Windows - Glass material

by Daniel Buck
www.danielbuck.net

I'll start out assuming you have a vehicle modeled, as well as the windows.

In case your wondering, I use planes for windows, then convert to editable poly, and stretch them to fit.

Start with a raytrace material, check 2-sided, set the diffuse to black, the transparency to a very light grey, the Index of Refraction to 1.0, the specular level to about 125, and the glossiness to about 70.

Turn on the background ( )for the material, and you should have something that looks like this:

A little explanation: Making the material 2 sided means that you can see it from both sides (because the polygons on a plane are only visible from one side) The dark diffuse color gives the glass a deep natural look, the very light grey color for transparency makes the glass near totally transparent. Make the transparency color darker for tinted windows. Changing the Index of Refraction from 1.55 to 1.0 takes refractive distortion out of the glass where it bends.

Click the box by the reflect parameter and select falloff from the browser that pops up. Change the top color to a dark grey, leave the bottom at white, and change the falloff type to Fresnel. You should have something like this:

And there you have it! All of my glass materials are based off of this method (some in different renderers, but same principle)

And as always, with reflective materials, what you have in your scene/background VASTLY changes the look of that material. Try putting up solid white self illuminated boxes or planes in the air to provide something for the glass to reflect.