Shiny glass

Unity Engine
1

I searched and found some year-old glass discussion, but what I want to do is pretty specific:

I want a glass look that simply reflects real highlights–like any glossy object does–and is otherwise invisible. I don’t want an overall white or gray fog that makes it hard to see through, just some strong highlights on a curved surface–like a fighter cockpit or empty wine glass:

http://www.stormvision.net/images/preview/wineglass.jpg
or
http://www.wings3d.com/images/tutorials/wine_glass.jpg

Can I do that kind of simple glass with the built-in shaders? (I realize that in real life, the highlights on glass are small, but I’d use a lower glossiness to make them more visible.)

Ideally I might also want:

  • A faint skybox reflection.

  • Angle-based opacity as the surface rotates edge-on. So a bubble would be a little opaque at the edges, and totally clear in the middle (but still with highlights everywhere).

But those would just be the icing. If I could have just highlights and nothing else it would be very useful :slight_smile:

2

Nope. I experimented with this some weeks ago, and while I suspect it’s possible to write a custom shader that just generates highlights, I don’t really know how. I settled for kinda sorta faking it with a modified alpha shader (all I did was change “cull back” to “cull off”) with something like 80% opacity, and using that on an object with 2-sided polygons, which generated some interesting artifacts that can pass as reflections/highlights, though that depends somewhat on the geometry of the model.

–Eric

3

There is an old glass example here:

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=146

I don’t know if it still works or is what you’re after.

-Jon

4

I’ll certainly give it a look! Thanks.