Material looks black through glass, why?

[Brian Jones]

did you copy the inside of the glass to make your liquid? If so, they both occupy the same physical space and it will render badly the liquid should be a little smaller or a little bigger (actually penetrating the glass) – anything as long as the polys don’t occupy the same exact space.

Otherwise it could be the Ray Depth settings in Render Settings but if it’s at the default 15 it’s probably not that.

[Suzanne Hemphill]

I tried scaling it a little smaller and also a little larger to penetrate the glass, but neither one worked.

I am using the Physical renderer with the Ray Depth at 15.

The bottom liquid is a different object than the object that is rendering black. I just put a simple white material on it just to test, but it keeps rendering black. I found the beer texture for the bottom object online and just modified it slightly. I just can’t figure out why it works and the other does not.

Any clues for me to know what to try would be wonderful.

Thanks so much!

Suzanne
MaD Studio

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Weird. Any chance you can upload the file?

[Suzanne Hemphill]

Here it is. I hope you can see something dumb I’ve done…

3531_beerupload.c4d.zip

Suzanne
MaD Studio

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Okay, I think the problem is ambient occlusion. Since the foam is so close to the glass it’s just turning black.

[Suzanne Hemphill]

Adam, you are a freakin’ genius!

I knew there had to be some little setting somewhere that was messing me up. Thank you so much for finding it!!!

Have a fantastic day! 🙂

Suzanne
MaD Studio

[Juan manuel Palomino domínguez]

I have the same problem Adam. May you tell watch should i adjust in ambient occlussion for getting better results? Thank you!

[Ryan Paterson]

Add a compositing tag to the object that’s giving you trouble and un-check “Seen by AO”

[Paul Carder]

Ryan – thank you so much! I had the same problem, and you’ve solved it for me! Legend.