THREE.JS / FOUNDATIONS 231

Let light travel through.

Physical transmission is more than opacity: refraction, index of refraction, volume thickness, attenuation, and dispersion all shape the way a material carries light.

Initializing transmission—

Preparing the environment, physical materials, and node-property path…

backend: —
material path: —
specimen: —
transmission: —
ior / thickness: —
frame ms: —

Physical material controlsnode overrides

specimen material path transmission 1.00 index of refraction 1.52 volume thickness 0.45 attenuation distance 5.00 dispersion 0.15 surface roughness 0.04 specular intensity 1.00

animate specimens auto-rotate camera

Node overrides are live on the selected physical material; click another specimen to compare its authored values.

Transmission contractNodeMaterial

materialphysical PBR

MeshPhysicalNodeMaterial

transmissionfloat node

transmissionNode

volumeworld units

thicknessNode

refractionoptical IOR

iorNode

absorptioncolor + distance

attenuation nodes

environmentcubemap

generated HDR proxy

When transmission is non-zero, opacity stays at 1; the environment and volume parameters make refraction and absorption visible.

The WebGPU path uses node overrides for the physical material properties; the property path keeps the same MeshPhysicalNodeMaterial and lets its ordinary values feed the lighting model.

Derived from the official transmission example, MeshPhysicalMaterial, MeshPhysicalNodeMaterial, NodeMaterial, and PropertyNode docs. Use ?forceWebGL=1 to inspect the direct MeshPhysicalMaterial fallback.

LAB 231 / PHYSICAL TRANSMISSION