The flat glass of every window, every shop front, every glass office partition, every modern facade. Float glass is the building-glass canon — manufactured by the Pilkington float process invented in 1959, in which molten glass is poured onto a bath of molten tin (the tin is denser than glass and heat-stable up to ~1100 °C, so the glass floats on top in a continuous ribbon, gravity-flat to one part in ten thousand). The result is a continuous sheet 4-25 mm thick, optically smooth on both faces (no rolling marks), produced 24/7 by a small number of giant float lines (Pilkington / NSG, Saint-Gobain, Guardian Industries, Vitro). Almost every architectural glass downstream — tempered, laminated, low-E coated, mirror — starts as float glass at the float plant. Buy by the cut sheet from Glass Doctor / regional glass shops for repair and small project use, by the lite from architectural glazing specialists for project work.
Soda-lime silicate glass, composition typical 72 SiO2 / 14 Na2O / 9 CaO / 4 MgO / 1 Al2O3 (weight percent), with minor refining and decolorizing additives. Manufactured by the Pilkington float process — molten glass at ~1100 °C is poured onto a bath of molten tin in a continuous ribbon, drawn through annealing at controlled rate, and cut to size at the cold end of the line. Standard thicknesses 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 19, 25 mm. Density 2500 kg/m³. Compressive strength theoretically very high (~1000 MPa) but tensile strength low (~50 MPa untempered) — annealed float glass is brittle, with edge defects governing actual fracture strength. Coefficient of thermal expansion 9 × 10⁻⁶ /K. Refractive index 1.52 at the sodium-D line. Light transmittance 89 percent for clear 4mm float; coated and tinted variants reduce this for solar control. Surfaces — the tin side (the side that floated on tin) is detectably different from the air side under UV light and has slightly different chemistry (the tin migrates ~10 µm into the glass), which matters for some coating applications. Cuts with a glass scoring wheel and snap, ground edges for visible installations, polished edges for premium applications.
Principled BSDF defaults derived from the sphere transparent finish. Reasonable seed for Blender, Substance, Keyshot, Rhino — tune per material. Or grab the whole library at once: ForMaterials library →
# finish: transparent albedo #d8e8e8 metallic 0.00 roughness 0.05 ior 1.50 transmission 1.00 clearcoat 0.00 sheen 0.00 anisotropic 0.00 thickness 1.00 attenuation_distance 0.60
{
"albedo": "#d8e8e8",
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.05,
"ior": 1.5,
"transmission": 1.0,
"clearcoat": 0.0,
"sheen": 0.0,
"anisotropic": 0.0,
"thickness": 1.0,
"attenuation_distance": 0.6
}
# Blender 4.x — Principled BSDF
# Float Glass (Architectural Soda-Lime) · finish: transparent
import bpy
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="mat_glass_float")
mat.use_nodes = True
bsdf = mat.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"]
bsdf.inputs["Base Color"].default_value = (0.6867, 0.807, 0.807, 1.0)
bsdf.inputs["Metallic"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Roughness"].default_value = 0.050
bsdf.inputs["IOR"].default_value = 1.500
bsdf.inputs["Transmission Weight"].default_value = 1.000
bsdf.inputs["Coat Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Sheen Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Anisotropic"].default_value = 0.000
# KeyShot 11+ — lux Python API, Generic material
# Float Glass (Architectural Soda-Lime) · finish: transparent
# Run from Window → Scripting Console
import lux
mat = lux.createMaterial(name="mat_glass_float", materialType="Generic")
mat.setProperty("diffuse", (216, 232, 232)) # 8-bit sRGB
mat.setProperty("metallic", 0.000)
mat.setProperty("roughness", 0.050)
mat.setProperty("indexOfRefraction", 1.500)
mat.setProperty("transparency", 1.000)
mat.setProperty("coatingWeight", 0.000)
{
"_format": "Substance Designer / Painter \u2014 pbrMetalRough constants",
"_about": "Float Glass (Architectural Soda-Lime) \u00b7 finish: transparent",
"baseColor": {
"r": 0.6867,
"g": 0.807,
"b": 0.807
},
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.05,
"ior": 1.5,
"opacity": 0.0,
"anisotropyLevel": 0.0,
"_notes": "Channels listed are the standard Substance pbrMetalRough output. Drop into a Uniform Color node per channel, or as the constant input on a layered stack."
