Realistic glass and render quality settings in Enscape: a guide for architects

For architecture and interior design firms using Enscape, achieving realistic glass and lighting results comes down to applying the right settings in the right order. This guide is based on information published in Enscape's official documentation and technical articles released by Chaos, explaining step by step how to balance real-time walkthrough performance with the quality of exported images. The content reflects documentation for the current version of Enscape and its Revit and SketchUp integrations.

1. Choose the right Rendering Quality level

Enscape consolidates the amount of effort spent calculating scene lighting into a single slider. To access it:

1. While Enscape is running, click the Visual Settings Window button.

2. In the window that opens, find the Rendering Quality slider under the Main tab.

The levels work as follows:

• Draft: Only direct light illuminates the scene; light bounce is disabled, and reflections are heavily simplified. Offers the highest performance.

• Medium: Path Tracing kicks in; light bounces from the first surface to a second, enriching the lighting, and reflections begin to show the actual surroundings.

• High: Lighting is calculated more precisely, reflections obscure fewer objects, and colored glass now also affects reflections, indirect lighting and fog.

• Ultra: The only difference from High is that two light bounces are calculated instead of one; according to the documentation, the difference is usually barely noticeable in non-VR mode.

At High quality in walkthrough mode, two performance optimizations that don't affect captures are automatically applied: the Fresnel term is skipped when calculating colored shadow reflections (saving roughly 2-4% of frame time on curved glass surfaces), and if a glass surface has a base texture, an averaged albedo color is used instead of the full texture for indirect GI (saving about 3%). These two approximations are not applied when taking a capture (exported image) — it renders at full quality.

In VR mode, quality levels generally behave one tier lower overall; for example, Medium in VR produces results similar to Draft in non-VR.

2. Define glass material correctly in Revit or SketchUp

In Revit, glass can be defined using three different methods: Generic, Glazing, and the Advanced (PBR) shaders introduced with Revit 2019. Whichever method you choose, the following step in Enscape's general settings is critical:

Enscape General Settings › Material Selection = Appearance

If this setting is not set to Appearance instead of Graphics, Enscape won't read Revit's Appearance assets (reading shaded overrides instead), and glass typically appears incorrect.

Most Revit templates come with the default Glazing material set to a very low Reflectance value, which causes curtain walls to appear glassless. Raising the Reflectance value from 0 to 50, then to 100, noticeably makes exterior reflections more realistic.

The Advanced (PBR) Glazing shader offers Visible Transmittance (VLT) and transmissive color parameters that correspond to real-world data; these values can be taken from manufacturer data sheets, and Enscape renders the transmissive color accurately. For those who prefer to use the Generic shader, a practical method is converting the VLT percentage from the manufacturer's data sheet to Revit's 0-255 grayscale using the formula 255 × VLT ≈ RGB.

In SketchUp, since the material system is more limited, the main work is done through the Enscape Material Editor; Tint Color and Reflection Roughness are the two most effective parameters, and the Transparency texture can also be used to apply frit or laminated patterns.

3. Refractive index and reflection normalization

Both the Revit/SketchUp material editor and Enscape Envision's Standard material include an Index of Refraction (Refractive Index) setting. According to the documentation, air is 1.0, water is 1.33, and typical window glass is about 1.52; architectural glass usually aims for minimal distortion close to 1.0 for clarity.

Enscape does not map Revit's reflection sliders one-to-one with manufacturers' VLR (visible light reflectance) values; according to the documentation, the software normalizes these sliders to physically plausible glass reflectance values, such that a "medium" setting behaves like roughly 4% F0 reflectance, with the upper limit around 12%.

4. Adjust export quality

The Visual Settings › Output tab contains four settings that determine export quality:

• Resolution: Window resolution, preset options, or custom resolutions up to 8192x8192 pixels can be selected; at very high resolutions the graphics card can become overloaded and Enscape may crash.

• Compr. Quality: Determines the bitrate of video files and doesn't affect render time; the Lossless option produces hundreds of PNG files.

• FPS: Going from 30 to 60 doubles render time but smooths playback.

• Panorama Resolution: Low (2048x1024), Normal (4096x2048) and High (8192x4096) options are available.

Impact on architectural visualization workflow

These settings are especially critical for client presentations at interior design and architecture firms: teams working with lower-spec laptops can maintain smooth navigation with Draft/Medium, then switch to High during the presentation itself to capture realistic glass and indirect light. The Material Library and "Replace with Enscape Material" workflow make it easier to share a consistent glass material set across the office, increasing team-wide consistency.

Common mistakes

• Leaving Revit's Material Selection setting on Graphics instead of Appearance and not understanding why the glass material doesn't look right.

• Leaving the default Glazing material's Reflectance value at 0, resulting in curtain walls that appear "glassless."

• Unnecessarily using the Ultra slider on every scene despite the visual difference usually being minor, incurring a high performance cost.

• Saving Lossless video output to the desktop and then having to deal with hundreds of PNG files.