Dynamic 3d nebula graphics

This video gives a short explanation of a technique for creating efficient and dynamic 3d nebula effects for real-time games and simulations.

You will need to have some knowledge of graphics programming and geometry in order to follow it. Please feel free to comment if you have any questions.

The effect demonstrated in the video was programmed in C++, using OpenGL and my own game engine, "avidgame".

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• opengl
• directx
• games
• programming
• c++
• graphics
• real time

[barkeg050]

I tried that out in my software renderer. It's a really nice effect BUT doing alpha blending with software is so slow!!! It's because I wanted do myself all. xD

[ElusivePete]

@barkeg050 Yes, blending in software is quite slow, so you're better off using a GPU-based pipeline for something like this. However, in this case you actually want additive blending, which can be a good deal faster because polygon rendering order doesn't matter.

[barkeg050]

@ElusivePete Yeah, I'm taking a look at directx to use it for per pixel acces because I think it supports GPU-based alpha blending.

By the way, looks great for smoke and explosions too when you use animated textures :)

[ElusivePete]

@barkeg050 Good plan. DirectX and OpenGL are the two major graphics programming APIs being used in the games industry, so they're definitely worth a look. I tend to find OpenGL is a bit easier to learn, but both support pretty much any blending algorithm you'd need.

I wouldn't recommend using them for per-pixel access though unless you're referring to shader programming (e.g. HLSL, GLSL, or Cg). Generally speaking, getting data back out of the GPU once its gone down the pipeline is quite slow.

[Clifton88]

This is great. I'm trying to create a realistic Nebula similar to this one in Blender using it's game engine in Python. My maths skills really aren't brilliant but this explains it really well. I hope I can get something even close to this!