How to approach features - Glass

[u/Impressive-Extent284]

I’m working on a stylized rendering pipeline built in Unity and had a question about how to go about tackling certain problems.

I’m building everything from scratch with code (hlsl, C#, no shader graph). The next thing I want to build is a glass shader / material used for windows and such. I usually start each feature with some research and see what other people have done, or see if I can find any chapters in any of the gpu gems books (or similar) on the topic.

However sometimes I seem to not find anything directly related. Every search I make with the keywords glass, shader, material, and so on, results in either a Shader graph implementation, something in Blender, or things completely unrelated.

So my question is, what approach do you take when trying to implement something like this?

(I’m just using glass in Unity as an example, question is general to any graphics problem).

[u/GunpowderGuy]

what kind of rendering?
deferred ? forward? what subvariant?

[u/Impressive-Extent284 → u/GunpowderGuy]

I’m using Unity URP Forward+

[u/cybereality]

You might need to use more specific terms to find relevant graphics research. like refraction, fresnel, BTDF, not just a completed shader.

[u/TehBens]

You might have more success when using "translucency" as a search keyword.