increase transparency of an object as you get closer

check out the tutorial 14 of directx 10 in the directx SDK

in your main app, set the maximum distance (the distance that the player is not transparent), and get the distance between the camera and your player:

maxDistance = 5;
distance = camPos - playerPos;

Now get the alpha value, between 0 and 1. the closer you are to the model, the closer to 0 it will be, the closer you are to max distance, the closer to 1 it will be (0 is transparent, 1 is opaque)

if(distance >= 5)
alpha = 1;
elseif(distance <= 0)
alpha = 0;
else
alpha = distance / maxDistance;

If you don't want the player to be completely transparent when you get too close, you can check to see if the alpha value is below a certain level, and if it is, just put it back up to that level:

if(alpha < 0.25)
alpha = 0.25;

Now you put the alpha value (and maybe a boolean that is true if your rendering your player, and false if your not, otherwise you will need two pixel shaders or something) in a constant buffer and send it to your shaders. You can easily look up how to do this if you don't know how. So now, in your pixel shader, you get the alpha value from the constant buffer, and set the alpha value of your players pixels to that value:

if(isPlayer)
return float4(playerColor.x, PlayerColor.y, PlayerColor.z, alpha);

hmm... interesting, i'll give it a shot and get back with an update.

remember that transparent objects need to be rendered LAST, otherwise there will be nothing for them to "blend" with if they are the first objects rendered

hmm.. and if I have water that is transparent, and the player that can be transparent, I can imagine I might have some issues there.

hmm.. and if I have water that is transparent, and the player that can be transparent, I can imagine I might have some issues there.

Correct. You may do coarse scale depth sorting for the objects in order to minimize blending issues.

hmm.. and if I have water that is transparent, and the player that can be transparent, I can imagine I might have some issues there.

as long as the player does not enter the water, i guess its safe to render water always before the player

so, just for the sake of learning, how would you (is there even a legit technique) go about a transparent object HALFWAY in the water? If the player is below the water level and the camera above (opposite sides of the water level), just draw the player first, and if he's above and the camera is above (both on the same side), just draw the water first. I suppose theoretically if they were both 50% transparent, it wouldn't matter which one is drawn first. and now that i'm thinking about it, if the player is touching the water, just change his transparency to be the opposite of the water, then it won't matter which one is drawn first. I've always thought transparency sorting was troublesome, so i'm probably wrong, but just a thought