"Overblending" ... I think you're talking about "additive blending".

Well, that's not the good blending for the smoke since it always add the rgb channels.
For instance, if you add such smoke in front of a white object, the object will always be white, and never grey (if you choose a grey smoke of course ). But obviously it SHOULD be grey !

Additive blending is very great for light-based effects, like fire or thunder.

For smoke, you'd rather need a standard blending
glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA);

It works very well, but it can yield some weird results if the particles are not sorted by their depth before being drawn. Anyway, I think those artefacts are insignificant for a smoke particle, and you shall not sort your particles unless you experience very annoying effects.

Edited by - vincoof on January 14, 2002 3:58:51 AM

Eh eh, that''s just because you''re still using your old texture :D

When you used additive blending, you _needed_ black borders.

But with standard blending, you have to set all the rgb channel of the texture to grey, and you have to modulate the alpha channel which will represent how strong the smoke is (say, stronger in the center of the particle, obviously).

It''s all about the blending functions.

You look for a blending which is smooth on the borders (eg you don''t see the transition) and become stronger and stronger as the blending is closer to the center of the particle.

With additive blending, you can do that using a texture which is black on the border and becomes lighter (say, white or even grey). I think that''s the kind of texture you actually have for your smoke particle system.
You may use a RGB texture.

With standard blending, you have to set the alpha channel to 0 on the border, and the alpha becomes higher (up to 1) as the center is closer.
You need a RGBA texture.
When the alpha channel is set, you can freely assign colours in the RGB channels, which may be something like grey for smoke but can be something different (say, red if you have red smoke, so easy)

Hope that was what you were asking for..