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"Soft" particles?

Started by dchavez Feb 12, 2006 at 2:52 AM 5 replies 9.2k views

Original Post

Feb 12, 2006 at 2:52 AM

Hi, I've been reading a bit about the new Crytek DX10 engine lately, and a feature they keep mentioning is "Soft" particles. Does anyone have any idea about what this means? I did a search and trusty google didn't reveal any papers describing this technique of particle rendering. Is it just marketing spam or is there some new way of rendering particles? Perhaps it's just some postprocessing of a particle render target to smooth out the edges? Call of Duty 2 may have done something similar with their smoke particles to stop the ugly 'clipping into the world' problem that most particle systems have, but again, some info about this would be interesting. Thanks for any help! Cheers, DChavez.

Rasmadrak

Feb 12, 2006 at 4:14 AM

you said it, Call of Duty 2 got em.

Simply particles using depth masks.

Coluna

Feb 12, 2006 at 9:25 PM

But using depth sprites, wouldnt it give us only "roundness" intersections, against planar intersections when using simple particles? Did anybody created a small (and public) demo showing us that?

zedzeek

Feb 13, 2006 at 1:46 AM

ive done them before but found the hit by writing to depth (u adjusat the depth by the alpha channel or luminance) too not really be worth it.
A/ visually it doesnt look that much better (ie its still looks flat + 2d/ also there is a chance u will still clip geometery unless u sample the existing geometry )
B/ its slower

RAZORUNREAL

Feb 13, 2006 at 2:04 AM

Are you sure they're not doing something like basing the contribution of the particle on how far in front of the scene depth it is?

Like you have the depth buffer rendered to a texture, and in the particle shader you compare the particle fragment depth with the scene depth. You smoothly move the alpha toward 0 as the particle gets closer to the scene depth. It simulates, in a crude way, that the particle represents a volume. Basicly the thicker the volume visible, the more the particle should contribute to the pixel colour. It avoids the ugly world intersection.

Zemedelec

Feb 13, 2006 at 5:36 AM

Quote:
Original post by RAZORUNREAL
...

That exactly the soft particles. Some (racers) games tend to use less general, but more robust method, where a single or two planes are choosen and the blend is done in the VS.
And - not the whole scene must be rendered into the 'depth' texture, just the world space intersections with the particles.

daktaris

Feb 17, 2006 at 1:35 PM

marketing term.

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