ABOUT GLASS render out stay as glass?

Hi All,
Question about using glass. V2.71 Cycles

When I apply Glass to a windshield like in the pic below. Will I be able to composite a PNG sequence later in another editor and still get the refraction and transparency?

In other words if I render that area with glass instead of just knocking out the faces and making it transparent, to then composite a planet scene in it, will I lose the glass effect? Will I lose the ability to add my planet scene with the glass effect there?
I ask instead of trying to render out and composite as some may have already been down this road and found a better way to do it…


Glass produces a solid alpha channel, due to the refraction. If you want window reflections with a composited background scene through the window, use this shader:


It works similarly to glass, but uses a transparent shader instead of refraction for the transmission portion.

Note that this shader will NOT work properly on meshes with thickness! Use open/planar geometry only.

In a short answer, no.
The glass effect happens in blender. If you bring it into another editor for compositing, it will not be like glass.
The only way you will see your other scene is to have nothing there for the window, and an alpha background so the render
will have basically a hole for the next editor, say l like GIMP or photoshop.

J Thanks for the node shot, I will try that on my model

Florida- thanks, saved me some time there. That is what I was asking about. So I will leave a hole and simulate refraction in After Effects.

Thanks guys appreciated!

You can still simulate refraction in Blender afterwards - just render the scene with just the glass pane which has a Refraction shader with the same IOR, and your planet. You will then be able to composite the planet into the existing render with whatever you want.

I am guessing using the composite editor…? Add a glass panel where I deleted the faces and inserted my planet render seq? As a later pass?
Good suggestion thanks Solar