iClone Settings Turning into Indigo Blend

The Indigo Blend material does not present any appearance change, it only blends two source materials to form a new look.

When you utilize the Opacity Texture or Opacity value in iClone, or when you apply the combinations of the Refraction and Reflection values at the same time, then the Blend material will take charge of rendering.

Opacity Texture and Opacity

When the material applied on an iClone object contains an Opacity setting, either via the Opacity Texture or Opacity value, the mapped Indigo material will become a Blend that blends a Null with any other material (mostly Diffuse, Phong, Indigo Specular or Glossy Transparent) in accordance with the other settings.

iClone material with Opacity Texture only

iClone material with Opacity value only

If the iClone material contains an Opacity Texture and Opacity Value, then they will be merged before being put into the Blend channel in Indigo.

iClone material with Opacity Texture and Opacity value.

Refraction and Reflection Characteristic

When the iClone material settings include Refraction and Reflection characteristics, the Indigo Blend will be utilized for rendering. (The Reflection Characteristic here means the Reflection Texture, Reflection, iClone Specular, and Glossiness values. Please refer to the previous section, iClone Settings and Indigo Phong)

1. Create an object in iClone.
   
2. Activate the Refraction setting and determine the value of it.
   

   Note:

   If you export the project to Indigo for rendering after this step, the mapped material will be Glossy Transparent as described in the previous section.

3. Activate the Reflection-related Settings of the material.
   

   Note:

   In addition to the Reflection value in iClone, the use of Reflection Texture, iClone Specular and Glossiness settings with the Refraction setting can also cause the converting mechanism to utilize the Blend material.

4. Export the project to Indigo.
   

   Note:

   The mapped material will turn into a Blend, which blends two other materials, Indigo Specular and Phong. The Indigo Specular material simulates the light transmitting phenomena, while the Phong material deals with the reflectivity on the surface.

Blend Texture

If you load a texture to the Blend channel in iClone, then when the project is exported to Indigo for rendering, the Indigo Blend Material Type will take over.

1. Create an object and apply images to the Diffuse and Blend texture channels.
   

   Note:

   Optionally change the Blend Mode if you want (in this case, Addition).

2. Export the project to Indigo for rendering.
   

   Note:

   The mapped material will turn to be Blend, which blends two other identical materials according to the other settings (in this case, two Indigo Phongs formed by iClone Reflection Characteristics). One of the Diffuse parameters of these two material types stores the image from the iClone Diffuse Texture channel, while the other stores the image from the iClone Blend Texture channel. The mapping method will be blended to the texture before being passed to the Indigo Blend parameter. Because Indigo does not have a corresponding blend mode like iClone, the results for different Blend Modes are not always identical between iClone and Indigo.