LuxCoreRender Materials Glass2

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Glass2 is an updated version of the basic glass material. It is the recommended material for glass, crystals, gemstones, transparent plastics and clear liquids.

It takes its properties almost entirely from the volume assigned to the object using it. It does not even have its own color or index of refraction(IOR). Since it takes its IOR from the object's volume properties, it is able to understand the IOR between surfaces to some degree, and due to the nature of the volume system this allows for more specific and technical optical properties than are possible with the older glass material.


Options

Architectural

This option disables refraction during transmission. The effective result is that transmission will appear as though the glass had an IOR of 1.0, while reflections will use the specified IOR. The resulting glass will show only the transmission/reflection colors and volumes effects. You could enable this option for a thin sheet of glass such as a window, and it will render much faster, as there is less to compute. However, disable it on any curved glass as it will make the object look fake.

There are several other important features to architectural mode, besides reducing the necessary calculations of the material. Because there is no refraction during transmission, architectural glass is transparent to shadow rays and alpha, neither of which is the case in non-architectural mode. This is especially important for window glass. Because it is transparent to shadow rays, it is possible to perform direct light sampling through the window to outside light sources, greatly improving the render efficiency. And because it reflects but still propagates alpha, it allows you to have realistic interior reflections and absorption on the windows, while still being able to composite in a backdrop for the view outside of the window.


Glass and Glass2

LuxCoreRender also contains a "Glass2" material which is similar in appearance as Glass. The two materials differ in what they can do. Glass2 is better if you need two volumes interacting with each other, such as water in a glass. Glass2 can calculate the relative IOR between those two surfaces, which Glass requires to be done manually with a third mesh and the user calculating the relative IOR by hand. Glass2 can also handle more specific and technical IOR data than the Glass material, such as using the Sellmeier equation, so Glass2 technically can handle light more accurately than Glass.

On the other hand, Glass has got the option for a separate reflection and transmission color (for painted glass).