adjustments

These are 11 transparent faces in SketchUp - moving from 10% transparency to 100%.


This is the same model rendered with nXt with no transparency adjustments. (30% transparent in SketchUp (70% Opaque) becomes 30% transparent in nXt). The IRender nXt image is less transparent then the SketchUp image.
This is rendered with transparency adjustments. The increased transparency matches the SketchUp model more closely.



Black Transparent Material

These are 11 transparent faces in SketchUp - moving from 100% transparency to 0%. The underlying face color is Black.


When rendered by nXt with no modifications, all faces appear as black, because nXt transparency does not let any color through which is not present in the underlying material.


IRender nXt automatically adjusts the base color towards white based on the amount of transparency. This allows some light to come through. But they still aren't as transparent as the faces in SketchUp.
We adjust the transparency a bit to make it make match SketchUp better.


Adjusting the White image

However, applying the same adjustments to the white image, makes it too transparent.
Original SketchUp rendering.


Blue Transparent Material

Here is a similar set of images for a blue transparent face.

These are 11 transparent faces in SketchUp - moving from 100% transparency to 0%. The underlying face color is Blue.


When rendered by nXt with no modifications, all faces appear as blue, because nXt transparency does not let any color through which is not present in the underlying material.


IRender nXt automatically adjusts the base color towards white based on the amount of transparency. This allows some light to come through. But they still aren't as transparent as the faces in SketchUp.
We adjust the transparency a bit to make it make match SketchUp better.


See also