Glass material can be used for all different kinds of transparent materials like glass, acrylic, and diamond among others. It is also an ideal material for liquids such as water. Within the glass material properties, many indices of refraction presets are available for the accurate representation of these materials within the scene.

Glass Material

• Exterior Transparency - Sets the shader’s transparency color. The exterior transparency acts like a color filter for the light coming from behind the surface. A darker color blocks more light and makes the surface more opaque. In OpenGL mode, the exterior transparency sets the color of the glass when the surface normal is facing towards the viewer. Raytracing ignores this attribute.

• Interior Transparency - Sets the shader’s transparency. The interior transparency acts the same as the exterior transparency. It filters the light coming from behind the surface. A darker color blocks more light making the surface more opaque. In OpenGL mode, the interior transparency sets the color of the glass. This happens when the surface normal is facing away from the viewer, the exterior transparency sets the color, and the normal is facing towards the viewer. Raytracing ignores this attribute.

• Reflection Color - Sets the shader’s color for reflections.

• Select Medium - Offers a wide selection of refraction indices based on materials existing in reality. The selected medium affects the Index of Refraction automatically.

• Index of Refraction - Sets the material’s refraction index. Only supported in Raytracing rendering mode.

• Simulated Thickness - Sets the materials simulated thickness.

• Use Dispersion - Simulates how different wavelengths of light are refracted, resulting in dispersion effects. Use Dispersion only works with spectral raytracing.

• Use Reflectivity - Controls the intensity of reflection on the surface. The higher the value the more the influence from environment and objects around.

• Fresnel Term Quality - The Fresnel Term describes the intensity of a reflection based on the viewing angle. Its intensity at normal incidence sets the material’s reflectivity.

  • Fast - Uses a fast but less accurate approximation to the Fresnel Term.
  • Accurate - Uses a physically accurate evaluation of the Fresnel Term.

• Solid Shadows (Cast Photon Caustics) - When selected, the Glass casts a solid (black) shadow (if a render mode is selected that can calculate caustic effects due to refractions). Otherwise the color of the shadow is calculated solely on the Glass’s color.

• Use Roughness - If selected, the Glass is handled as frosted glass with glossy reflections and refractions.

• Use Material Density - If selected, rays traveling through the glass gets attenuated based on the distance it travels inside the glass.

Texture

Texture settings define how a texture is placed on the surface and how the planar projection is blended at the edges.

• Texture Mode - Defines how a texture is placed on the surface, whether it uses UV Coordinates or Triplanar projection. By using UV coordinates there are no other parameters to be set. Using the Triplanar Texture Mode, the following options are available:

• Edge Blend - Sets the range for overlapping areas of the planar projection.

• Texture Size X, Y - Defines the textures size on the X/Y-axis.

• Uniform Repeat - Synchronizes the repetition value for all projection axes.

• X Repeat UV, Y/UV, Z/UV - Set the repetition value of the U and V-axis for each projection direction.

• X Offset UV, Y/UV, Z/UV - Set the offset value of the U and V-axis for each projection direction.

• X,Y,Z Rotate - Sets the projection orientation.

Exterior Transparency Texture

Can be used to load a texture to the exterior surface.

• Use Texture - Loads an image texture for the exterior transparency channel. Using a grayscale image is recommended, for color images the red channel is used.

Further settings are identical with the Diffuse Texture settings and are described in the Phong reflection model - Diffuse Texture section.

Roughness Texture

For further information on the Texture settings, refer to the Phong reflection model - Roughness Texture section.

Bump Texture

For further information on the Texture settings, refer to the Phong reflection model - Bump Texture section.

For further information on the Incandescence, Transparency, Displacement, Raytracing, and Common settings, refer to the General Truelight Material Settings section.