GMAX Ground Polys Shadow Lost

[hek293]

Hi all,

Finally got my ground polys to work with GMAX and FS2002 gamepack thanks to all of you!!. thanks again, much appreciated!

Now a problem I have is that the shadow of the plane on the runway is only partial...like only half of it can be seen from the windows (see attached)

I am using the layered method where all layers are being called form a single BGL file. Although there is no problem with the base layer (8), all additional layers seem to be progressively losing the shadow casted on them.

Any ideas anyone?

Thanks a lot
Emilos

 

[Tyler]

Did you double check your asm files? Happens to me every now and then

 

[hek293]

Did you double check your asm files? Happens to me every now and then

Thanks for the reply, actually I cross-checked everything with Arno's/Bill's tutorials, but if you have some time to take a peak, maybe you can spot something that I ve missed?

Thanks again

 

[Tyler]

Hmm, it may be that theyre all linked to the RY2_20LAYOUT.asm, might be. Arno, can you verify this for me.

 

[arno]

Hi,

The ASM file looks fine. It is no problem to call all the polygons from one main ASM file.

 

[hek293]

Hi,

The ASM file looks fine. It is no problem to call all the polygons from one main ASM file.

seems I m still not able to figure out the problem....Also tried compling the ASM files separately, but no joy.....From the spot view angle, the shadows are ok, when you start moving the POV towards the ground I loose shadow, same thing happens from the window view....

bottom layer is fully opaque, the other two on top are with alpha channel DTX5_dds textures

 

[Tyler]

ill copmpile it and check on my system, where is this runway at?

 

[hek293]

ill copmpile it and check on my system, where is this runway at?

Hi there....many thanks! that's runway 2_20 of PHOG

Thanks

 

[Tyler]

May be the textures cause i had a full shadow

 

[hek293]

May be the textures cause i had a full shadow

Thanks a lot for trying it out! hmm...dont know why they would be problematic....maybe I ll try them in different DXT format

Many thanks for checking it out again....!

 

[Tyler]

no prob, try dxt_3

 

[hek293]

no prob, try dxt_3

well...tried DXT3 with alpha...no difference ..BUT when I removed the alpha from the overlaying polygon texture, everything went back to normal with full shadows from all angles..of course it doesnt blend with the underlying polygon but at least gives a clue on what may be wrong..By putting back the alpha channel again, saw problems with shadows from certain angles again...

Only DXT1 with alpha shows full shadows from everywhere, but then the resolution is crappy...

To conclude, what i see is that at certain angles, shadows do not show when the overlaying polygon (Layer 12 or above) has a texture with an alpha channel included..(either with DXT3 or DXT5).

 

[hek293]

May be the textures cause i had a full shadow

Now I can be sure it's not the texture!

I ve used another DXT3 with alpha from a scenery where all shadows work fine. Once I edited my 0.asm to call this texture instead, the problems were still there. So, I m pretty sure there is something wrong with the GMAX model or the ASM files, since the 'working' textures with alpha from other sceneries seem to partly lose their shadow on my ground polys .

I ve made ground polys as either lofts or planes, with a standard material and only a diffuse bmp which has an alpha channel. I guess that's all that is needed right? Is there anything else that I need to do for polygons which have textures with alpha on them??? Because only these seem to have this problem.....pls pls pls pls....i m at a dead end.....

 

[hek293]

Solution Found!

Hi all,

many thanks to anyone who helped me with this problem...! the problem lies indeed in the model and not the texture

Finally....may be common knowledge to some of you but the solution I found to that was this:

To any polygon handling a texture with alpha I changed the opacity of its material from 100 to 99, and I noticed that the change of this line in the _0.asm made the difference :

with full opacity you get :; NonAlpha
RW2_20SKIDS_NonAlpha label BGLCODE
MATERIAL 0,0 ; <255,255,255,255> SKIDMARKS_BIG_MERGED.DDS;;;

and with just a notch of reduced opacity, which would not change the visuals, the _0.asm line changes to :
; Alpha
TEST_Alpha label BGLCODE
MATERIAL 0,0 ; <255,255,255,229> SKIDMARKS_BIG_MERGED.DDS;;;

I guess someone might tweak it manually as well

may have smth to do with testing the alpha channel of the bitmap file..? otherwise shadows on the ground have some problems through transparency???

Anyways, long story short, full shadows come back from all angles with any texture, DXT3 and DXT5, on any layer tested so far..

regards
emilios

 

[arno]

Hi,

But those lines are the same, it is only the comments or the label names that are different. To the final BGL that would not matter.

Most likely the material list further upwards in your file has changed as well.

I would not set the material to transparent when my texture has an alpha channel.

 

[hek293]

Hi,

But those lines are the same, it is only the comments or the label names that are different. To the final BGL that would not matter.

Most likely the material list further upwards in your file has changed as well.

I would not set the material to transparent when my texture has an alpha channel.

Yes I see you re right, the texture def and material def values are changed in the _0.asm file as well.

However, this was the only way so far to get back the shadows of the aircraft on these polygons.

I know the texture is just fine, I tested it in other sceneries and works...so there is definetely somth wrong in my gmax model, but no clue what it is though....it's just a simple plane placed on top of another...i dont get why the one with the alpha texture wont work....only this seemed to fix the problem so far...

emilios

 

[PakMac]

Hi,

Look at the MATERIAL_LIST_BEGIN section you should see

Exported with no Alpha;

MATERIAL_DEF 1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,  0.392157,0.392157,0.392157,  0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,  0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,  0.000000 ; 0

Exported with Alpha;

MATERIAL_DEF 1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,[COLOR="Red"][B]0.988235[/B][/COLOR],  0.392157,0.392157,0.392157,  0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,  0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,  0.000000 ; 0

We have used this tweak to stop the white tile you see when the ground texture pops in by setting the alpha to 0.000000

David

 

[hek293]

Hi,

Look at the MATERIAL_LIST_BEGIN section you should see

We have used this tweak to stop the white tile you see when the ground texture pops in by setting the alpha to 0.000000

David

Ahhh...now I get it, nice to know how things work.... By setting my material to 99% opacity it changes this value from 1 to 0.976471. I should tweak it manually then rather than changing the opacity of material in Gmax I guess.... All in all it untied my hands...i had big broblems with these nasty shadows....thanks!

Emilios