to my understanding, rendering realistic translucent plastics in a realtime renderer cannot be done. the inside geometry doesn’t properly diffuse light like in real life/an offline renderer like blender cycles.
i have been trying to recreate those retro dyed frosted plastics, in this case a memory card, as well as a clear glossy transparent material for cd jewel cases. unfortunately, using the simple translucent material in shapr3d (to my understanding the only one that truly reveals all geometry behind the material) strongly lacks ability in displaying proper light shading/diffusion inside. this isnt even fault of shapr, its just the nature of the beast in technology limits we have today.
another example of transparent materials compared between renderers, this time of a cd case:
yes… very hard to see the shapr.. and i am not trying to bash shapr at all, this is literally just the nature of real time rendering. fortunately, black backgrounds help tremendously in showing the clear material.
the only workaround i’ve been able to find for this is using a transparent material on the outside faces of a model, and keeping the inside faces an opaque material. this kind of creates the illusion that you are looking through a transparent object and are able to see the inner walls of the plastic still. i tried this using Matte Transparent Polypropylene on the outer faces, and any standard opaque material on the inside. as you see in the video, i think it is pretty fooling when you choose a color set to a color like red:
although if set to clear, it falls on its face and no longer looks convincing.
so, i am at a loss here on the potential for creating a convincing transparent plastic material in a program like shapr. ive given node materials a shot within reality composer pro as well (apple’s realtime rendering engine) and sort of reached the same conclusion. i hope someone with good knowledge of pbr real time materials can chime in on this, and teach me something miraculous solution that i dont know. thanks