Palantir Study

[WAS]

Just a quick TG study. Energy orb thing like the Palantir from The Lord of the Rings.

[Dune]

Subsurface scattering of an image?

[WAS]

Three spheres, one with metallic black and luminous exported cloud map, then middle sphere with opacity and luminous cloud map, then a glass sphere merged with translucent black shader for a tinted glass, then that mixed with a regular glass shader with middle cloud map as density of SSS for a touch of SSS to it. It didn't really actually distort things much more so may not really be needed (regular SSS glass). Meant to be a quicker solution to SSS but ended up adding it at the end. Lol SSS Glass is merged in at 25%.

[WAS]

Think I may try doing the outer surface with metallic black masked by glass, and then innr glowing opacity layers. May have a better black look with the brooding subsurface glows.

[Dune]

Interesting combination. Did you try a spherical image and SSS through glass shader?

[WAS]

I haven't tried just glass. May give it a go. I was trying to shy away from long SSS times.

[WAS]

Hmm, so SSS appears to just kill Luminosity so can't get any glowing internals. Just a black orb with SSS.

Oh, turns out the TGO saved with all the materials disconnected even though they're all uniquely named. >.<

So, it seems to make muddle the colour a little bit, and offers a less impressive subsurface look imo. What do you think?

[Dune]

Looks sort of like your previous version, pretty cool. So this is 'just' a glass sphere with a spherical image projected in SSS with a certain depth?

[WAS]

Oh actually no, its the same luminous internal spheres with normal SSS glass on the outer sphere. Haven't tried just SSS sphere alone. I am not sure how it would glow without external light sources.

[Dune]

A light inside maybe? I must experiment with some day as well...

[WAS]

Yeah I tried that too, which is weird cause it'll make the SSS work, but only from external lights, where the only light coming out of the sphere is broken light seemingly squeezing through vertices. Without light source it's just a black sphere under these low lighting conditions. Weird though with it, the external (least what it looks like) SSS gets stronger.

[Dune]

Perhaps there's a difference between sphere and polysphere? TG is full of intricacies

[pixelpusher636]

Very cool!