'Predator' Cloaking/Electricity/Glowing/Moisture Shaders

Xenomorphine

Best seen in 'Predator', much the same cloaking effect has seen use in near-future simulators of combat soldiers. It's not quite in the league of a ghost-like effect, but is more along the lines of seemingly 'bending' light around individual curves.

Would also look great on spaceships, to give them a similar cloaking effect, too.

Optional extra: A ragged, randomised 'holed' effect in the shader, so as to give the impression that the cloaking is malfunctioning or activating/deactivating.

Another shader of interest would be one which looks like a character or object is experiencing some kind of electricity effect. Could be great for depicting malfunctioning machines, reactors and robotics, as well as macabre scenes of, say, convicts on an electric chair or, for the recent insane asylum characters and props, electro-shock therapy.

Along the same lines, maybe a shader which somehow causes surfaces it's applied to, to glow?

The last shader of interest would be something which looks like a character or entire object is glistening, as a whole, with wetness fluid. Can see this especially being useful for depicting submarines or cargo crates which look like they've surfaced from the depths. I know there's a kind of layered thing you can get for human characters, but a shader dedicated to reflecting glistening light for reflecting organic wetness, would be great. Especially with varying strengths of reflection, so that we can depict slime-coated buildings, ghosts and creatures!

Midnight_stories

Hmmm the only way I can see that working is using animated textures and transparency maps poser could do it but I don't think DS can do that yet but if some one wants to correct me on that please do !!!

Xenomorphine

Which one?

I was thinking that something along the lines of a modified version of the kind of things in PW Ghost might do well for a cloaking effect. I've tried mixing that with some additional transparency, but it doesn't quite have the right 'bending' effect. Maybe if the process behind it was mixed with the new reflective mirror shaders?

I wouldn't have a clue as to how to programme anything along those lines, however!

Martyrdog

I too have been searching for this effect for some time now.. I don't think I ever came across the solution for the effect myself.. ps it would be an awesome sales item ;)

I myself haven't yet seen it, but I've heard its available/coming soon to bluray (At least in Australia that was).. probably out everywhere else :P lol

Xenomorphine

Well, the cloaking effect can be partially achieved by using this:

http://www.daz3d.com/pwghost/

There are various settings, but if you make sure to recolour the ghostly effect from turquoise to white and then play around with the figure's opacity, as a whole, it can look similar... Took me a while to figure out how to use it, but once I did, found it's relatively simple (although, sadly, Swidhelm's Predator model doesn't 'shade' properly on the dreadlocks, for some unknown reason).

There's also this:

http://www.daz3d.com/vengeful-spirit-for-genesis-and-genesis-2-female-s

But I haven't really had the time to investigate it much. Have no idea if it can be used for anything other than figures, however.

A properly authentic version for the 'Predator' films, themselves, is a little different, though. It seems to make additional use of contours on close-up detailing... However, the above should do fine for mid-/distant-range. Plus, they look fine for cloaking spaceship effects!

I'd love to see some of the other shader ideas I mentioned, though. Especially one which can make things look wet (tried messing around with reflectivity, but can't quite get it right) or the 'Matrix' idea, to make things look like they're made out of floating digital code.