Blender Material Nodes
Explained: Building a
Glass Material in EEVEE

You edit material nodes in the Shader Editor. Click "Shading" in the tabs at the top of the screen.

This is the Shader Editor. The boxes you see here are material nodes. You may be picturing something far more complicated, but a new material starts with just two: "Principled BSDF" and "Material Output."

Think of the Material Output on the right as the final destination: whatever reaches it is what Blender renders as the surface.

Let's look at what each of the two material nodes on screen is doing.

The Principled BSDF is the node that calculates how a surface looks. Using the values you enter for Base Color, Roughness, and the rest, it works out how that surface reflects light. In the previous article, changing the color or the gloss changed the look because this node's result changed.

The Material Output is the node that receives that result.

Each node has its own defined role like this. Once it has done its job, it passes the result on to the next node. Connecting nodes together is how the look of a material gets built.

Here are the things you see in the Shader Editor and what each of them does.

What travels along the link that connects the material nodes is the result the Principled BSDF worked out: its answer to "here is how this surface looks." Let's disconnect the link and see for ourselves.

Click the dot next to "Surface" on the Material Output, drag, and drop it on an empty area. The link comes away.

Nothing about the settings changed, yet the cup body and saucer turned black. That's because the Principled BSDF's result no longer reaches the Material Output. The handle uses a different material, so it stays as it was.

When color or finish doesn't show up, start by checking that this link is connected.

From here we'll model the tumbler. To make that easier, switch the tab at the top of the screen back to "Layout."

How glass looks depends on what's reflected in it. So we'll set up the surroundings first.

Press Shift + A and add "Mesh" then "Cylinder," and place it next to the cup.

It doesn't look like a tumbler yet, so let's give it a taller proportion.

Press S then Shift + Z to scale the width (the X and Y axes) down only. Aim for around 0.4.

Next press S to scale the whole thing up. A tumbler looks natural standing taller than the cup, so aim for around 2.

Now remove the top face to make it read as a tumbler.

Next we'll give it thickness.

Press Tab to return to Object Mode, then press Ctrl + A and choose "Scale" to apply the scale. If you don't lock in the size you just changed, the thickness will come out uneven from one direction to another.

Then, in Modifier Properties (the blue wrench icon), choose "Add Modifier" then "Generate" then "Solidify," and set "Thickness" to around 0.02.

Add a "Bevel" the same way, with Amount at around 0.005 and Segments at 2, to round the rim slightly.

Finally, let's smooth out the faceted look of the surface. From Add Modifier again, choose "Normals" then "Smooth by Angle."

That alone won't make it smooth. Tick "Ignore Sharpness" in the Smooth by Angle options.

With the tumbler selected, switch to "Shading" in the tabs at the top of the screen. The 3D viewport in the Shading tab has its own display setting, separate from the Layout tab, and starts in Material Preview. Use the icons at the top right of the 3D viewport to switch to Rendered view.

The tumbler has no material yet, so click "New" to create one. Creating the material places two nodes automatically: the Principled BSDF and the Material Output.

To make glass, you use the "Transmission" settings. Unlike Base Color, Roughness, and Metallic from the previous article, "Transmission" starts out collapsed. Scroll down the Principled BSDF node's options and click "Transmission" to open it.

Set "Weight" inside it to 1.0. Set these three on the same node as well.

Take a look at the tumbler at this point. It's only reflecting light off its surface; it isn't transparent.

Transmission switches the surface to one that lets light through. But the calculation for light actually passing through the glass is off by default in Blender, so all you're seeing right now is the reflection on the surface. That's why setting up glass in the nodes isn't enough to make it transparent.

To make the glass transparent, turn on settings in two places: Render Properties, which applies to the whole scene, and Material Properties, which applies only to this glass. One without the other has no effect.

Open the camera icon (Render Properties) and tick "Raytracing." It's the system that calculates how light passes through the glass and bounces off its surface.

The material-side settings aren't on the nodes in the Shader Editor. Go back to Material Properties and open "Settings" then "Surface," near the bottom.

For Thickness, the official manual explains that a rounded shape such as the tumbler in this article is better suited to "Sphere." When we tried it ourselves, though, "Slab" came out more clearly see-through, so that's what this article uses.

Staying in Rendered view, take a look at the tumbler.

The tumbler that showed only the reflection on its surface a moment ago now shows through to what's behind it.

Here are all the values set in this article. If the glass isn't transparent, compare them against your current settings.

Search for something like "Blender glass not transparent" and you'll find steps such as "tick Screen Space Refraction" or "set Blend Mode to Alpha Blend." Those options were renamed and moved when Blender 4.2, released in July 2024, changed how EEVEE works.

If the glass won't turn transparent, work down these six checks.

In this article we looked at how material nodes work while building a glass tumbler.

Next, we'll cover textures. We'll build a wooden table under the coffee cup and use images to create its surface. A single wood-grain image isn't enough to make it look like wood, so we'll layer several images to get closer to the real thing.