Render shaded or Translucent object with painted "surfaces"

[brendeho]

I have an interesting question here - How should I try to shaded render this syringe so that a plunger can be seen underneath the translucent body? I need to have the gradiations and labels of the millileters be plainly black.

OR

is there a way to keep those gradations black while rendering an illustration and have the plunger visible beneath the body?

The gradiations are cut into the body of the syringe in this model, and the surfaces of the gradiations are changed to black.

Have been adjusting the color styles - but perhaps I'm missing something. Making the material translucent just fades the gradiations on the syringe, I'd like.

[nannerdw · Accepted solution]

You'll probably have to create a multi-body part, and color the bodies individually. Try embossing the painted features instead of engraving them. Then use the Split command to separate the painted markings and cylinder into two separate solid bodies. For the Split Tool, use a cylindrical surface that is coincident with the outer diameter of the syringe.

Alternatively, you can extrude the painted markings between two closely-spaced cylindrical faces, instead of embossing, and create a new solid body with the extrusion.

[brendeho]

I was considering a couple of those options - thanks for the feedback!

[JDMather]

In a similar situation I Derived the part (today you could use Mult-body, but I think I would still prefer the Derive technique as the rest is a work-around, not really the part) as surface body.

Then Thicken/Offset the (text in this case) just a bit away from the body as surface, and thicken offset again to solid and set my color.  This tiny bit of distance seemed to take care of the render problem.

My part wasn't quite as transparent as yours