Rendering with transparency

 

Playing with the transparency of the clear case offered new challenges and opportunities for our post-work team. As we got into the project, it seemed there was a fine line with adjusting the contrast of the varying levels of the plastic surface to achieve a truly transparent look and not something that seemed almost “X-ray” like in quality. We also wanted to show realistic shape and contouring to sell the impact resistance and slender qualities of the product accurately.

Working directly with our internal rendering artist, we were able to work back and forth to achieve a desired transparency level from the starting image and replicate that in the rendering stage across all images to have a good starting place for moving forward. That was extremely helpful in creating a consistent transparency feel over the 8 angles.

An additional challenge unveiled itself when the client wanted to use the images on a dark background. Originally, the renders were lit in a lighter mid-tone environment, making their optimum use ideal on backgrounds of 50% or lighter. Once the background went to a range higher than 50%, the highlight/shadow/mid-tone relationships became disjointed and didn’t feel right. The end use became hugely significant in contributing to the desired highlight and shadow values of the product overall.

Further still, once we created multiple color phones within the case, we needed to address the subtle color refractions that bounced into the transparent areas. For the Rose Gold, Gold, Space Gray and Silver phones, each version needed a different treatment to sell the realism of the image overall.