3D Model of the Month: Iridescence and transmission – real-time realistic glass

Creating realistic transparent or translucent materials for 3D models can be quite a challenge, especially in real-time. Thanks to the iridescence and transmission extensions of the Khronos Group, it’s now possible to create materials like glass or water that look convincing. With the help of RapidPipeline, you can also optimize 3D models that use the iridescence or transmission extension.

For this month’s Model of the Month, we’d like to showcase a complex model that was optimized using RapidPipeline. The bottle section is a perfect example of a sophisticated scene with challenging materials including the iridescence and transmission extension. Not only does it make use of both extensions, but it also has a transmission map. This creates variations in the transparency of the glass in different areas. In addition, the bottle also uses the tridescence extension, which makes the overall reflection more realistic. Finally, the IOR extension was used in the bottle as well as in the water materials, in order to represent realistically the light refraction on each material.

Using the RapidPipeline Cloud, we were able to optimize the model in just a few simple steps. Firstly, we reduced its size from 30 MB with 305,000 polygons to 2.2MB with 50,000 polygons. Afterwards, all of the maps, including the transmission one, were baked seamlessly into the optimized model. In conslusion, this means that we can now use our Model of the Month in a variety of applications. Including for example the web and VR.

If you’d like to take a closer look at the optimized model, we’ve created an embed that you can check out.