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Blurry transparency

Started by circuit May 19, 2006 at 5:32 AM 1 replies 1k views

Original Post

May 19, 2006 at 5:32 AM

Does anyone have an idea how to do the "Windows Vista style" blurry transparency effect. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Windows_Gadgets.png As far as I know a shader can't read from the buffer it renders to, so the only way I can think of, is to copy the the content behind the window to a texture, blur it, and then use this texture as a input. How ever this seem highly inefficient way.

acid2

May 19, 2006 at 5:57 AM

This is the job of a compositing manager. What happens is there is a screen buffer texture. Each window is rendered to this texture, and when it is rendered the previous render is passed in (everything behind the window). The window, when rendering is there free do a blur pass, saturation, etc on this texture, creating some nice effects. At least, I think that's how it's done.

It's that, or once everything is rendered, it is rendered again with just a blur shader, and mask areas. However, I doubt this is the case as it doesn't lead to much flexibility.

jollyjeffers

May 19, 2006 at 7:19 AM

Quote:
Original post by acid2
This is the job of a compositing manager. What happens is there is a screen buffer texture. Each window is rendered to this texture, and when it is rendered the previous render is passed in (everything behind the window). The window, when rendering is there free do a blur pass, saturation, etc on this texture, creating some nice effects. At least, I think that's how it's done.

I don't know for sure, but I would go with this suggestion.

Full AERO Glass support requires a ps_2_0 capable card, and that sort of kernel post-processing effect is fairly easy using ps_2_0.

hth
Jack

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