Creating Transparent Windows in Unity

Objective: learn how to create a transparent surface.

In the scene we worked in last time, we have two windows with mostly matching materials, but the glass of one of the windows isn’t transparent. To actually create a glass window, we need a transparent material.

Achieving this affect is easy enough. We can create a new material and change it’s rendering mode to transparent. This will allow any camera to be able to see any objects or environment on the other side of the surface.

By itself, this doesn’t fully make the surface transparent. We have to lower the alpha value of the color, which controls how “opaque” the surface is. The lower the alpha, the less of the surface we see and the more we see the things behind that surface.

After setting up the proper alpha and smoothness, our new glass material looks like this.

Now we can apply it to the unfinished window! Now we have a nice glass surface effect that game camera can properly see through.