Hello,

I'm trying to add a glow to a bright object in Direct3D. Actually, the object is a sun, and I was wondering how to go about giving the glow from the sun and adding some other special effects using Direct3D (such as a lens flare or corona).

The glow is what I find most important, and I was thinking about have several spheres each greater than the previous which got more and more transparent towards the outside which would create the illusion.

I realize it can be done in Immediate mode, and I'm not sure how and I'd like to know how. If it can be done in Retained-Mode could someone please tell me, I'd prefer to see if it could be done in RM.

If anybody has any websites or can provide me with direct help, its greatly appreciated,

Thanks

I don't use RM, but you should be able to render a texture that always faces the camera. In IM you would just render two triangles. Then make a texture that is greyscale with a radial gradiant, and you can render that using different texture combination types. Like I said, I don't use RM, so I don't have specifics, but it shouldn't be very hard. I would render this so that the center of the texture is in the center of the sun, and the whole thing is about 3 times bigger than the sun. If you use the right texture combination (try add, subtract, multiplay...) then you could get the effect you want. The same thing is used for lens flares.