• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Shadows under Scenery Objects; ORBX

lionheart

lionheart

Messages
10,149
Country
us-arizona
I noticed that ORBX have ingenious 'shadows' that appear under their objects which give them a very photo real effect.

I didnt now you could have fuzzy, blendable shadow textures with scenery objects. Very nice idea. Congrats guys.

Dare I ask how you do it? Just a semi-transparet texture with a nice alpha for a transparency zone?



Bill
 
Yep. I got mine from a series of freeware Russian vehicles, and modified it to my taste.

Note the shadows under the jeeps and ramp equipment, those are polygons with the shadow texture:

classic_libraries.jpg


What I do is give them a no_shadow attribute (via Model Tweaker, as I remember, but it can be done in MCX too I think) in case someone has ground shadows turned on.

Hope this helps,
 
Last edited:
Bill, pretty much.

I can't speak for anyone else, but:

With scenery economy is important, so a common material with shadow properties is what I use.

With Max, it is simply a matter mapping the area you want on the shadow material, then using the render to texture feature to outline a shadow, then inverting this to use as alpha on a semitransparent texture.

"No shadow" is part of the material properties, and the same material is used across all shadows ... mapping to other bits.

Other developers use their own technique, no doubt.

Z-testing may not be required (parallel to ground)

Also, a shallow "pyramid" works better than a single plane (to avoid flicker)

For even more economy (performance) ... shadows can be burned onto the ground texture.
 
Thanks HC for the heads up. I hadnt thought of flickering. I guess the shadow would need to probably be up a bit to help that from occurring.

Thanks Tom for showing those.

Another tidbit of todays cool scenery technology.

The ORBX scenery objects I had seen blew me away. It was so nicely done it was photo real. Really helps with the object realism.




Bill
 
lionheart said:
The ORBX scenery objects I had seen blew me away. It was so nicely done it was photo real.
Click to expand...
They must have been from one of the other more talented developers.

I'm. More of a paint-by-numbers guy than an artist!



Sent with Tapatalk for iPhone
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top