Start with an actual photo reference for what you’re actually trying to accomplish and go from there.
Well… i guess you are after a very dirty dusty window… disregarding the pattern (which may also be a good start… or not… ) i guess you have to play with some obaque / alpha settings to show something of it on the light… now you see bright sunlight coming through a dirty window → doesn’t only look… but is unreal…
Maybe also the frame should have some dust/dirt color degrading (i mean the real material getting dirty… ) to recreate the material as a shader material… and so step by step… You know what i mean ?
I think you should add some ambient occlusion, to make it look worn out
Tried a lot of things but got frustrated as it didn’t look any good.
Settled on this one. Not really happy but can’t work on a single project for a long time.
Anyway, any general feedback is appreciated on this render.
I don’t think that I have ever noticed “dust on a window” in real life . . .
That’s probably because you tried everything EXCEPT the very thing I suggested in my earlier post. You need to start with pre-existing references before you set out to create something. There is no workaround for that.
“Dust on a window” – what does that look like? Google up photos and what you’re likely to see is not what you think. Dust like every other object in the universe is controlled by gravity, and tends to want to fall down and not cling to flat, low-friction vertical surfaces like glass.
If you want to create some sort of dusty, dirty atmosphere I would recommend to use volumetric scattering and a particle system to create floating dust where the light comes through the window like you can see here for example: Atmospheric Barn interior