How to create a simple hole in a wall

Toobis

So in an Iray scene I am doing a guy is watching/spying a woman through a hole in a simple building wall. Is it possible to do this? Basically I just want a small tiny circle cut out of the wall enough for him to be able to look through to the other side. Is this at all possible?

Matt_Castle

This is something that's kind of tricky.

As far as "in-DS" solutions, you could try GesCon, although it creates a massive amount more geometry. If the UVs are right, you could also maybe get away with an opacity map if it's not then obvious the walls are hollow.

There's various solutions that involve Blender or the like, but my guess is you wouldn't be asking about this in the first place if you had that skill set, so probably not worth looking into.

SilverGirl

If it doesn't have to be a circle, maybe make four copies of the wall and geometry edit them to:

-wall left of hole

-wall right of hole

-wall below hole

-wall above hole

if the wall itself is paper thin, you could use the thickener plugin... if it's hollow, "patch"/cover the interior of the hole with geometry planes?

zombietaggerung

Wouldn't it be simpler to just create an opacity map for the wall to fake a hole? Black is invisible white is visible. Then it would be exactly where you want it to be, and would be non-destructive.

OrangeFalcon

It's interesting how something as conceivably simple as putting a hole in a wall can be quite a project.  OP wants to maybe have parts of the other side visible through the hole, so you could make a sphere and change the surface to whatever's on the other side and stick it in the wall. Then do a closeup of what they're actually seeing.  
 

Or maybe take an asset like a lightbulb, create an emission where you can place an image on there and that should work. Create the illusion of the hole. I'm just throwing ideas out there that might be alternatives to geometry editing or bridging to Blender and/or Photoshop.

Note to any PAs on the forums, we could use an asset of just holes in walls. Squares in walls.  Shapes in walls-stuff in walls!

 

felis

I think, like Zombietaggerun, that an oppasity map woud be the simplest.

A practical matter, If the wall have any significant thickness, you wouldn't want a small hole all way through, as that would give a very limited view. You would want one that is larger on the observers side.

crosswind

Depending on the wall's UV, make a B/W mask map with a hole and assign the map to Cutout Opacity. As others said, this is a quick way... as you don't have to touch its geometry. 

Then create a primitive cylinder, delete its top/bottom geometry, place and Scale it into the hole to "seal" the inner edges... if it's a "thick wall".