In one of my most popular tutorials, I showed you how to create a proper window glass material in Blender. The goal was to let light pass through the glass, including colored stained glass, instead of simply creating a transparency effect. The good news is that, with Blender 5.2, we no longer need that node setup because we can achieve the same result using only the Principled node and its new Thin Wall feature.
Video Transcript
Hello everyone! In one of my most popular tutorials, I showed you how to create a proper window glass material in Blender. The goal was to let light pass through the glass, including colored stained glass, instead of simply creating a transparency effect.
The good news is that, with Blender 5.2, we no longer need that node setup because we can achieve the same result using only the Principled node and its new Thin Wall feature.
In this example, the Material I'm using for the window glass includes Textures that provide the colors and surface details for stained glass. However, with the default settings of the Principled node, the glass appears completely opaque.
To quickly create realistic glass, we only need to make two changes to the Principled node. First, set the Transmission Weight parameter to 1.0. This tells the material that the object is transparent, allowing light rays to pass through it so we can see through the object.
At this point, some light already passes through, making the scene noticeably brighter. However, this Material still causes some light attenuation because the light rays travel through the object using the Material, so the light does not fully reach the wall on the other side.
To solve this, all we need to do is enable the Thin Wall option in the Principled node. This option is designed for extremely thin objects such as leaves, paper, and glass. When combined with a Transmission Weight value of 1, it treats the object as thin and transparent, allowing light to pass through completely.
Keep in mind that this is not just a simple transparency effect. We could achieve that by using a Transparent node or by lowering the Alpha value in the Principled node, but that would effectively remove the glass and prevent the colored light from appearing on the surrounding walls.
Instead, this creates a true glass material with its characteristic reflection and refraction effects. You can also adjust those effects by changing the IOR value, which is the material's Index of Refraction.
That's all for this tutorial! As with many of my other videos, you can find the written version of this tutorial, along with additional resources, on my website in several languages using the link in the description. If you found this tutorial helpful, please leave a Like and subscribe to the channel. See you next time!