Best approach for glass on buildings? PBR values?
polycounter lvl 7
I'm currently modelling lots of buildings for the background objects on race tracks for real-time rendering.
But I've been struggling with buildings a little, especially getting nice glass windows.
I'm trying to do the building fronts as just a flat surface with one PBR type shader/texture. So no actual interiors, just faked in interiors beyond the glass in the diffuse texture.
Glass windows would normally be IOR 1.5, but I suppose this is like a multi-layer approach too. Ie, the diffuse of the stuff behind the windows is important to the values the glass would give.
Part of me is thinking that this is more a special case and I need to write a shading a bit more specific to the multi-layer type approach that is actually going on in reality.
Ie, maybe do the buildings without glass, and then add the glass as a second shader with a mask, a monotone IOR and a monotone albedo.
But will this actually give a more realistic looking result or not?
I've had a read around but it seems multi-layer PBR isn't really well documented or discussed quite yet, but I think it's maybe what I need here.
Or if it's not, I'm wondering what kind of approaches people are using to get these types of assets looking really nice and also reacting realistically?
Thanks for any help
Dave
But I've been struggling with buildings a little, especially getting nice glass windows.
I'm trying to do the building fronts as just a flat surface with one PBR type shader/texture. So no actual interiors, just faked in interiors beyond the glass in the diffuse texture.
Glass windows would normally be IOR 1.5, but I suppose this is like a multi-layer approach too. Ie, the diffuse of the stuff behind the windows is important to the values the glass would give.
Part of me is thinking that this is more a special case and I need to write a shading a bit more specific to the multi-layer type approach that is actually going on in reality.
Ie, maybe do the buildings without glass, and then add the glass as a second shader with a mask, a monotone IOR and a monotone albedo.
But will this actually give a more realistic looking result or not?
I've had a read around but it seems multi-layer PBR isn't really well documented or discussed quite yet, but I think it's maybe what I need here.
Or if it's not, I'm wondering what kind of approaches people are using to get these types of assets looking really nice and also reacting realistically?
Thanks for any help
Dave
Replies
Hey man, this might be something interesting.
Wow that is pretty interesting.
Very simple and effective!
I'll try out a few approaches to see how things look.
I've already done a bunch of buildings and they look ok... but I want them to look better.
I think subtle things like having each pane of glass have a slightly tilted normal so the specular runs across them non-uniformly etc, will all be little touches that help add to the realism.
I'll report back if I end up with some nice values that seem to work out really nicely vs what you'd expect.
Thanks
Dave