/vr/ - Retro Games

Hey guys I'm reading a Powerpoint (can be viewed with LibreOffice's Impress instead for less bullshit) about Halo 3's effects from the FX Lead (and later Senior FX Artist) at Bungie, Steve Scott. https://web.archive.org/web/20120504011541/http://www.bungie.net/images/Inside/publications/presentations/halo3_fx.zip

If I see something cool, I'll share it here.

Here's something cool for fire effects:

>Simply fading alpha at the end of a fire particle’s life makes the fire seem bland and ‘gassy’
>We solved this by adding a control to crush the black point of the alpha channel
>This technique proved to be invaluable for other effects in the game
>-Water
>-Dirt
>-Explosions
>Bitmaps had to be authored with this purpose in mind. (Make textures that look good when this effect is used)

If you aren't familiar with the effect, here's an animation. As you can see, the "flame" gets smaller and still has a clear form.

I don't know how to do this in (G)ZDoom just yet aside from changing the translation every frame, but you can easily do it in GIMP, Photoshop, or anything else with a Levels or Curves tool. Just drag the black level forward so the blacks and dark greys get clipped and do this a little more each time for each frame. This GIF moves the black point forward by 17 each frame.