How to Get the Most Realistic Glass and Ice from Arnold

Arvid Schneider Creates Advanced Realistic Glass, Ice and Crystal Shaders Using Procedural and Volume Shading Techniques with Arnold.

Translucent, see-through, reflective and refractive. Familiar terms that come to mind when rendering. Those terms can also describe glass, ice and crystal materials, which are easy enough to replicate using a Standard Material preset. It gets much more complicated if you are looking to add the details that make an almost hyper-realistic glass, ice or crystal shader. ILM Lighting TD Arvid Schneider has a recently completed series that deals with getting the most out of creating realistic glass, ice and crystals with Arnold render.

The tutorial series covers using procedural techniques including shading challenges with noises, and projections, along with volume shading to get the most from your final renders. As always with Arvid’s tutorials, you can have access to the full scene files for this project if you are a Patron. Visit Arvid’s page to learn more.