tl;dr - I want to make a duplicate mesh somehow and use the star distortion to give a race's ships animated, distorted skin in addition to their existing bloom abuse.

Long version -

I'll quickly summarize the concept.

There is a race in my novel who possesses ships made out of an elemental energy-metal. They glow, they have pulsing crimson veins, and they are highly reflective. They also produce distortion - like heat waves - but it's psionic energy.

They are the Undead, and the unique appearance of their ships has been impossible one way or another in every game I've ever modded. But I've always tried to find a compromise to achieve a unique effect.

In sins, I currently have this;

(Ignore the coppery sheen... I'm gonna fix that)

Sins does not have reflections, not even cubemaps, so the reflecitivity is imposible (although I have heard of people breaking the textures to the point of making some kind of reflection, but have never been able to recreate that effect or discover specifics). I can't get 99% of the shaders in Particle Forge to do anything other than render particles invisible. Distortion is also impossible, it seems. But I was looking at a star earlier today and I thought, "Hey, can't particle forge render meshes? Was that not how the B5 guys made the rotating Omega section?"

My idea is simple, but I have doubts if it will work, and I have no idea how to execute it.

The initial idea was to try to spawn a duplicate mesh of the ship that is very slightly larger than the original, and make an animated texture that scrolls and pulses across it for the glowing crimson veins. But perhaps I could take this a step further if I can access the shader used by the star's surface to create that rippling distortion. True distortion for effects doesn't seem like it's at all possible, but if I can give a ship mesh some transparency plus that star animation, well I do quite expect the effect to be very impressive. If I can spawn a second mesh and apply the red veins, we'll be in real business. Since the Undead models are all very low poly (excluding the Fear, but a triple-mesh fear would still only be around 30k poly, hardly anything to be concerned about), I am not at all worried about performance issues (I'm on a beefy computer, anyways). I have done something similar in warcraft 3 to achieve crystalline effects as well as the moving texture effect. I presume that since the Advent Starbase has a shifting texture around the middle that moving textures is possible with particles or in some other shape or form. If not, then we'll ignore the crimson veins. If it is possible, I'd then try to make the crimson veins player color, otherwise the Undead won't have player color. But player color is not a big concern for me since I can't uvw/skin anyway.

There is also that curious shimmering animation played on ship textures during warp. I have another race that could make use of that kind of an effect of that is also possible to access.

But I don't know if this is possible, or how I would go about this.

Grant me your insight, gentlemen. Give in to my madness.