Creating X Ray Brain that glows

[Tom]

Hello all-

 

Just a quick question. I was checking out the UCLA Lab of Neural Imaging and came across a cool picture of a brain. I was trying to duplicate it in AM. I even thought that there was a Dark Tree shader that approximated x rays but couldn't find it.

 

Anyway, in AM I took 2 spheres, crumpled the bigger one slightly and made it transparent. Added a color map and high specularity and came up with something that doesn't look even remotely what I intended.

 

Any ideas how to achieve the effect on the left?

 

Many thanks!

Tom

[robcat2075]

I think what you want is an edge gradient effect, a bit like the "fake rimlight" material we sometimes use.

 

Delete all your other texturing and try dropping this on the model

 

Semi_Xray.mat

[markw]

Another possible method, strait off the top of my head, would be to model the brain as a solid and then decal it with some good images three times; 1st for transparency, 2nd for color and 3rd for displacement.

The screen shot here took all of 5min to set up so its not great but maybe works as a proof of concept though.

Project1.prj

[Tom]

Cool!

 

Many thanks to both of you for the help!

 

These give me something to play around with...

 

Best,

 

Tom

[johnl3d]

here's an idea

 

Check tinkering gnome area just posted idea and project

[Tom]

Thanks John ...(aka Tinkering Gnome!)

 

Tom

[Rodney]

Failed attempt with an ultra simple model...

 

Things that I thought worked:

- Using a checker material to try to get the color variation.

- Modeling only one half of the brain and then duplicating the other half in the Chor (scale the second instance of the half brain -100% to get the other side of the brain)

- Flipping the material in the second model to achieve the reverse effect of color

 

Things that don't work so well:

- Doesn't capture electric feel

- Surface Roughness doesn't achieve brain folds effectively.

- Need more transparency throughout*

- No glow*

 

*Note that in these last two cases they can be achieved by adjusting the surface properties.

 

Added a render with glow and transparency tweaked.

Note that for the material I just started adding random nodes/colors.

I didn't make any attempt to be accurate. As such some nodes could be deleted with minimal effect over all.

ColorfulBrain_Failed_Attempt.prj

[Rodney]

I note that there is an interesting phenomenon going on that some have actually struggled against but that can be used to nice effect for glow/transparency.

Note that in the second image above how the glow is greater in the area where no ground plane is.

This suggests that if we want to increase the glow in certain parts of our model while decreasing it in other areas we simply need to place (or remove) some geometry directly behind the model.

 

As this could be useful later on... note to self... note to self... note to self.