bend light?

hey im makin a map in which players pick up balls of "distorted reality" from the ground with grav gun, and throw them at each other. when you get hit, it triggers a push (maybe a 0 or - gravity, but havent tried that yet) effect so that you are suspended inside the bubble and float upwards. i was wondering, is there a way so that when the player is inside the ball, they see the rest of the world around them wierd? maybe use some glass effect to bend light? it may be to advanced for hl2's engine (it shocks me to say that) but if you have any thoughts post them please.

Judging form what was in the E3 demos, I'd say it's possible, but I've no idea how to do it.

I imagine you would have to find a code monkey and make a mod for this to work.

hmmmm have you tried the many properties of water, or func_illusionary?

You remember that beam thing in the citadel that bent light? Thats an env_steam with its Particle type as heat wave! (Discovered by accident)

i imagine this type of thing is a material setting rather than any type of coding.

Have a look at the magnifying glass in kleiners (spelling?) lab, it
distorts light like a lens would and im pretty sure it's done entirely
with materials.

You might also take a look at env_screenoverlay, which is used for some
effects during the teleportation sequences. I've no idea how to use it,
though, or whether you could use it for only one player in a
multiplayer game.

Or as popsi says, make a model with a distorted-glass effect (like the
Combine barricade thingys) and place the player inside it.

erm i think its refraction, not sure how to do it but i saw someone write about it before

as far as i can remember you have to make an alpha channel for a texture, so that it bends light a certain way. theres a doorway used in the game where the glass is rippled light a bathroom window.

i think there is a valve tutorial for it - but they seem to explain it in a way that only becomes useful once you figure out how to do it - then it all makes sense.