Cycles Exterior Render: Architectural Glass Material Question

[sandstorm]

Hi all, I am currently working on a house front, focusing on material and textures. I am quite unhappy with the glass material and the speckles in the render. I did an extensive search in the forums and in Google.

Does someone have some good advice or can direct me to external resources to improve the rendering and render time of the glass material?

Thanks

Render

Glass Node for Windows

[J_the_Ninja]

The node setup you have there is more for a window viewed from inside, that you need light to pass though. For an exterior (particularly if you don’t want your interior - or lack thereof - to be visible) try something like this:

If your windows look darker than you want, you can also try making the diffuse color dark green or blue instead of full black, but I’d be careful with that, personally. They might start looking like semi-transparent plastic if you push that too far. You can also mix the result from the mix shader with a transparent BSDF if you want some visibility of the interior, but it’ll probably be noisier.

[RickyBlender]

what are the 2 nodes ?
cannot read it on pic !

What does the ray shadows does in this case on first nodes set up!

thanks

[sandstorm]

@RickyBlender

What does the ray shadows does in this case on first nodes set up!

Tell the shader to be transparent where it would cast shadows. Make the areas a bit lighter.
Source: Rendering a Sports Car in Blender Cycles – Part 01 –> jump to 31:30

Would you say it is wrongly applied in here?

[RickyBlender]

sorry this is 1 hour video
can you give a short summary for this ray shadow

i think this should control shadows but not certain what it does ?
is it shadow from the window itself onto other objects?

thanks

[sandstorm]

As written, when you jump to 31:30 it is explained and shown.

Bascially the shadow areas on windows/glasses are bright. To see the inside better and to make the glass “darker”, you use transparent areas instead of glass reflections at shadow areas. Basically my composition does not contain many areas where this trick is applied.

Is it shadow from the window itself onto other objects?

When I watch the video again I can see that it is applied on areas, where no light is reflected. In my composition: close to the top areas of the windows near the frames.

[sandstorm]

Ok, sorry for the late reply. I worked on it but I could not complete the renders. I had to recompile Blender.

So what looks realistic? Any improvement suggestions? See below for node setups.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

[sandstorm]

Node Setups - see post above for images

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

[gradyp (Grey Deepy)]

There seems to me to be some sort of lighting difference between 1 and 2 (not just a difference in the windows). I like the clarity of the outside in the first one with the windows in the second. While you may have some reflectivity when viewed from outside, you do have a bit of transparency to see inside, particularly at this close of a distance.

[sandstorm]

It is funny, there is no difference in lightning between 1 and 2. I think the dark reflection of the windows make the render appear differently. But yes, I would like to somehow combine the dark windows color of option 1 and a bit of transparency to see the inside. But that is exactly my problem that I get the fireflies. Any improvement suggestions or ideas on the material settings to achieve this?

[gradyp (Grey Deepy)]

Actually, I was noticing the difference not on the windows, but on the wall.

[sandstorm]

Yes, I know. But I did not change the colors nor the lightning. Maybe you can point to the differences?