SHADED SMOKE!

[Skinnytorus]

Hi guys,
Here is another technique to be used if you want to create a shaded smoke effect.
Enjoy!

[ikam]

cool, unexpected and works fine.

[Skinnytorus]

Thanks, man. But anyway, that's a cheat.
I hope you'll find a proper way to shade particles in your new tool.

[CybeREX]

Nice, I think it can be used also as nebulas if make this sprites align along spiral mesh))

[Skinnytorus]

IMO Nebulae will require a more complex shading, but give it a try - why not?
There is another cool technique to shade particles in wz4 which involves a bit of compositing. Basically, you create a base simple mesh for shading purposes, light and blur it by IPP Blur, use the same mesh as a source for particle sprites, make both the mesh and the sprites render targets (2 Cameras -> RTT1 and RTT2) and then composite the sprites RT over the lit and blurred mesh RT using Layer2D. This approach gives pretty cool results, but there is one big flaw: you can't bring the camera too far away from the base mesh (the farther your camera from the blurred mesh, the more it dissipates due to the blur effect).