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Laser Trails / Tracer

Started by Scottehy 1 reply 1.5k views
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Scottehy
Scottehy
Hey guys,

Just wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction of doing laser trails. I want to do something that leaves a nice trail behind that fades without using particles. Possibly starting thicker then fading off thinner.

Not to sure though how to attempt doing such a task.

How ever I do have shader, particle and sprite knowledge. So if anyone can think of anyway of doing this that isn't do graphics/cpu intense please let me know. Or possibly link some tutorials.

I'm aiming to implement this in XNA as well. If it's any help to anyone.

Cheers,
Scottehy,
Digitalfragment
Digitalfragment
Cylindrical/Axial billboarding works well for this purpose. It is essentially billboarding on an arbitary axis, so that you show as much surface area of the polygon to the camera, while retaining a depth and direction. I used it on a past commercial product for both tracers and curving trails.

Per point on the line, take the normalized direction of the camera to the point, and cross product it against the forward direction of the camera. That gives you your cross section axis to extrude against.
Scottehy
Scottehy

Cylindrical/Axial billboarding works well for this purpose. It is essentially billboarding on an arbitary axis, so that you show as much surface area of the polygon to the camera, while retaining a depth and direction. I used it on a past commercial product for both tracers and curving trails.

Per point on the line, take the normalized direction of the camera to the point, and cross product it against the forward direction of the camera. That gives you your cross section axis to extrude against.


Thanks for that, to the point and it makes sense. I'll be giving it a try within the next 2 days.

Thank you

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