Thanks for the reply EvilSOB,

Since posting this yesturday afternoon i decided to look into doing something with the models skin instead of scaling the vertex (scaling the vertex was always just a temporary solution so you could get a basic glimpse of the effect).

What im thinkin of doing is finding the location of the vertex on the models skin, copying the colour from that posistion then changing it to pure black for overlaying. then apply the copied colour and write it to a particle. if copying single pixels from the skin looks abit "choppy" then i will copy a whole bunch within say a 5 - 10 pixel range from the vertex position then writing them to a single or a bunch of particles to make sure i cover a greater area due to vertex positions only being one pixel in size.

One problem i know thats going to happen is that if a model has alot of vertices the particles will take up entity spaces (if a model has between 1k and 2k vertices...owch) until they are removed after doing their thing which is why i have kept the shader idea in my mind...but saying that i can change the var from checking ever vertex to every two vertices to halve that

The code as it stands (as seen in the video) is quite simple really, programmed in c-script which could be translated very easily (which i will most likly do myself). This code will go through any model you apply it to and for testing purposes i just called the function when pressing B.

Ill have a bash at this skin idea and post the code for anyone and their family's to use / experiment with. if you want the character to just burst into a bunch of particles that form his/her body all you have to do is change one line of code to off, and back on for the effect as seen in the vid.

no need to apologise buddy, didnt waste my time at all very helpful ideas