Max Real-Time Viewport Fog

Revel

Hi guys!..I have question about Max real-time viewport display. I have posted this question on my Mutant Nurse thread, but I guess I post it back in here for a "wider audience" to see it

Anyway, what I'm trying to achieve is Silent Hill foggy environment. is there a way to create a fog real-time (most of us here hardly press the F9, I believe) in Max's viewport?..I notice that you can achieve it in UDK but having not too familiar with that program yet, if possible to do it Max it'll be much better, if don't then guess it's time to learn UDK now.

Any thought on this, guys?
On Game-Artist forum someone asked this question last year (2009) and seems like don't have any way to do that yet, maybe right now someone actually find a way to do this in Max?...

Thanks in advance.

_Revel

divi

use udk. the only way i know of to add fog in the max viewport is with a lot of planes with low opacity - and that hardly looks good.
if you dont want to do really fancy things - fog isn't one of them - then udk is really easy to set up and get into.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77377
check those out and you should be almost, if not already, where you want to be.

NBLM

Or you fake it with z-depth later in photoshop.

cman2k

^to further clarify, you could actually render a z-depth pass out of max and use it in photoshop to fake fog.

IIRC there isn't a 'nice' way to get good z-depth for an entire viewport out of max with real-time shaders. This is the same reason we haven't gotten a good Depth-of-field FX for max shaders either. There is the possibility to make a 'depth' shader you could apply to individual objects, but that isn't quite the same... :P

Revel

Well, I used Photoshop z-depth function before to fake DOF for 3d rendered scene..but that's a different case as i want to make it real time in Max viewport like in Silent Hill game, guess technology is not that advance, yet..heheh...

Ah I see...thanks for the answer guys...seems like i have to start watching all those tuts about UDK (a HUGE collection from UDK website)..I interested to learn UDK for quite some time now, but just have't found a good "time" to do it..and looks like it is now the good time for me to start learn UDK!..

_Revel