How to create glass cube?

Help
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1

4.7.2

Hi everyone,

I’m on Godot 4.7.2 (Forward+) and trying to make a simple glass cube.

What I did: MeshInstance3D > BoxMesh > new StandardMaterial3D with Transparency = Alpha, low alpha on albedo.

Problem: It looks like tinted plastic, not glass. No real refraction, and when I look through it the background doesn’t distort, and the inside faces disappear.

What I’m aiming for: A clear glass cube like you’d have in a product render - transparent, a bit reflective, with refraction.

Does anyone have a good setup for StandardMaterial3D or a simple ShaderMaterial for this in 4.x? Do I need to enable anything in WorldEnvironment?

Thanks!
2

You can get decent looking glass using the standard material. Be aware though that with realtime rendering, the results can’t be as good as with full featured pathtracing.

  • The most essential thing for glass is setting up a good looking environment to reflect/refract. So start by finding (or making) a hdr equirectangular environment map and set it up as a panorama sky in a world environment node.

  • Using a cube mesh with slightly beveled edges will look much better than a simple hard edged cube. Rounded and more complex geometry always looks better for glass. Refraction/reflections on plain cubes are kinda bland.

  • Material properties:
    – transparency: alpha
    – albedo: black (or some dark color) with medium alpha
    – metallic: high
    – specular: maximum
    – roughness: low
    – clearcoat (enable optionally: high value, low roughness)
    – anisotropy (enable optionally)
    – refraction: enable, low positive scale, add a low frequency noise texture to distort the refractions

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Holy smokes this looks incredible. Thanks a lot for sharing the properties.