Making transparent glass

From all the googling I did, this is an old question - and there are bunch of tutorials with “easy” fixes, some outdated, some very weird. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOTYZfYakQU, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_44rg3XS3ao, https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Tutorials/Materials/Clear_Glass).

The thing is I saw this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=643CAA5Zh_8 and basically all guy did was he picked a material and made it glass and it was transparent and all cool. When i repeated this process on a model of wine glass I made, it made wine glass reflective, like a mirror. And as said, there were other “soultuions” which were a real mess for me. So I’d like to ask: Is there a simple, basic way to make item look glass-like and transparent?

thanks :):confused:

If you glass object turns into something mirror like, you most likely have the normals on that object flipped…
See here for another example of the same mistake - is that what happens on your glass?

Thanks so much, man. I’d just like to ask another thing. I went here and did this:

a)Mode: Edit Mode

b)Panel: Tool Shelf ‣ Shading/UVs ‣ Shading ‣ Normals: Flip Direction

c)Menu: Mesh ‣ Normals ‣ Flip or Specials ‣ Flip Normals

I did a) and c) - should I do b) too since a) and b) seem to do the trick? I seem to be unable to find Shading/UVs button. Perhaps this tutorial does not apply to the nevwest Blender version?

If your mesh is built in a physically plausible way, all you need to do is hit Ctrl-N in Edit mode. That will recalculate the normals based on Blender’s understanding of the “inside” and the “outside” of the mesh.

Your commands b) and c) are the same, so doing both would mean you turned the normals a full 360 and they are back where they started. Mind you though, that any “Flip Normals” command will fail when your normals are inconsistent. Sometimes when modeling it happens that some normals are pointing outwards and some accidentally inwards. Flipping would change the direction of ALL normals - even the ones that were correct to begin with.

Ctrl-N on the other hand tries to make them consistent.

Thank you. :slight_smile: Also - since you seem to know ways around and I do not want to open new thread - where on this forum should I post my initial noobie strugglesfor some very basic critique?