Is there a way to include the alpha channel when using the glass shader in cycles?
I want to have alpha show up behind the object with the glass shader:
does anyone know if this is possible?
I am not sure what you want. Glass is a transparent material, but with an IOR.
Set the IOR to 1 for glass and it’s a simple transparent object.
In the picture I posted the transparent material includes the alpha channel(checkered background behind it) but the glass shader does not.
Ah yeh, intresting, I actually never noticed. Your image wasn’t really very explainatory, without knowing the IOR it could be anything, but even with an IOR of 1.0 the glass isn’t showing the “transparent” background.
Might be an not implemented feature, or a limitation of the current glass material - or even a bug.
Undesireable but you could work around it by mixing a transparency and a glass shader.
OK, thanks. Do you know where to go to suggest a feature to be implemented into blender?
Yeh, you take a paperbag speak your wish into it and put it at your front door. A Blender Dev will come on his unicorn then to pick it up 
If anything you could try Blenderstorm, but that’s pretty much the same like what I said 
But now seriously.
Don’t request features - it’s pretty pointless. Either this is a known bug already, or it’s on the to-do list for implementation. That’s the first thing to research. If neither, you could file a bug report and if it’s formulated somewhat factual and polite the devs usually take the time to explain why it is the way it is - it might be intended behaivoir for some reason quite in opposite to user expectation.
I myself had more than one nice discussions about things I reported as bugs and was handed between Ton and other devs just to clear up a misunderstanding and to explain how it works under the hood - which is awesome and much better than just a closed report.
And lastly do not forget that cycles is somewhere between alpha and beta software.
Right! OK, Thanks!