Glass

• Exterior Transparency - Sets the material exterior transparency color. This 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, the exterior transparency sets the color of the glass when the surface normal is facing towards the camera. This is in contrast of the interior transparency, which sets the color when the normal is facing away from the camera. Raytracing uses this attribute for both sides.

• Interior Transparency - Sets the material interior transparency. It acts the same as the exterior transparency by filtering the light coming from behind the surface. A darker color blocks more light, making the surface more opaque. In OpenGL, the interior transparency sets the color of the glass when the surface normal is facing away from the camera. This is in contrast of the exterior transparency, which sets the color when the normal is facing towards the camera. Raytracing ignores this attribute.

• Reflection Color - Sets the material 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.

• Refraction Index - 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. This only works with spectral raytracing.

  • Input Type - Defines how the refraction indices for different wavelengths are calculated.

    • Abbe Number d-line - Bases the calculation on the d Fraunhofer line at 587.56nm. Affects the density of the glass. The denser the glass, the lower the Abbe number and the higher the refracted index.
    • Abbe Number e-line - Bases the calculation on the e Fraunhofer line at 546.07nm. Affects the coefficient of expansion of the glass.
    • Spectral Distribution - Uses the refraction indices defined by the spectrum. Affects the radiating light dispersion. For example, tinted UV glass would have a different spectral distribution than a headlight. When enabled, Abbe Number is disabled.

  • Abbe Number - (Also known as the V-number or constringence of a transparent material) Sets the approximate dispersion of the glass or other materials. It is used to classify the chromaticity of glass and other optical materials. The higher the value, the lower its dispersion. This is also known as the V-number or constringence of a transparent material.

    Note:

    When Spectral Distribution is selected, Abbe Number is disabled.

• Custom 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 - 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.

• Use Solid Shadows - 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 - Makes the glass frosted with glossy reflections and refractions, wnen enabled. The roughness parameter controls light refractions on top of the surface. The higher the value, the rougher the microscopic structure on top of the surface and the more diffuse the reflections.

• Use Density - Makes the rays traveling through the glass attenuated, based on the distance it travels inside the glass.

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 along the X and Y-axis. Enter the width and height of the texture in millimeters. Only available with the mapping type - UV and Use Texture Size selected or with the mapping type - Triplanar.

• Uniform Repeat - Synchronizes the repetition value for all projection axes. If selected, the repeat factors of the x, y, and z axes of the triplanar texture projection are linked.

• X Repeat UV - Sets the UV repeat factors for the x-axis of the triplanar texture projection.

• X Offset UV - Sets the UV offset for the x-axis of the triplanar texture projection.

• X Rotate - Sets the rotation value for the x-axis texture coordinates of the triplanar texture projection.

• Y Repeat UV - Sets the UV repeat factors for the y-axis of the triplanar texture projection.

• Y Offset UV - Sets the UV offset for the y-axis of the triplanar texture projection.

• Y Rotate - Sets the rotation value for the y-axis texture coordinates of the triplanar texture projection.

• Z Repeat UV - Sets the UV repeat factors for the z-axis of the triplanar texture projection.

• Z Offset UV - Sets the UV offset for the z-axis of the triplanar texture projection.

• Z Rotate - Sets the rotation value for the z-axis texture coordinates of the triplanar texture projection.

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.

• Use Image Sequence - Select when an image sequence is loaded in the Use Texture box. This uses an image sequence as a texture. The image name for the sequence will be generated based on the filename and the image number. Use the Curve Editor to animate the image number. Go to Animation > Timeline. Click play to view the animated image sequence on the material.

  Note:

  For a group of images to be considered an image sequence, there must be at least two images with the same name with an increasing numeric value. The required naming format is name, number, and extension. For example, image000.png image01.png.

• Frame Offset - Sets an offset to the image number when using an image sequence.

• Inline Image Sequence - Inlines the image sequence into the .vpb file.

• Link Texture Settings - Available only when Use Texture is enabled. Links the texture mapping settings together when multiple texture slots of a material are selected. When changing the Repeat UV of a linked texture, all linked textures are changed at once. When selecting this option for a texture, while other textures of that material are already linked, its texture settings are also set to the already linked settings.

  Depending on the type of material, the setting options can vary. For common materials like Plastic and Phong, there are now three mapping types selectable for the using textures:

• Mapping Type - Available only when Use Texture is enabled. Sets the mapping type of the texture. There are three modes which can be selected:

  • UV - For radial and planar brush mapping. UV mapping is always used for Incandescence, Transparency, and Displacement textures.
  • Planar - For decals. The first two values define the orientation of the plane in 3D, the third value defines the rotation in 2D around the plane normal.
  • Triplanar - For triplanar brush mapping orientation. Use to apply textures to a geometry with no UVs. There is a blend zone where the projections overlap on the surface. If this does not give the desired result, actual UV coordinates need to be created, and UV must be used as the Mapping type for the texture in the material.

• Repeat Mode UV - Available only when Use Texture is enabled. Sets how the texture is repeated. There are four modes:

  • Repeat - Repeats the texture in all directions.

  • Mirror - Repeats and mirrors the texture on the x- and y- axis with every repetition.

  • Decal - The texture is not repeated.

  • Clamp - Repeats only the last pixel of the texture.

• Use Texture Size - Only available when Mapping Type is set to UV. Uses the texture size, instead of repeat values. Select to defined texture size in millimeters instead of repeat values for texture mapping. The geometry UV texture coordinates must match the scene units to get real world scaling of the texture. Use Apply World Scale in the UV Editor to calculate the real world scaling of UV coordinates.

• Offset UV - Moves the position of the texture’s pattern horizontally or vertically. The higher the value, the bigger the difference from the original texture pattern.

• Rotate - Changes the orientation of the texture.

• Anisotropy - Available only when Use Texture is enabled. Sets the texture filter quality for the image texture. Use the following as a guide:

  • A value of 0.0 switches the filtering to normal bilinear filtering without mipmapping.
  • A value between 0.0 and 1.0 uses normal trilinear filtering with mipmapping.
  • Values between 1.0 and 16.0 will use anisotropic filtering.
  • A value higher than 16.0 will result in a higher quality anisotropic filtering.

• Use Infinite Tiling - Removes repetition artifacts from tiled, seamless textures.

• Grid Size - Sets the sample grid size (m x m) per unit UV-rectangle. A finer grid (larger value) will average out larger scale details and the resulting texture will look more uniform.

• Contrast - Sets the weight of the variance-preserving operation. May need to be lowered to remove excessive color clamping at the cost of blurring.

• Max Rotation - Sets the maximum value texture samples can be rotated.

• Hue Weight - Sets the weight of the random hue shift of each sample.

• Saturation Weight - Sets the weight of the random saturation shift of each sample.

• Value Weight - Sets the weight of the random value shift of each sample.