Glass material with Lumen in Unreal Engine 5.3 | TUTORIAL

[@aldoromo1]

Really nice settings. Glass is perhaps the material I have the most problems with in Lumen.

[@laurenmoore1237]

Seriously, so helpful! Thank you!

[@cookieplays33264]

your right, should be good practice, humbled by your expertise!

[@streamteam9922]

Just amazing! Thanks!

[@designhu6078]

Thanks for sharing. I always thought that the effect of UE5’s glass material under ray tracing was a bug.

[@antoniosuarez7881]

works fine, excellent info, thanks

[@mohamedabelaziz6239]

this is awesome dude well done !

[@KRUChY_80]

Very good pice of advice, I love Lumen but I thought that it would be easier to use, but nothing in UE is easy to use. There are always tone of stuff to set up before it will work in real time right. No one click solution. It would be great to see more of Lumen stuff from setting up common materials like bricks, walls, wood, steel to more advanced Post Processing volume and light specialty. It’s not so easy to get lighting right in Lumen.

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Glad you liked it. Thanks for the ideas, noted for the future.

[@moroalou]

Hey man, thanks for this valuable video. Like many others, I'm struggling to create a translucent curtain, and there aren't any good KZbin videos with results for Lumen

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Hi. Glad you liked it. I actually have a video about curtains here on the channel.

[@leepowers1316]

Thank you!

[@leepowers1316]

thanks dude!

[@violentpixelation5486]

Awesome stuff! 👊💯 #ue5

[@tayayoung6031]

Followed your tutorial, but even though I am interior it seems to be reflecting my skylight? instead of the surrounding environment? Thoughts? I am in 5.3 - UPDATE: I read through all the comments and found your response that turning off the option "affect raytracing" in the SKYLIGHT fixes it =)

[@emarinm1]

Hello. Excellent video. I wanted to ask why when I am setting "translucency" " lighting mode" surface translucency volume, the test sphere does not change from being a black sphere to an object with reflections as seen in your video. I ask this because if I keep moving forward and the sphere no longer shows the appearance of your video and then when I apply it and change the post process from raster to ray tracing it looks as if it had its own lighting or something similar but far from your result made at the bottom of the letter. What am I not considering? greetings

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Hi. Try to see in the little viewport of the material if it's set to lit mode or not.

[@mechuxxxxxx]

hi, could you recreate this scene with light setup, settings etc? it is looking shockingly good. i got the same interior and my final effect doesnt even look half that good. thanks for great tutorials!

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Actually, I'm working on a few videos regarding exterior and interior lighting from scratch, but I am using another scene made entirely by myself. So I hope it will be helpful.

[@mechuxxxxxx]

@@drawwithnightbuzzer 😻

[@yugi9710]

Awesome content 😊 btw any tips on where do you get good quality assets for interiors ?

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

This was a premade scene from the marketplace, but usually I make the furniture myself so that it fits my scene and for example I would add sofas or chairs and other decorations from other websites.

[@yugi9710]

@@drawwithnightbuzzer thanks ! When working with clients on tight deadlines and a lot of iterations it's not doable, that's why I use sketchup/ enscape. I started to get into unreal, but as much as I want to implement it with my workflow I still find it not suitable for the early stages.

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Yeah, I agree, Unreal is a lot more suitable for final shots. But I think you could use Twinmotion instead of Enscape if you want something new. It also comes with lumen or path tracing and is more user friendly and more suited for archviz or something like that. The great thing about Twinmotion is that is based on Unreal, so for the final stages, you could import the Twinmotion file into Unreal with everything set up already.

[@tayayoung6031]

We use 3D sky, we just fill it with credits and then the team can just download whatever assets we need. Sometimes we have to model very specialty furniture, but 3D sky has A LOT of stuff. (it's all for 3ds max, but just import it to max and use datasmith to bring it into UE)

[@yugi9710]

@@tayayoung6031 thanks ! Yeah 3dsky is awesome and there's a lot of free stuff too !

[@sajidshahnawaz8127]

So raster is for Lumen right? I don't have path tracing options probably because I don't have a NVDIA card. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm new to UE5. Thanks for the tutorial!

