This tutorial is illustrated in 3ds MAX, but of course the principles carry over into other software packages. First, you'll need to model a creature. For this tutorial I used our site's mascot "'t slurfke", and watch closely how I'll transform him into a ghostly figure in only a few seconds...

1. open the 'Material Editor' and select a 'New Material'
2. Pic a light blue tint as 'diffuse color'
3. Tweak shininess and shin. strength to your liking, I used 40/30
4. put 'Self Illumination' to 100%
5. Make the 'Filter' color black
6. in 'Extended Parameters' put 'Fallof' to 'In' with amount ('Amt') set to 100
7. apply this texture to your mesh

Now you've got your transparent looking ghost. The trick to this material is in the Opacity Falloff. You should try some other settings like White as Filter color or Opacity Type additive. When doing this you'll see that the hidden geometry shining through will become much brighter.

Pick green as diffuse color to tecture the slimer model from ghostbusters, and so on...

The final step of this tutorial will be adding a faint glow to make our ghost more fancy :)

1. open 'videopost'
2. add standard 'Lens effects glow'
3. go to 'preferences' and put 'Size' to 3 and 'Intensity' to 10
4. videopost render

Now behold our spooky mascot :))

Best regards.
David op De Beéck