A feature that a lot of people have asked is finally here as an addition in Thea's material system,
strengthening it even more. The Glass material is now enhanced by dealing also with interference
wave phenomena.

Interference is a phenomenon actually very common in life but rarely solved by render engines.
The phenomenon can be explained by the wave nature of light; multiple waves of light can
add to each other (when in phase) amplifying the end result or cancel each other (when out
of phase) zeroing the end result.

The interference can be seen very easily with very thin dielectrics (the thickness being on the
visible light wavelength order). Furthermore, the amplification and canceling described previously
is strongly wavelength dependent. We can see it very easily on bubbles, oily coatings and CDs.

In Thea, we have added thin film interference as an extension of Glass material with the most
accurate solution of the phenomenon. Even more, the new material (ThinFilm) not only can stand
alone (for example, modeling a bubble) but also can be used as a very thin coating type (for
example, an oily layer on a metallic surface). Bump mapping is also possible now.



best wishes

Very nice enhancement - raises the realism of Thea up another notch.
Keep up the great work Giannis.

great work Giannis and Team! Thea features really are in a class of their own. Can't wait to try V1!

and that fly render looks great BTW.

Very cool development. A feature I didn't even know I needed. Great stuff.

Very nice

Damn, that fly looks amazing... Put it on the front page

wow how is the rainbow effect done on the bubble, with an texture map i think. Looks better than using a gradient which is hard to control

Easy. You can try it by your self with the latest beta. Just enable interference under Thin Film>scattering. You can give a procedural texture for thinness too. Thin Film material has now replaced old Glass material. It has all the old properties too. Works as windows, bubbles and oil... you name it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_interference

how many nanometers thick is a bubble? approx. somewhere between a germ and a hair?


another website:


I'm not sure how the Thin Film is supposed to work... I was thinking it would work like a coating, but when I added it on top of my velvet, it appears that it actually doesn't allow me to see thru the thin film to the solid color base, but instead it makes it disappear... so if thin film's layer is 100%, the velvet is clear, if thin film's layer is 50%, the velvet is seen at 50%, and so on...

with the Coating, on the other hand, it works as I expected, that with the coating at 100%, then the solid color still shows up as perfectly 100% opaque.

So, can you please post a simple example of, say, the body of the fly in the image above with the accompanying very cool material?

Hi 3DCGdesign

if you want to use the thin film as coating, then you have to add the thin film like you do normally, select it in the layer schema ... but now click on the up arrow two times (this is very important to click/move it two times up .... so it becomes a coating)

will post some example soon ....

Greetings Patrick