Fades

Today I'll talk about changing scenes by fading in-out. I use it very rarely when moving from one scene to a different one and more often when moving between cameras that point to the same environment. The list goes like that:

• No fades. Camera just cuts from one scene to the next: useful in fast paced demos.
  
• First scene plays, cut, second scene fades-in: I quite like this; there is no fade-out on the first scene, so there is no sacrifice of a couple of seconds of valuable screen time.
  
• First scene fades out, darkness, second scene fades in: I use it in the rare occasions that I want to change from one scene to the next without doing anything clever with transitions. The fade-to color is almost always black but sometimes it is white or "tv noise".
  
• Cross fades: very hard to do in realtime - you need to render two scenes at the same time. While feasible it will "spike" your framerate down if not done carefully.

I try to keep it so that there are only 2-3 "fade" effects per minute. I think this is the sweet-spot for megademos.