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Can you see through translucent glass?
Frosted glass, tissue and other materials aren’t opaque, but we can’t see through them because they scatter light so that that any image seen through them is hopelessly blurred. This allows them to not only re-create blurry images, but do so in three dimensions and in real time.
Why can you see through glass but not wood?
We can see through glass because light passes through it. When something is clear, like glass, visible light passes straight through it without being absorbed or reflected. Wood, on the other hand, absorbs the light in wavelengths we can see.
When to use glass BSDF in a blender?
The Glass BSDF is used to add a Glass-like shader mixing refraction and reflection at grazing angles. Like the transparent shader, only pure white will make it transparent. The glass shader tends to cause noise due to caustics.
Why is this glass cycles material casting solid shadows?
You did have Transparent Shadows disabled in the Material Settings. Once enabled, you can use the Light Path Node’s Is Shadow Ray to Select between the Glass and Transparency shaders to achieve this effect. You need to put a solidify modifier on your glass pieces. Or make them thick otherwise.
Can a transparent shader be used with a glass shader?
Like the transparent shader, only pure white will make it transparent. The glass shader tends to cause noise due to caustics. Since the Cycles path tracing integrator is not very good at rendering caustics, it helps to combine this with a transparent shader for shadows; for more details see here.
How are glass surfaces treated as opaque by shadow rays?
Neither GlassBSDF nor PrincipledBSDF (with transmission) count as transparent surfaces to shadow rays. This results in glass surfaces casting shadows like fully opaque objects, even when the render option for transparent shadows is enabled. In my opinion this radically compromises realism by default and is an incorrect behavior of light rays.