The other day I was wondering about the possibility of letting DirectX (after a tweaked D3D8.dll) draw an alpha color depending on the distance of all objects and meshes to the camera, instead of graphics.
For example, the closest distance to the camera would be black and the farthest distance would be white (or any two-tone combination).

Combining this output through a screenshot with Photoshop's Lens Blur filter and the screenshot with LFS' graphics would create absolutely stunning results with perfect detail. Better than anyone could ever make. I also see a possibility to use it with movie editing, creating true distance blur.

3DStudioMax already has this as a rendering option and it allows you to create absolutely stunning results.

Can anyone tell me more about the possibility? Is anyone interested in programming this? I'd like to hear all comments.

Cheers,

Would be very cool to have this one with AfterEffects you could make stunning stuff

Example Images:
http://www.ixbt.com/divideo/ae-plugins/zbuffer.png (works for me)
http://binarypictureshow.com/nemesis/dofmask.jpg

Hope this helps: http://www.toymaker.info/Games/html/z_buffer.html#

Quote from zurdospeed :

Example Image: http://www.ixbt.com/divideo/ae-plugins/zbuffer.png

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Quote from spiderbait90 :

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drag the link into your address bar

How would (semi) transparent surfaces be handled?

Can't leave 'em black / white for obvious reasons.
Treating them as if they weren't there is going to cause funniness in reflections.
Treating them as solid surfaces is going to cause funniness in the scenery behind.

*edit*
Definitely possible for D3D to automatically create depth maps through HLSL ... whether shaders can be applied through a proxy dll is beyond my knowledge tho.