Glass

Support Basics & Interface
1

I want to get a nice glass effect for a drinking glass, and the tutorials list is so long, I went through it for 10 minutes before giving up…

2

To make glass:

  1. Model your desired object(s) and scene.
  2. Apply a new Material (F5). Do not set up any vaules at this point.
  3. Apply a new Texture (F6). Select Blend, then Halo.
  4. Return to your Material.

-FIRST COLUMN OF BUTTONS-
5. Set the Alpha slider to 0.000 ( I set it between 0.000 and 0.200 if using an env map so it will show up on the ‘glass’)
6. Set Spec, Hard, and Sp Tr to the maximum value. (Adjust Hard for larger specular reflections)
7. Add, Ref, Emit and Amb are all set to 0. (Adjust emit value if using spotlamps)

-MIDDLE COLUMN OF BUTTONS-
8. Set Ztransp to on, its just to the right of the Ref slider.
9. Set the Nor to on to use it as your texture cordinates set up in step 3.
10. DISABLE X and Y scaling (this is key).

-LAST COLUMN OF BUTTONS-
11. Set only Alpha to on so your texture affects the objects alpha value.

3

One more thing. You cannot get realistic glass with Blender’s scanline renderer. Those settings above are to get a result that suggests a glass material. Feel free to play around and customize those settings. Also materials often need to be adjusted to get the desired results and vary from scene to scene.

Try out the Yable script for Yafray and Povanim for POV-Ray.

4

you can get some interesting refraction effects with envmaps, though they are better suited for single lenses (like a magnifying glass)

off the top of my head, I can’t remember the settings though
(twas in the blender 2.0 guide, look at it)

5

Glass Tutorial

6

I am not sure of this still of any use to anyone, but two years ago I created a plugin to simulate refraction, but it only really works best as z3r0_d says for closed glass objects like lenses, not drinking glasses, it can’t raytrace after all.
In any case you can still get it here:
http://www.stormpages.com/eeshlo/otherBlender.html

However, as usual with the things I create, it’s complicated and awkward to use.

7

Cheers!

8

I just compiled the last tuhopuu update on windows and it seems Cessen has implemented refraction mapping. This could be in the next Blender version (2.27). Of course it has all the same limitations as my plugin, but it should be a lot easier to actually use. No fresnel (yet) but you could emulate that with a z-axis normal mapped sphere blend texture.