Hi PowerPC603,
I've had no problems creating glowing entities such as neon signs and the like, I simply create the sign in Photoshop & use the glow filter to make a nice glowing sign on a black background - In the level I've previously designed I've placed a light of the same color approximately at the center of the sign & lightmapped (ie. glowing pink sign, pink light). I then map the sign texture onto a simple object (two triangles joined together - a billboard) with the background transparent. The net effect is a glowing sign which casts its light onto the environment, the effect is very convincing.
In summary its very easy to make flat signs and the like glow, however I've not attempted to make 3D objects glow. I've always wondered how the Farb Rauch demos (is that how you spell it - the guys behind the popular demo) have such amazing glow effects. To solve the problem, I would probably approach it in the same manner as above, except using an algorithym instead of photoshop to create the glow for the object.
ie. I've got a cup that I want glowing in my scene, branch to function that renders the cup to an image buffer (from the current camera angle), remove the cup & draw glowing edges, return and use a transparent billboard for the texture positioned appropriately. For objects that are lathed and upright, you would not need to re-call the routine as you rotated around the y axis, you would only need to re-call the routine when the geometry (not the scale) of the outline changes from your point of view. (I think checking whether you needed to recalc a glowmap would be the most difficult task). Now in saying all this - unfortunately Blitz3D doesn't have all the advanced locked buffer goodness of Blitz+, so you'd probably have to write the function as a c++ .dll for speed. Now here is where the gotcha is... apparently you can't (or nobody has worked out how to) access Blitz3D image buffers via dll. :(
The crazy thing is - I believe Blitz+ would have the power to create these glow-maps in real-time. (Based on my work with locked buffers in B+ the performance really is amazing).
Now I suppose I'm not the first to say this, but if Mark could only add the locked buffer functions of B+ to B3D then many great cool things would be possible...
-R
p.s. man... what a ramble of a post...
I've had no problems creating glowing entities such as neon signs and the like, I simply create the sign in Photoshop & use the glow filter to make a nice glowing sign on a black background - In the level I've previously designed I've placed a light of the same color approximately at the center of the sign & lightmapped (ie. glowing pink sign, pink light). I then map the sign texture onto a simple object (two triangles joined together - a billboard) with the background transparent. The net effect is a glowing sign which casts its light onto the environment, the effect is very convincing.
In summary its very easy to make flat signs and the like glow, however I've not attempted to make 3D objects glow. I've always wondered how the Farb Rauch demos (is that how you spell it - the guys behind the popular demo) have such amazing glow effects. To solve the problem, I would probably approach it in the same manner as above, except using an algorithym instead of photoshop to create the glow for the object.
ie. I've got a cup that I want glowing in my scene, branch to function that renders the cup to an image buffer (from the current camera angle), remove the cup & draw glowing edges, return and use a transparent billboard for the texture positioned appropriately. For objects that are lathed and upright, you would not need to re-call the routine as you rotated around the y axis, you would only need to re-call the routine when the geometry (not the scale) of the outline changes from your point of view. (I think checking whether you needed to recalc a glowmap would be the most difficult task). Now in saying all this - unfortunately Blitz3D doesn't have all the advanced locked buffer goodness of Blitz+, so you'd probably have to write the function as a c++ .dll for speed. Now here is where the gotcha is... apparently you can't (or nobody has worked out how to) access Blitz3D image buffers via dll. :(
The crazy thing is - I believe Blitz+ would have the power to create these glow-maps in real-time. (Based on my work with locked buffers in B+ the performance really is amazing).
Now I suppose I'm not the first to say this, but if Mark could only add the locked buffer functions of B+ to B3D then many great cool things would be possible...
-R
p.s. man... what a ramble of a post...