When working on the Snowman Crystal Ball illustration, I originally had trouble getting the look right when using the built-in Blender “Glass BSDF” – Shader: Either the reflections on the surface were too harsh or the Snowman blurred out too much or got distorted way too much.
Well aware of the fact that I’d lose out on realism, I opted to fake the glass by using a mix of a “Glossy BSDF” and a “Transparent BSDF” mixed by a “Layer Weight” node:
The “blurriness” of the reflections can now be easily adjusted through the “roughness” value on the “Glossy BSDF” node.
Download the original Blender file here (both Glass Shaders included)
Thanks to “Anime Matrix00006” for asking the question! I leave this up here for anyone to download and use in their own crystal ball projects.
Until next time!
Matt