Blender cycles continuous glass dispersion
Why Blender Stack Exchange recommends it
Blender Stack Exchange users link it when asked how to get a rainbow or prism-style dispersion effect, since Cycles has no built-in dispersion and this is the go-to node-based workaround.
Recommended by 3 people across 3 different months, 2022 to 2024.
What it is
A short Blender tutorial from the CG Vertex channel showing how to fake continuous glass dispersion (rainbow splitting of light) in Cycles. It builds a glass shader whose color varies per wavelength, with linked downloads for the Cycles and Eevee versions and a mention of LuxCore as a renderer with native dispersion.
What people said
Recommends Marty Fouts · 2022-05 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “How was this glass material made?”
We can guess, but the actual answer depends on whether the glass was rendered with EEVEE or Cycles. The rainbow effect is a form of dispersion that Blender doesn't model correctly, so the shader probably has a fake dispersion setup. Here's a Cycles tutorial [this video] and an EEVEE tutorial [LINK] . In addition, the lighting in the scene is very important to how the glass looks, as is the beveling on the model.
Recommends MrChurch2005 · 2023-07 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “How to flip color ramp HSV Far colors”
I'm working on a glass dispersion node group based off of this brilliant tutorial on youtube: [this video] I need to flip the colors on the colorramp so that its a gradient from red, violet, blue, green, etc. instead of a gradient from red, yellow, green, blue, etc. [LINK] If anyone has any ideas that would be greatly appreciated!
Recommends Lutzi · 2024-04 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Problem when adding shaders to simulate glass”
Why does your shader with Add Shader is darker ? By adding together the 3 colored Glass shader, you are asking from Blender to : Let only red light pass through And let only green light pass through And let only blue light pass through The result is that no light passes through, unlike in the case of a white glass shader. The only light reaching the shadows will be indirect light bouncing from other surfaces, not refracted light. Why does adding 2 Principled BSDF is emitting light ? Disclaimer : I'm not 100% sure about that one. Principled BSDF also have a glossy component. You could bypass it by adding roughness (then glossiness is 0), but then you'd loose the clear glass refractions you cu
Cites PowerNow · 2023-04 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “How to render prism refraction with Cycles?”
The dispersion (red, green, blue) seems working under normal light conditions by using this methode Video [this video] . But in the extreme case of using a prism it does not, the prism stays dark, no matter how high the samples are (100000). So I simplified the problem from red, blue, green to only white light to reduce the complexity. The scene consists now only of two reflective walls in the background, one floor, one prism (material in photo below), one spot light and the camera. One can see that one light ray goes straight ahead and the other is refract to the right. Is there a way to get only one retracted light ray through the prism and again retracted when leaving the prism? [LINK] [LINK]
Cites Allen Simpson · 2023-06 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Ways to simulate light dispersion in cycles?”
White noise texture is the modern solution. I worked on an example for nodevember two years ago but ran out of time. Here's the video I was using as reference and trying to improve upon [this video]