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MSFS adding glass reflective surface to an image texture material

jgarnold

jgarnold

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I have an 'image texture' of a photo of the front of a building which has a number of glass doors. I applied this texture image to the front of my building and then thought perhaps I could imitate reflective glass of the doors by adding a mesh PLANE, placing it directly in front of each of the doors, applying (material) MSFS GLASS and setting the metallic value to 1.0 and the roughness to 0.0 When in MSFS I do not see any reflections. Is what I am trying tio achieve possible?
Here is the image applied to the building mesh to which I added mesh PLANEs covering each door.


VANCOUVER HARBOR AIR BUILDING FRONT2.jpg
 
Hi

You give reflections on the comp file like I have done.
The albedo file:

1665346657301.png


The comp file:
RGB chanels:

R - pure white
G - pure black
B (metallic channel) - white on the glass and black in the rest.

1665346733172.png



Result of the comp file with the 3 channels:

1665346791459.png
 
Thanks
Never done that sort of thing which looks like a lot of work. What image editor did you use?
 
Hi John. You could make mesh planes over all the windows, off set them 0.05 meters or so away from the building, and then apply a glass-like material. They are mostly transparent, but have the shine of glass. I attached an example. You could just steal that material for your windows.
 

Attachments

Thanks Dick. I did try adding mesh planes over all the doors and they did show reflections but didn't appear as particularly - I had set roughness to 0 and metallic to 1.0
I also tried using MSFS Material GLASS with no improvement.
I note you used 0.037 and 0.5 respectively so I will try those settings.
Thanks again.
Thanks also to Mariorc. I will also have a look at that method using Corel Photoshop Pro.
 
Hi Dick
I used your example and 'wrapped' my texture image (photo of front of building) onto your cube and can see the (glass) plane mesh shows both reflections and transparentcy allowing the image on the cube to show through and so your values work well. See attached blender file. Thanks again. I was on the 'right track' but my values obviously weren't the best.
 

Attachments

Hi Dick,
This is MOST strange. Whilst I can see through the 'glass' plane in your example (fakeglass) when I wrap my image onto the cube, I CANNOT see through my added mesh plane on my building.
The method I used is
Open my blender file of my building which already has the image of the front of the building uv wrapped onto the front face.
Add Mesh Plane and rotate and move it to just in front of my building
Add material and change the following parameters as per the differences between the defaults and what I note in your fakeglass example
Metallic from 0 to 0.5
Roughness from 0.5 to 0.037
Clearcoat from 0.0 to 1.0
Alpha from 1.0 to 0.074

I get the reflections but cannot see through the mesh plane
I have attached my blender file of my building with the mesh plane. Could you have a look to see what I am missing please.
[added later]
Strangely if I open your fakeglass blender file then IMPORT my building (saved to a gLTF file) 'discard' the cube from your blender file and position your mesh plane over my (imported) building it displays with reflections AND see through. Obviously there is something about the 'seeti8ngs' for your mesh plane which I don't notice.

ANYWAY I can get around the problem I have by importing my (gLTF) building and using your mesh plane. It would be nice though to know what is the difference.
 

Attachments

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In the .blend file, the Blend Mode should be set to Alpha Blend. I would also set Specular to 0.8 or so.
 
Thanks Dick. I should have thought of that (setting blend mode). Also I just noticed that I didn't have SETTINGS expanded and so didn't notice the Blend Mode difference between your 'glass' plane and mine.

That begs another question (I just noticed). What is SURFACE type GLASS BDSF used for? I suspect to only make the SURFACE look like glass?
 
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I have noticed that these settings only result in reflections of light ie reflections of the environment.
I have considered that having a mirror effect would be nice so that objects in front of the glass would show some reflection and so found some Youtube videos on how to achieve that but try as I might using the Reflection Plane I cannot get that to work.

And maybe this effect will not be seen in MSFS?
 
jgarnold said:
And maybe this effect will not be seen in MSFS?
Click to expand...
Maybe so, yw.

www.fsdeveloper.com

Telescope mirror

I am trying to model nice telescope mirrors... Using a (R=100%, G=0%, B=100%) texture for the metallic texture, i get a perfect mirror effect in Blender : but the result is not so nice when rendering in MSFS : Seems similar if i de-activate the shade smooth in blender. I am loosing this...
www.fsdeveloper.com www.fsdeveloper.com
 
Thanks Rick
I noted that 'he' said the "mirror isn't perfect" but maybe better than nothing.
 
I noted what he said and went on to prove to myself that "metallic=1, roughness=0" makes as perfect a mirror chrome as I'll ever need to simulate anything.
 
Thanks Rick My 'reflective glass panels' have a material with metallic = 1 and roughness = 0 yet it only results in 'reflections of the environment'. The glass doors in my model do reflect the 'environment' but not other objects such as an aircraft parked in front.

The author of the video clip I tried to emulate has now advised me that mirror reflections occur 'naturally' using Cycles (I always use Evee) and so I will persue that but not sure if the Render properties has any effect of an (gLTF) export for MSFS but I will test that. Once again I am thinking that it cannot be done in MSFS.
 
There are probably a few aspects of reality that have little to do with flight simulation, that cannot be simulated in MSFS. If you wanted to check 6, you could try DCS, I know mirrors work there. You can see the F-15 in the rearview. Check the distortion though!

hqdefault.jpg
 
Thanks again Rick. Not sure what
=rk= said:
If you wanted to check 6, you could try DCS,
Click to expand...
means 'check 6' and 'DCS'
Anyway would you believe I now have the reflection to work in Blender. Not sure if this is because I have 'applied' each 'step' (in the video) in a different order.
Could the order of doing thing affect such things I wonder?
I have noticed though that you can't seem to have (mirror) 'reflections' AND see through (eg blender mode alpha and alpha set low). I guess that might be 'asking' a bit much although in real life it is possible to see through a glass door and also see some partial reflections of nearby objects particularly at obtuse angles.
Now to test it in MSFS and I note you mentioned distortion. I will see what I find.
[added later]
After preliminary testing I suspect that 'full' reflections will not work in MSFS and maybe not even 'partial' reflections as I exported my model as a gLTF and then imported it and the full reflections aren't seen in Blender (only partial reflections as if the 'reflection plane' doesn't work any more.
 
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