Hi Kent,
Following and redoing the shading part of the tutorial, I can't get right the transparent effect of the main bell. Overall I feel something is off with the whole scene, maybe the world?
If you can look at the file please and advise that would be great.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MKFBxA81RkQKyqTHFdNTm-yEawDoJ1F3
Also a screenshot about the settings and viewport render.
Thank you.
I think your result is pretty good actually. Pretty close to the example. When I opened your file, dialing down the glass BSDF roughness to 0.1 helped to see into the 'guts' of the jellyfish.
Also yes, if you add other jellyfish/objects/world texture that appear behind this jellyfish, you'll get more transparency play. A solid blue color doesn't provide much for refraction.
Thank you for the reply. You gave me an idea about the solid blue background. I have to play with settings to get a gradient background, but it seems can't get it right.
In your latest image the bell has really dark areas. I'm wondering if your transmission light paths are too low, meaning light can only bounce through so many times before it quits and registers as black. To troubleshoot this, try setting the light path preset to "Full Global illumination" to see if the dark black areas clear up.
As for the world, here's how I tweaked your ramp to do display darker at the bottom of the frame and lighter at the top:
Alternatively you could try an underwater panoramic image for your world, like this one. It's not an HDRi, but that should be ok for this scene. If you do some searching I'd bet you could find an HDRI underwater environment texture.
Thank you for the solution, it is getting there. It seems the very subtle settings of the background was the missing link.
Also tried with full GI, which gave - for me at least - a not so good image. To compare, the upper part is direct light.
Thank you once more.
