Hey Guys,
I just started working on transparency in my models. I like the results so far, but I’m open to suggestions to make it better. Also, as it’s rendered in Blender, how would I go about making it Unity ready so as to retain it’s transparency and look.
Thanks in advance for all help given. 
First, looks good! I did something similar in Blender a couple of years back…
The way I chose to do it was drop the alpha for the crystal texture to something like 85%, while rendering the texture in blender with reflection and refraction, so that you get a genuinely ‘crystalline’ look. If you have Pro, consider rendering the crystal texture with some kind of refractive shader.
These models currently are not using any textures. They are live renders.
Then, you’re halfway there. Just reduce the render alpha of the crystalline texture, and enable reflection/refraction on it, and then try a render. For my crystal that I did, I wound up having to include hints of other colors as well, due to the fact that the crystal is breaking light that is entering it.
For a visual reference, try this - this is just a simple Quartz crystal The spar on the right of the image is where you can really see the transparent/refracted optical properties coming into play.
Just don’t drop the alpha much below 80%, as the crystal will look ‘ghostly’ when you try to render it using a transparent shader in-game. I found 80%-90% gives the best trade off of rendered look and transparency when I was playing with crystals.
Here’s the new render. I like the result a lot better than my previous renders. A lot less glassy looking and more solid.
I think I’ll increase the Reflectivity a bit though.
