I'm gathering some references so I wanted to ask you all: What's the best/more interesting/coolest/most unique ghost visuals you've seen in a 3D game? I want to get away from the fresnel rim light style with this and I want to see what else is out there 👻 - ThreadSky

halisavakis.com • 105 days ago

I'm gathering some references so I wanted to ask you all:

What's the best/more interesting/coolest/most unique ghost visuals you've seen in a 3D game?

I want to get away from the fresnel rim light style with this and I want to see what else is out there 👻

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tinyworlds.org•105 days ago

📌

cjamierun.bsky.social•105 days ago

The ghosts in Metro 2033 would be invisible but cast shadows from the player's flashlight and imo that was really spooky.

halisavakis.com•105 days ago

Oh those do look rather spoopy 👀 though in my case, I'm more interested in like, wholesome ghosts, wouldn't want to go towards creepy/spooky (though these can be useful for visual reference too)

dekaf.bsky.social•105 days ago

Ghostwire: Tokyo had some interesting ideas. Mainly played a lot with tranparency, color grading and fog

tomatolamp.bsky.social•105 days ago

The What We Do in the Shadows TV show does this thing with animated wispy textures around the silhouette which helps it feel more like fantasy than horror.

halisavakis.com•105 days ago

That's good reference, thanks! That'd be something cool to try :D

fearian.bsky.social•105 days ago

Not a ghost, but I have to bring up the hiss effect from control- wait! Alan Wake shadows too!

halisavakis.com•105 days ago

Ah yeah, that's always an amazing reference; wish I had the skills to do sth like that though 😅

joppemin.bsky.social•105 days ago

this viddy discusses some techniques surrounding datamoshing als also discusses and explains the Control approach about it, worth a watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uapad3pVxBY&t=661s

halisavakis.com•105 days ago

ooh damn that's a great resource and now I very much have to recreate these effects >.<

alexepton.bsky.social•105 days ago

The keijiro one is a good place to start. I don’t think anyone did it in URP yet?? 👀 I adapted for HDRP here: https://github.com/alexxxchange/HDRP_dataMosh

fearian.bsky.social•105 days ago

Sweet! This is also top of my list in: "tech art I'm not quite ready for" with the fog. (Because of the same Henri Prestes reference)

joppemin.bsky.social•105 days ago

exactly what I was thinking hahaha, thanks @jam2go.bsky.social <3

gyepmester.bsky.social•104 days ago

luigis mansion 3

halisavakis.com•104 days ago

Luigi's mansion is cool, but the ghosts there still have that default fresnel glow look; I was mostly interested in more unique representations of (wholesome) ghosts 👀

gyepmester.bsky.social•104 days ago

oh, you mean like Casper in the movie?

halisavakis.com•105 days ago

Mind you I don't mainly want scary ghosts in horror contexts, any sort of ghostly/spirit visuals will do

timbuhrs.bsky.social•105 days ago

I think Fi from Skyward Sword has a really unique look! Though I think from an art point of view it's just great design, texturing and a cool looking matcap on top!

sherbsville.bsky.social•104 days ago

I really love wisp in animal crossing new horizons, and collecting the bits of their spirit is cute. I like the glow. 💖

louiscyan.bsky.social•104 days ago

Not sure if I've seen it yet, but in Unreal you have a node called SceneDepth, which gives you the depth of the scene *behind* the current object. Maybe as simple as applying a gradient map to that.

Stack that with PixelDepth controlling a local depth gradient on the local object and you're off.

halisavakis.com•104 days ago

That can probably yield some nice results! I'd probably pair it with some distortion along the view space normals as well though

louiscyan.bsky.social•104 days ago

Now we're cooking 🍲

sidvenblu.com•105 days ago

I can't remember the game, was so long ago. But it was an rpg and there place with the horror themed map had this poltergeist ghost with either pixels particles around it or static noise every now and then since it came out of screens.
Never forgot about that and have been using that idea ever since

supersonicloz.bsky.social•104 days ago

They might not exactly be ghosts, but i always thought the shades in nier: gestalt had a very unique and interesting style.

halisavakis.com•104 days ago

Ooh these do look interesting! Still a bit scary for what I had in mind unfortunately 😅

astrades-studio.itch.io•105 days ago

The most effective ones for me are either fatal frame 3 or even something as simple as white day's flat texture ghosts are super creepy.

tomasweisss.bsky.social•105 days ago

I don't think I've quite seen it anywhere, but I feel like you can get some interesting visuals just using photoshop blend modes. Here's a quick mockup I made with random images I found online, I really like divide.

halisavakis.com•105 days ago

That's quite interesting! Haven't tried experimenting too much with the blending, I'll look into that

hiddenasbestos.bsky.social•105 days ago

I guess it could be considered dated (and hard to implement) but I do like the transparent effect in Doom. https://youtu.be/ONsgzLKt3vQ?si=m-OWGGfJLr8e32bi

ogey-bogey.bsky.social•104 days ago

If you’re going for scary then the dark souls 1 ghost design is one I really like

halisavakis.com•103 days ago

That's definitely cool! I'm mostly looking for the shader/VFX effects that communicate that something's ghostly though, like a material/setup you could add to any mesh

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