How to make a game effect

[doqkhanh]

Hi,
This is a cool effect in WoW, in the ground, there is a light effect.
http://blogs.usask.ca/wow/posie6eq.jpg

How can I make this effect in my game??

[starstutter]

I'm going against my better judgment to answer questions like this, mostly because they are profound wastes of time.

But anyway...

That effect is very simple. While I can't see how it's moving, I can tell you that it's nothing more than maybe 12-18 polygons with a blue texture using an alpha channel that fades as it gets near the top.

The little "poof" at the bottom is making me think they also have some billboards surrounding it.

If you want to get a bit more advanced, you can use refraction as well.

[doqkhanh]

Thank you very much. I have got it with Volumetric Lighting.

A demo with irrlicht in this file:
http://quockhanh.info/skydriver/hu1.rar

[starstutter]

Ah, yes you're much better to go with volumetrics for that. But gaurenteed they don't have volumetrics in WoW. There's not even many high-end games that have those in for real use.


As a side note: w00t, 100th post! No longer do I have to suffer in the "non-valued" peasentry!

[Vilem Otte]

Real volumetrics can be used just with raytracing, so no commercial game used it yet!

[starstutter]

Real volumetrics can be used just with raytracing, so no commercial game used it yet!

Really? I thought Crysis used volumetrics for their light beams.

[Nils Pipenbrinck]

I did light shafts / light beams myself some years ago.

It was fast and straight forward to code. Not the most flexible light beam system in the world for sure, but it also only took around 300 lines of code.

[Kenneth Gorking]

Really? I thought Crysis used volumetrics for their light beams.
They do (http://ati.amd.com/developer/siggraph06/Wenzel-Real-time_Atmospheric_Effects_in_Games.pdf), but it is not ray-traced.