Phantoms

[Alboroto]

I FINALLY saw Final Fantasy: the spectres within or whatever it's called (remember, I live in Ecuador), and I found those phantoms to be really cool enemies, fast, stealthy and almost invincible.

Also, for some eye candy they look awesome.

[Lord FlatHead]

Congrats.

[dsm]

I hear that the movie sucks other than the visuals - is that true? Do YOU think the movie is bad?

Phantoms are basically in Doom already - spectres. The id guys just need to improve on them like they have improved the "pinkie" demon.

[Zaldron]

You can't make good spirits unless you use falloff to determine the pixel's opacity. Those triangles with normals that face the player's camera should be completely transparent, while the ones at 90° should be quasi-opaque.

[Fredrik]

DOOM3... dark corridors... a grunt... there it is again... louder, behind you... You turn around, nothing there. You continue... there, you hear it again...

[Zoost]

That's right!!!!!!!!!!

[IMJack]

You can't make good spirits unless you use falloff to determine the pixel's opacity. Those triangles with normals that face the player's camera should be completely transparent, while the ones at 90° should be quasi-opaque.

That's an interesting concept, Zaldron. Are there any programs/games that use such an algorithm? The problem with most games with transparent entities [cough]Half-Life[/cough] is that you can see every triangle on the thing.

[Rancid-Radio]

i hated final fantasy, but then i hate all final fantasy.

[IMJack]

i hated final fantasy,

Probably for good reason.

but then i hate all final fantasy.

I haven't payed attentioned to the Final Fantasy franchise since Square and Nintendo parted ways.

[Zaldron]

You can't make good spirits unless you use falloff to determine the pixel's opacity. Those triangles with normals that face the player's camera should be completely transparent, while the ones at 90° should be quasi-opaque.

That's an interesting concept, Zaldron. Are there any programs/games that use such an algorithm? The problem with most games with transparent entities [cough]Half-Life[/cough] is that you can see every triangle on the thing.

That, combined with refraction and a bit of caustics is what people use as glass in CG. I don't know if there's a way to do this in OpenGL (at least not a fast way) triangle-wise. Pixel-wise? maybe, specially now with pixel shaders.

[IMJack]

I don't know if there's a way to do this in OpenGL (at least not a fast way) triangle-wise.

Suppose you could break a model down into groups of triangles with similar normals, kinda like what they do with continuous level of detail algorithms. Give each poly a pointer to its respective grouping. Then, rather than going through and judging each triangle's normal vs the camera angle one-at-a-time, the renderer could just assign an opacity level to each angle group. That way, rather than running 4000 or so additional calculations per render, you only have to do about 200. It might not look as good, but it would run faster.

[Alboroto]

Well, the movie itself sucks, but the visuals are great.

Then again the movie sucks