Hey Developers,

We’re excited to announce a new material: Glass.

Glass is a material that can be applied to any Part, MeshPart, or Union. It offers a few visual features that are currently absent from our material palette:

Tint

The Glass material acts as a color filter. For example, red glass lets red light through, but blocks other colors. Glass uses a multiply blend when calculating pixel colors, whereas Plastic uses an alpha blend.

Tint - Image

Fresnel Reflections

Glass reflections increase in strength when you view a surface at an angle. This creates a reflective outline around the edges of an object.

Fresnel Reflections - Image

Refraction

On high graphics quality levels, glass bends light that passes through it, distorting the image behind it.

Refraction - Image

Behavior:

Glass Transparency is slightly different than that of other materials. At Transparency 0, glass is completely opaque. As Transparency increases from 0 to .5, glass becomes less opaque (any light that bounces off as diffuse decreases to zero), while all light that passes through is filtered by the glass color. As Transparency increases from .5 to 1, strength decreases until the glass is completely invisible.

Transparency - Image

Reflectance determines how much light comes from reflections of the Skybox versus the scattered diffuse light from the Part’s color. Skybox reflections are slightly tinted by a Glass Part’s Color.

Reflectance - Image

Warning: Non-opaque Objects - Non-opaque objects are currently not visible through glass. This includes, but is not limited to, transparent parts, decals on transparent parts, particles, and world-space gui objects. This behavior matches the refraction on high quality smooth terrain water. This was implemented so refraction wouldn’t have a large performance impact. This behavior may change. We do not recommend relying on this behavior for gameplay.

Image

We want to hear your feedback. Feel free to let us know what you like and dislike about the material, as well as any problems you face. We’re looking forward to seeing your glass-filled creations!