}{
"asset": {
"version": "2.0",
"generator": "ForMatter"
},
"materials": [
{
"name": "mat_glass_float",
"pbrMetallicRoughness": {
"baseColorFactor": [
0.6867,
0.807,
0.807,
1.0
],
"metallicFactor": 0.0,
"roughnessFactor": 0.05
},
"extensions": {
"KHR_materials_transmission": {
"transmissionFactor": 1.0
}
}
}
]
}# USD Preview Surface — UsdShade.MaterialLook prim attributes
# Float Glass (Architectural Soda-Lime) · finish: transparent
def Material "mat_glass_float" {
token outputs:surface.connect = </mat_glass_float/PreviewSurface.outputs:surface>
def Shader "PreviewSurface" {
uniform token info:id = "UsdPreviewSurface"
color3f inputs:diffuseColor = (0.6867, 0.807, 0.807)
float inputs:metallic = 0.000
float inputs:roughness = 0.050
float inputs:ior = 1.500
float inputs:opacity = 0.000
float inputs:clearcoat = 0.000
token outputs:surface
}
}
Pilkington float-glass technical literature; ASTM C1036 flat-glass specifications; *The Story of Architecture in 100 Buildings* lists the Pilkington process as 1959 invention.
House vocabulary — terms ForMatter uses with intent.
Materials and processes for people who design and make things.
A local-first library of materials, processes, applications, and finishes — equal weight, citable everywhere, with cost-over-volume curves, trade-off profiles, equipment-tier filters, and second-life paths layered onto the data so a student can move from "what is this" toward "what's actually buildable here, now, by me." Part of the renato.design ecosystem — sibling of Plenum, Specimen, Ingenue, gesture, graf, and the Renato Rhino plug-ins. Form and matter, inseparable.
Half of teaching materials is teaching how the material is made into the thing. The standard subscription library was always light on that half. The wedge here isn't better samples or a prettier interface — it's treating Process as a peer entity, not a footnote.
Conway's Material World on raw materials, Lefteri's Making It on processes, Forty's Concrete and Culture, Sparke's Design in Context, Bürdek's Design: History, Theory and Practice of Product Design, Schröpfer's Material Design on materials in architecture, Winchester's The Perfectionists on tolerance, Minshall's Your Life Is Manufactured on the global supply chain, von Busch's Making Trouble on material activism, Were's How Materials Matter, Hegger / Drexler / Zeumer's Basics Materials, Untracht and McCreight on metalsmithing, USDA Forest Products Lab on woods, GIA on gemstones, Schott / CoorsTek / Toray / Owens Corning datasheets, MakeItFrom for verifiable property numbers, ASM Handbook, ISO standards. Museum holdings draw from the Met, MAD, V&A, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Newark Museum of Art, British Museum, Heard Museum, Smithsonian NMAI, Eiteljorg Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, and Grand Rapids Art Museum — collection-record permalinks only, designer overview pages and exhibition listings excluded. Voice blocks now ride on every entry kind — material, process, application, and finish — and include Ruskin on iron, Anni Albers on twining, Greg Lynn on the shred-and-teeth NURBS lineage, Pugin on the metal that won't be hammered, Barthes / Yanagi / Benjamin channeled within their philosophy; Sparke, Bürdek, Forty, Conway, Schröpfer, Minshall, von Busch, Lefteri, Pat Pruitt, Mary Lee Hu, Tom Joyce, Albert Paley, and the rest of the contemporary makers quoted verbatim with citation. All cited.
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