MAKEEVRYSINGLEBLOCKHAVETHISSKIN

I could do that. I might do that. I need the time to do it, first. So busy with starting a new career right now.

this might seem like a really dumb request and I know you don't have time but hear me out: this glass for surfaces

yesterday i had a bout of inspiration that is sure to get me fired if i waste another day sneaking off to besiege that i had some spare time to work on. i thought i had a really excellent way to render this large sci-fi siphonophore/fishing community for a world-build ive been working on for years, but i'm not at all happy with the high reflectance of the transparent glass. I layered it with a solid colored under-surface but that tends to make it even more mirror-like. Your glass has this darkness in the middle that is just beautiful and would be perfect for the crystalline globes that are the centerpiece to this thing...

TL;DR the built-in glass surface has really strong reflectance. I don't know how you messed with the bump map or the occlusion but it would be amazing if it's something that can be pulled over onto the surface blocks



You know what? Nevermind: don't contribute to my delinquency :P

I haven't played the game for a few years, are 'surfaces', the transparent glass that came in since last I played? Saw it in a Draegast video but it wasn't explained.
Anyhow, if surfaces has an obj file, or you just mean other objects you want the effect on, it's very doable.. it's not a texture that makes the effect, it's attributes of object vertices called 'normals', which tell the renderer which way the a polygon is facing, as far as the light is concerned, per corner (which can be different to the way it's actually facing, if you have the tools to manipulate that). Some basic manipulation is possible in most apps, e.g. smoothing polygon edges, which averages the Normals together to point out at 45 degrees.. if you smooth all edges of a cube the light will act like it's a sphere. What I do, is I take those values, and I invert them, so the surface reacts as though it's being hit by the light from the other side.
I also sometimes subtly adjust them to add ripples and warps in the effect, and the background texture has to be a very plain, subtle, thing, to allow the effect to dominate a model.
If you can replace the surface obj, (if it is what I suspect, and if it even exists that way) with a same shape polygon divided into a grid, you could create all sorts of refractive effects with manipulating the directions of the Normals, depending on the resolution of the model.. but I'd need to know more details of your specific application of the effect to advise more.
The tool I use to manipulate the Normals is Autodesk Maya (and I'm pretty sure most other 3D packages don't have the level of control required). The student version is free from their website, and has all features active.