how do i setup a glass texture? for some reason whatever i do my glass spheres won’t let light through, they cast a solid shadow, does anybody know how to fix it.
i mean obviously a glass ball would let some light through, right?
Make sure the material that has the shadows cast on it is able to receive transparent shadows. In the material section it is one of the buttons under the Shaders tab.
Richard
Glass should be transparent, set the alpha value to less than 1.00 in the Material panel, also turn on Ray Transparency in the Mirror Transparency panel and give it an IOR (index of refraction) greater than 1.00. Set up your lamp to do ray shadows (button in the lamp’s Shadow and Spot panel) and do what Richard said, too.
still dosn’t seem to work, oh well thanks for your help!
You might be looking for caustics, and I don’t think Blender Internal has this yet, unless there is a patch from Broken somewhere… Yafray has it, I think. Caustics ( it took me a year to understand that this term had nothing to do with caustic soda or any other acidic chemical 
) are the light beam penetrations you see in realistic renderings of inside lighting scenes, like through glass balls or like the underwater scenes…
If this is not what you are talking about, just disregard the above 
Craigo