'Smoked' glass

Id love a decent 'smoked' glass texture I realise its just a matter of adjusting colours on a transparent prim but it never seems to be as good as some of the other results Ive seen in sl.

Can anyone suggest the best way of getting the best result please ?

HI Maelstrom,

I have a feeling there might be something like that inworld already, I'll have a dig around in the cupboards. If you want to make one yourself, however, you may want to post this question in the texturing forum.


/me remembers to go and check Maelstrom's sim out

Alpha channels in photoshop are great for this - I've made some that have "solid" edges to look like window frames...

I'll usually just use white as a base (grey's for shading), make one of the layers partially transparent (evenly colored), merge all the layers and set an alpha channel - the result works out to a colored glass effect (can be a smoked look if it's not REALLY transparent) - then I just set the color in-world for the effect I want.

Edited to add: Mael - send me an IM in-world, and remind me to send you some of what I've made...perhaps that will give you something to work with. I won't be in-world for quite a few hours however.

You can take a peek at some of these glass textures which are free for download--
http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/texture_colour/glass/

Then fiddle with the colour and transparency as needed.

Thanks all. I love nice glass and metal textures.

For a simple and uniform texture, you can just adjust the transparency, color and texture of a prim to get a 'smoked glass' effect.

But for a really GOOD effect, you need textures with a custom alpha channel. That allows the artist to specify different levels of transparency in different areas on the glass pane, to simulate thicker and/or more opaque sections. I make stained glass textures, and I'll use that method to have completely opaque leading (the metal between the glass pieces), clear glass, wavy glass, and all sorts of other effects. All in one texture. You simply can't do that with just the transparency sliders and a simple flat texture.

I get satisfactory results with a blank texture, color set to black, transparency set to anything between 25 and 50 per cent, depending on how much tinting you want.