[Valathil]

Here's a vid if you haven't seen it yet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScWqgReCRPk&hd=1

Zip file here: http://www.mediafire.com/?fpwko4ev1ccqfwq with a build, shaders, a patchfile for programmers, and a noise texture.

the shaders go into the data/effects directory and the noise texture in data/maps.

Please test some mission where cap ships blow up and report any oddness.

[Mongoose]

How did you...bwuh...

[headdie]

 

[Kolgena]

That's really cool. Much better than the jarring sharp line we have now.

A couple refinements to consider, no idea how hard they'd be to do:

Could the dissolving "plane" move at a variable pace? (preferably more rapidly in time with explosions, and slower in between explosions)
A particle effect of small hull pieces coming off the dissolving plane, as if it were crumbling into chunks rather than burning away like paper. These particles (if ambitious) could pull from the cap ships textures somehow.

[Dragon]

Wow. You keep to amaze me. The only thing (that I can think of now) that could enhance it would be implementing Kolgena's suggestion.

[Rga_Noris]

Wow! You keep to amaze me too!

[General Battuta]

it's a miracle. a miracle

[The E]

I can confirm that this works as advertised on ATI cards.

[Spoon]

I can confirm that this works the way its meant to be played.
Also, its super sweet and a huge improvement over the old clipping plane. 

[Valathil]

http://youtu.be/04OcdUG5e5A?hd=1

[attachment deleted by a ninja]

[General Battuta]

Mega gorgeous. It'd be awesome if there were a way to 'plug the hole', so to speak, but I'm not sure how you'd go about it.

[Valathil]

well there are bees and flowers ........

[Kolgena]

How did you-- never mind. So awesome.

(the only thing now is that it looks like hull is peeling away to reveal the same hull underneath where there's premodeled debris. Very mall price to pay. Could be fixed by retexturing debris to look less pristine)

[Valathil]

yeah but like "upper armor plating is burning off or ****" also dont get too excited it seems the effect is really dependent on model size so i have to do a version where its dependent on the size. also this version i posted screws up the 3d ship select. Also ATI's have problems apparently. JUST PLAY IT THE WAY ITS MEANT TO BE PLAYED

EDIT: More to come 14.04.12 Real Life calls for duty

[Bobboau]

I'm not sure the deformation really works, I mean technically it's cool, but it makes the ships seem too soft, and you are going to have issues with it going through debris and it's self.you might want to extend the width of the basic effect, so the burn time acts longer.

[Nuke]

im seeing some space through the ship that kinda breaks the illusion for me. is there any way to support any of the things from this thread to fill in the ship's holes with geometry.
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=80098.msg1589929#msg1589929

[Nighteyes]

It looks good, but I don't think it works so well currently, mainly because the line moves along the hull in a constant speed, giving the feeling the ship is peeling rather than exploding, the glowing line probably draws too much attention, so you notice it more than before when there was nothing.

is it possible to adjust the animation? so instead of the line constantly moving, it would stay in place for a second of so, than deform/vaporize at once, a section at a time, as if the hull is actually exploding a part at a time as the ship dies.
*the animation itself won't have to change, just the way it renders the effect

[Cyborg17]

The most recently posted video looks beautiful to me. 

I feel like the thing getting in the way is the gigantic image of an explosion going on behind the ship. Although I know we could never get everybody to agree on a "best" explosion, I think we can agree that the way Vanilla Freespace handled explosions was mostly to hide the way big ships exploded.  I feel like there is probably a better way to get explosion bitmaps, flashes and effects like this to work together.

[Kolgena]

nooooo why must everything ATI break first distortion on thrusters now this

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Now that's what an exploding ship should look like! Nice work on the skin blowing up