So thought I'd share this shader that I built for Cogwheel Chronicles - it is a very light way of introducing animation for simple flying objects such as butterflies.
It can be used for birds or bats too - anything really that has wings, though as the shader is rendering and deflecting only a plane model, these need to be small creatures or only to be seen in the distance.
It is efficient and effective though, you can have swarms of flying winged entities given it is vertex animation and not resource intensive or texture heavy.

Attached are the files for a butterfly. To do other flapping flyers, make a copy and change the texture from a butterfly to something else - keep the alignment of the wings on the texture as for the butterfly and reuse the 'model' provided (flat plane with 6 vertices).

This is the type of shader usage that will be much harder to do (for GG users) with Max over Classic, but we'll see what Lee and Preben can cook up.

Anyway, something else for you to experiment with


Cheers.

(place wings_basic.fx in effectbank\reloaded folder, other files in an entitybank folder. If required the flap amount and speed can be changed at top of shader fx file.)

Awesome!
Thanks cybernescence - will have fun playing with this for sure

OldFlak....

You rule. Thank you.

Useful as usual, thanks ciber, nice one.

Sounds cool. This is faster than using a normal animation then?

I'm sure that shaders should be possible in max personally. Just look at how Wicked uses them Bound to be compatible. I think Lee avoids these questions or just says no, to avoid any failed promises now.

Sure, it may help to fill the scene, especially when these are not the focus of the scene, just making the environment.
Shaders in GGMax will not come like in GG, not friendly modifiable, I'm afraid you will need VS and some C or C++ skills, to deal with.