SpeedSix.Glass   (Discreet Box4)



PURPOSE

Glass simulates the refraction caused by a sheet of glass whose thickness varies from point to point. You can visualise its operation by thinking about what would happen if you took a photograph and placed a ripply sheet of glass some fixed distance above it then looked through the glass at the photograph. In our case, the 'ripples' in the glass are precisely controlled by the luminance of an image, which in effect determines the thickness of the glass at every pixel. You can get all sorts of watery and lens-like effects by choosing the control image appropriately.

glassa.jpg glassb.jpg



INPUT CLIPS

 1: Glass : Imagine a piece of textured glass through which you are looking.
 2: Behind Glass : The scene beyond the glass which will be distorted depending on the 'thickness' of the glass. The thickness is controlled by the luminance of this clip.



Glass   CONTROL PAGE

BlackHeight  (Number  Min: 0.0, Max: 100.0, Default: 10.0)
     Glass thickness corresponding to black in the Glass image. The units are multiples of the image width. i.e. for this purpose, the image is considered to be 1 unit wide.

WhiteHeight  (Number  Min: 0.0, Max: 100.0, Default: 20.0)
     Glass thickness corresponding to white in the Glass image.

Index  (Number  Min: 1.0, Max: 10.0, Default: 1.4)
     Refractive index of the glass. The higher this number, the more the light will be bent.

Invert map  (Checkbox  Default: Off)
     Invert the effect of black through white in the 'glass' clip.

ImageFill  (List Box  Options: Duplicate | Black | Wrap, Default: Duplicate)
Controls how areas of the output image that should be (partially) filled by areas of the input image, are to be filled.
Edge Duplication: which repeats the contents of the nearest edge of the input image.
Black: fills input image regions with black. This is often useful, and looks most like real glass (where you get total internal reflection).
Wrap: treats the input image as an infinite repeat tiling, so regions that would be just off the left hand edge get mapped to just in the right hand edge for example.
Smoothing  (Number  Min: 0, Max: 10, Default: 0)
     Specifies the smoothing factor to apply to the glass height image. Since this image can only have 256 or 32768 distinct levels, 'steps' can become visible in the output image. This is because finding 'normals' to the glass surface is very sensitive and picks up very small changes in brightness. This control sets the spacing between points on the image (in pixels) used to calculate the surface normal. If you want a smooth result (e.g. you have modelled a lens with a suitable grade image) you should increase this until you see no stepping effects.

ChromaticAb  (Number  Min: 0.0, Max: 200.0, Default: 0.0)
     Adds colour distortion if values are greater than 0.0
Note: if you are not using chromatic aberration effects make sure the value is set to 0.0 to turn it off and speed up the processing.

Light Active  (Checkbox  Default: Off)
On: to enable the light settings.
Off: to disable the lighting without losing your settings.

Brightness  (Number  Min: 0.0, Max: 200.0, Default: 100.0)
     How bright the light is. Values over 100.0 will start to burn out.

Light  (Position  Default: 0.5,0.5)
     The light source position.

LightZ  (Number  Min: 0.05, Max: 5.0, Default: 0.5)
     Defining the angle at which the light hits the glass surface.

Gloss  (Number  Min: 1.0, Max: 1000.0, Default: 45.0)
     Sets how sharp the specular lighting highlights on the glass surface will be. The higher the number, the tighter they will be.

Back Bright  (Number  Min: 0.0, Max: 100.0, Default: 100.0)
     Controls the relative contrast of the lighting highlights and the image seen through the glass.

Light  (Colour Box  Default: white)
     The colour of the light.

Index