Creating Transparent Window Effect in Unity

Objective: Create a transparent window material to use for a window in Unity

When it comes to objects in Unity, there are a range of ways to add color or textures, but what happens when you want to see through an object?

As you can see in the above image, the right window is transparent allowing a lovely view of the skybox behind it. You can also see there are slight reflections in the window panes themselves.

Now take the window on the left. There is a slight reflection on the window panel but the rest is a solid flat color. Logic would suggest changing the materials alpha or transparency to 0 but this is not the case.

In order to create this glass effect we start by creating a material.

Rename the material then in the inspector change the rendering mode from Opaque to Transparent. Drag the new material on to the object.

As you can see in the above image, the material has change but we still don’t have transparency. Now is where you can lower the materials alpha to a value that suits your needs. To do this, click on the materials Albedo color picker to open the color selector.

Then move the alpha value down using the slider until you reach the desired transparency.

We now have a transparent window to match the one on the right.

In the next post, we will look at the difference between Reflection Probes and Screen Space Reflections in Unity.