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

yes, that's correct. but if you don't have a gpu that supports ray tracing, i don't think that raster means full lumen, as lumen is a combination between ray tracing and raster rendering, as far as i know. you can check these in the post process volume, down to the global illumination, reflection, etc settings. hope this helped.🫡

[@sajidshahnawaz8127]

@@drawwithnightbuzzer will do! Thanks again!

[@Andrei-YT01]

as shown in the video raster looks bad with lumen. so you need to use raytracing instead.

[@SuadKapetanovic]

this is great! Do you know how this affects performance in comparance to the rasterized type of translucency?

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

It does make the performance go down actually because it uses ray tracing, which is far more advanced. But it's not a huge impact, I mean it depends on your gpu.

[@hosseinSattari]

Hey man first of all thank you for your time i try this this but for me dont work when i change the surface tranclucency volume but doesn't work the material perview remain black

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

The material preview sometimes acts up and won't change, but if you apply it onto your asset, it will look fine.

[@kuntalbiswas2685]

Hi, I'm new to UE5.3.2. Imported my skeletal mesh. The scene consist only the mesh and few rect light. But the shadow doesn't look very good. It looks like starecase/ low resolution. Could you help me fix it? Thanks

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Hi. Can you send me a message on instagram with some pictures?

[@kuntalbiswas2685]

@@drawwithnightbuzzer sure. Thanks for responding

[@RVNverse]

Can you try a Crystal Tutorial with nvrtx caustics branch?

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Hmm. I have seen videos, but I never tried it. I'll see what I can do.

[@tommyg83333333]

Not sure what I'm doing wrong but I applied this material to a flat piece of facade/window glass and I can't see shadows being cast through the glass. Followed every setting. I tried with thickness to glass and no thickness to glass. It also refracts incorrectly and heavily distorts when standing very close to the glass panel with a glancing view across the glass Any help would be appreciated

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Hi. I'll try it myself and find a sollution to this. I'll let you know.

[@user-zb7vq3hz2e]

如果您有开放折射率，您可以尝试将折射率更改为正常像素偏移

[@renderfactoryrf6436]

excellent! a question, how are you lighting the scene? When illuminated with an HDRI backdrop, the glass takes on the reflection of the sky even if it is in a closed room. You know why?

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Hi. I don't really use hdri, I use a simple sky and sun system. I don't really remember which one, but I think there's a setting in the details panel of the glass material.

[@renderfactoryrf6436]

@@drawwithnightbuzzer Is there a setting so that the glass does not reflect the sky?

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

I am almost certain that there is one.

[@GooseMcdonald]

Same problem here...

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Sorry, my bad. It is not in the glass properties, but in the skylight properties. In the light panel of the skylight disable "affect ray tracing reflections". Hope this helped.

[@ivomollov3073]

Hi there, awesome vid you have there. Since 5.3 I don't seem to be able to have additive materials to have reflections. Do you know why is that?

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Hi. I am not sure why that happens, but I don't think it has something to do with the version. I think mine works, so try to look in the material editor at the error panel, forgot how it's called. Usually it says there if something is not properly set up.

[@ivomollov3073]

@@drawwithnightbuzzer Let me be more specific- I am following a VFX course made on v. 5.1 and all sprites / meshes with additive materials seem to emit light when bright enough color is set. In 5.3 this is no longer the case material. If you want to reproduce it, get a simple plane, apply to it the DefaultSpriteMaterial (any material with blend mode == Additive will work too) and add a very bright color (V >= 3 lets say). Place it on a level of your choice. Then change the blend mode of DefaultSpriteMaterial to opaque and see the difference. I hope there is a setting or a way to go around this

[@da_drood-digitalart]

Awesome! Thank u so much ^^ I noticed though that if i set translucency type to Ray tracing the object material turns into a glitchy grey. Am i missing something? Using UE 5.3 with a rtx 2080Ti. Also quick question: if i get a translucency map (from Substance Painter) would i have to connect it to the Refraction connector of the material node? Thanks for any help you could give :)

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

1. I think you mean the graininess of the refraction. In realtime it is a bit grainy, but if you render the image with a decent amount of samples it's going to look nice. 2. I agree. I think the transparency map is for the refraction, in this case you would put it in the slot where you set the IOR. But it could also be an opacity map if there isn't one. I don't really know why would you use one for refraction, it doesn't really make sense. It's hard to tell if I don't know the context. But try it out!

