When the camera gets too close to the player, I have been turning the model
translucent and raising the alpha untill the model is semi-transparent. The
problem is, this method is very ugly. You can see the inside of the model as
it fades.

Does anyone know of a shader effect that will make the model semi- transparent
and not show the inside of the model?

Thanks!

There isn't one in place so far, but it could be made. The problem is that you'd have to have another view, which would make it framerate heavy...

Yeah, I guess I am kind of looking at ideas in creating it.

To eliminate seeing "inside" of the model, the shader shouldnt render pixels
on polygons facing away from the view, or that are occluded (like the inside
of the mouth, eye sockets etc. The first is easy to do, but I am not sure about
how I could easily find self occluded parts of the model.

Thats why I mentioned the second view. Basically, there are two passes...

The first renders the model normally.

The second renders that image over the scene.


..it's complicated, but it'll work. The problem comes when you have multiple entities...

Render world + depth map. Render your transparent models on a render target. Use rendered world + render target and blend them depending on the depth map.

you think much too complicated guys.
First you render the scene without the models that shall be transparent(rtt) and then you apply a shader to the transparent models that lerps the normal pixel with the screen rendered before (texProj2D or something was the instruction...)

Kind of refraction shader without refraction, huh?
If i've got time i'll give it a try tomorrow.