Fibrewire Strands / Transmission issues

[meU6KLN]

Hey,

I want to create strands of fibrewire with glowing ends. I created aproximately 1000 strands with MASH on a polyplane, gave the ends an aiStandard with emission and the strands itself a transparent aiStandard material. Of course it is render heavy, transmission rays are up to 100 (which is super extreme) but its black because rays are not enough to calculate through this massive amount of geo.

Does anyone know a good workaround to create a realistic looking fibrewire (transparent plastic) look? Faking it in a smart way?

Maybe reducing geo in the middle? Any ideas on how to tackle this?

I attached two images, one with the black (transparent) strands and glowing ends and one that i use as reference.

[meU6KLN]

Here is another reference that I am aiming for

[lee_griggs]

Try increasing the transparency_depth in the Render Settings.

[meU6KLN]

Hey Lee, thanks for the reply. I tried increasing Transmission Ray Depth and Transparency Depth to maximum without getting desired results. 'Opaque' is turned off, IOR is plastic. I don't know how to proceed and where to turn the right screws. The mesh is created with MASH and turned into one polyObject, initially made out of about 600 single fibre cables.

I attached another screenshot and the file I used for testing. Maybe someone can help me or give me a hint on where to look to get the right settings.

The .ma File can be found here:

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/f0b5adb310ac5de06c8309ca4327aea820211124091502/086632b30bbc428f4cca...