[@da_drood-digitalart]

@@drawwithnightbuzzer it's a big bottle with a ship model inside, next to a wall. I figured out the problem with the rat tracing and somehow by playing with the other settings. Thanks for your advices ;D

[@tayayoung6031]

@@da_drood-digitalart how did you figure out the problem? i have the same issue. the moment i turn on raytracing the glass looks super ugly

[@da_drood-digitalart]

@@tayayoung6031 sorry unfortunately i can't remember how i sorted that out precisely, if not just by playing a bit with the settings available *_*

[@marcesmack]

Hey, I followed your steps, but I see all the polygons from the model that i have that switch to super low res when I apply the translucent mateirial... why is that happening?

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Hey. I think it's your 3d model. You should shade it smooth before importing.

[@marcesmack]

@@drawwithnightbuzzer it was actually 5.4 because I did it in 5.3.2 and it works great 😁

[@realemptystudio]

Uhm what about windows? How can I make light pass trough it

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

For windows, usually I turn off the refraction. And if you don't like the look of raytracing translucency, you can leave it to raster as it looks good in most cases.

[@mohannadhaikal4178]

My glass material is black in the preview window, using UE5.4.1, any idea how to solve this?

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

I'm not sure on how to solve it. It's not a problem for 5.4 but all versions, at least the ones that I worked with. But if you apply it on your model it will work.

[@mohannadhaikal4178]

@@drawwithnightbuzzer That's true, it does work normally, just looks odd when I configure it but I can't see the preview in the settings

[@RealityRenderStudio]

hey , do you see the shape of your lights in the reflections if the size of a rectangle light is small , lets say 10 x 10 ? it feels very weird that i see a rectangle box. how do i fix that?

[@RealityRenderStudio]

i have shared the image as well , i can send this to you on some other platform if you want to

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Hi. Yeah, pretty much any lights will appear on the reflections because they're visible, but if you want to get rid of just that reflection of the rectangle light, you can disable "affect ray tracing reflections" in the details panel of the light, but note that it will also lose the lighting effect in the reflection. Hope this helped.

[@zatlanibrahim5438]

In rectlight or any light therés an option called specular scale set it to 0

[@user-it3us4vi3v]

did everything but my glass is a mirror and abit emissive

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Sorry to hear that, but it may be because of the lighting.Try it in different scenarios. If it doesn't work, let me know.

[@Artofraytracing]

Man when i open my material its only showing nodes grapes area. Not details panel or anything. Just node area. What to do?

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Hi. Check the details under the Window tab.

[@Artofraytracing]

@@drawwithnightbuzzer its showing tick but wont showing if u give me ur ig i can send u some ss

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

My ig is in the description. Sorry for the late reply.

[@jonos138]

Using 5.3.2 and it looks dark.

[@jonos138]

I had to turn off Lumen and use Raytracing, otherwise the glass looked too dark.

[@seancollett6]

Any chance to get caustics for the glass shader?

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Would be nice if they implemented that, but not any time soon I'm afraid, but who knows?

[@ShyftLabs]

Glass material doesn't have shadows

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Yes, it's a limitation for now. I really hope they look into this for the next versions.

[@ShyftLabs]

@@drawwithnightbuzzer I'm duplicating the glass object, altering its material, and then setting the "Actor Hidden In Game" flag to true in the details panel. After that, I navigate to the Lighting section and enable the "Cast Hidden Shadow" flag to create shadows.

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

That's very smart. I didn't think of that.

[@yyin2612]

just in 5.3 haven't shadow? @@drawwithnightbuzzer

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

It's like that in earlier versions as well.

[@ADRIANA6.12]

Geat job! Thanks for the help!🫡

[@cookieplays33264]

can you share the glass material?

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

I don't think so, but each step is explained, so if you follow them, you will create it yourself very easily.

[@Staydiie]

hi. how add some dirt on glass

[@drawwithnightbuzzer]

Hi. you can either do it with a roughness texture, or more accurate with substrate material.