RW extensions or DirectX9? How to best go about getting this glow?

[ceedj]

I need a glow effect around an actor. I can do this with shaders (like MTA/pluginSDK) or via DirectX9, with this:

21.5.5 The Variable Ramping Effect
The screen glow must use a certain set of parameters—such as blending weights and fog—to create the final blur for a single frame. However, that doesn't mean the parameters can't change from frame to frame. In fact, by varying any of these parameters, you can achieve a variety of interesting effects. For example, in one of the levels of Tron 2.0, the player is inside a corrupted server that has a sickly green glow. To convey the unstable feeling, the blend weights of the blur were ramped from low to high to create a dull pulsing of the screen glow. See Figure 21-9.

 

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/all/modules/custom/gpugems/books/GPUGems/gpugems_ch21.html

 

I'd like to do this effect, but just on one or two actors. Part of what I'm unsure of is in the bits of RW SDK I've seen, it refers to an actor as RwChar; is this the whole actor or just the DFF object? It seems that most of what I'd like to do takes place between vertex creation and rendering the texture, so while learning the basics of this are fine, I'm already in-process via my hook, so I'm not sure how to get it all to connect. I do NOT want to port my code to MTA/plugin-SDK, It's been plenty enough cleaning up 25000+ lines, and my hook environment works really well (built in camera code, similar to CamHack is mostly finished, just need to sort out the angles)

I'm willing to learn/figure it out, but I could really use a nudge in the right direction. Please don't tell me not to bother/it's too hard/etc. I taught myself Mission Scripting, C++, 3DS Max modeling (converted VC to SA peds, a few custom objects), animations (3 custom, maybe 1 one more to do) all of the TXD stuff. I can do the work and am willing to put in the time, just need to know where to start. 

 

In any case, for the above, can I do this with the rwd3d9 asi or should I use direct (hehe) DirectX? Any suggestions for my approach?

 

Thank you!