I did some additional research into layered fonts (thanks Thérèse) and discovered that they are exactly what I need. Switching gears to XeLaTex, I found a free layered font and started playing around.

The font is called Tribbon, and while it looks nothing like the font I was interested in, it can mostly achieve the same effect. I downloaded, installed the font, and from there it was simple to make it overlay in different colors at different opacities. Here is a nice example I whipped up:

\documentclass{article}
 \usepackage{xcolor}%for color change
\usepackage{pgf}%must have for the transparency
\usepackage{fontspec}%for font specification

\definecolor{mysilver}{RGB}{208,208,208}

 \begin{document}
Tribbon is a layered font.\\
{\fontspec{Tribbon A}Tribbon A}\\
{\fontspec{Tribbon B}Tribbon B}\\
{\fontspec{Tribbon C}Tribbon C}\\
\\
By combing the layers using different colors and opacities, using \rlap to overlay the text, we can achieve a shading effect on the characters in the font. For example, combining the following:\\
{\color{mysilver}\fontspec{Tribbon B}\huge THIS IS A SAMPLE} \\ {\pgfsetfillopacity{0.3}\color{black}\fontspec{Tribbon C}\huge THIS IS A SAMPLE} \\ {\pgfsetfillopacity{0.4}\color{mysilver}\fontspec{Tribbon A}\huge THIS IS A SAMPLE}\\
\\becomes\\
\\
\rlap{\pgfsetfillopacity{1}\color{mysilver}\fontspec{Tribbon B}\huge THIS IS A SAMPLE}{\pgfsetfillopacity{0.3}\color{black}\fontspec{Tribbon C}\huge THIS IS A SAMPLE}\llap{\pgfsetfillopacity{0.4}\color{mysilver}\fontspec{Tribbon A}\huge THIS IS A SAMPLE}\\

\end{document}

Which produces:

This method would require fine tuning for each font and may require additional tuning based on color and need. That said, converting this to a macro that takes text and a color as inputs, and outputs shaded text in a layered, 3D-esque font should be trivial. The only difficulty is finding the right layered font.