I tried putting the new STL plugin into v17 but it didn't work, so you'll just have to wait a few weeks until v18 rolls out.
But if you look at the picture above, both 1024 and 4096 work pretty well. I don't think you'll need more or 2048 in between.
I recall someone doing a lot of twisted splines to make some "ash" once.
Perhaps you could use a material effector moving through it to change it from dull grey to bright orange.
Stan Freburg's commentary track where he just repeats the lines his character said is almost as informative as Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Hey I remember doing this scene" commentaries.
I guess these Warner Brothers cartoons aren't really ON TV anymore, are they? I thought they would be a perpetual Saturday morning program but there isn't really a Saturday Morning block of cartoons now.
It's hard to believe kids are growing up unaware of these. It's ... un-American!
Here's a demo of the new subdivs. Clockwise from top left, original spline model, STL 64 (8x8), STL 1024 (32x32), STL 4096 (64x64)
As The Donald would say, "Your files are gonna be... HUGE!"
It turns out it's a bit more complicated...
wE40kDUmxvs
So you need...
-the refraction (surface setting)
-slight ripple distortions on the surface (a material noise combiner could do that)
-slight surface reflection also, most noticeable on bright objects. An reflection map might be most convincing.
-color fringing. This can be done with a multipass technique
-the glass itself has a slight green tint to it.
It's possible that only people beta testing v18 right now can see those so far.
Basically, I described the problem and suggested adding 1024 and 4096 subdivisions as options to STL.
I tested split patch for this. Unfortunately SplitPatch doesn't take into account the need to adjust the biases as CPs are added to a spline. You do get a denser mesh but it doesn't have the exact shape of the original.
I also tried exporting to PLY to use its subdiv ability but what you import back in has many broken splines that would need to be manually rewelded back together.
I think just adding more subdivisions to STL should be a feasible thing if Steffen has time.
Now a v18 feature request
I think the subdiv will need to happen in A:M before export because another app will interpret A:M's meshes as straight line edges between CPs rather than still-curved splines when it tries to do its own subdiv.
I don't see anything.