Seeing through windows

From a user:

I have found that using the default render settings make windows reflective and I can't find a tutorial on how to set up to render windows that are transparent with just a touch of reflection. I want to be able to see through my windows to show what's going on inside. Is there a tutorial on this or are there several steps that I need to make to achieve the desired result?

I don’t think there is anything in any of our tutorials that specifically addresses this.

As you noticed we automatically add a little reflection to any transparent SketchUp material, since glass usually has some reflection.

Whether you can see through the window depends on:

1. How reflective the window glass is. You can set the amount of reflectivity on a material by right clicking on the material and selecting IRender nXt/Edit Material. You can set the reflection to a lower value to see through windows better. You can also set the Index of Refraction to a lower value, since IOR also affects reflection.
2. The color of the glass. SketchUp lets you see through colored glass easily, but in reality tinted glass is very hard to see through. By default we automatically move the color of the glass toward white to compensate for this (there is a check box on our Support dialog to turn this feature off.), but you might want to make it even less tinted.
3. How much light is in the room. If you add lamps to the room, or increase the light for those lamps using light channels, you will see the geometry in that room better.
4. The color of whatever is being reflected will also affect how much you can see through the windows. This will depend on type of sky is reflected in the windows, and obviously if the sky is set to reflect.
5. The balance of the Sun and Sky with respect to the artificial lights can be set on the Options/Lights tab.

I think that you just have to play around with all of these things to see what you need to do for a particular model.