Severe lack of shadows

(BoltyBoy) #1

Notice in this pic how the ground surface is considerably lacking in shadows. The ground is made of a normal texture, as are the buildings around it. Sun is at 65 degree from horizontal.

I’ve highlighted a point in the scene to show that a shadow is being cast from the wall on to that of another building and yet the floor below it is fully lit. Also if you note to the right of the scene the ground is certainly receiving a dim shadow of sorts.

Any ideas why this could be?

Thanks

The skybox shader…

textures/ww_canyon/canyon_skybox
{
	qer_editorimage textures/wildwest_villa/villa_skybox_rt.tga
	surfaceparm noimpact
	surfaceparm nomarks
	surfaceparm nolightmap
	surfaceparm sky

	q3map_sun	1.0 0.86 0.71 160 135 65
	q3map_surfacelight 80
	skyparms textures/wildwest_villa/villa_skybox - -
}

[/img]

(wudan) #2

Is the inside of the wall on the same plane as the ouside of the wall? Are they the same brush?

You could probably fix this up with fancy brushwork.

(ydnar) #3

The sky is not your issue, holmes. Post the shader used on the ground brush(es). If there isn’t a shader, check to make sure you aren’t running in vertex light mode. If you aren’t, then check to see if that ground brush isn’t ludicrously large.

Either way, reexamine any native american cliff dwelling source material you might have and look for any areas with perfectly flat ground. When you don’t find any, chop up the ground into something a bit more natural. I recommend using lightmapped terrain…

:cool:

(BoltyBoy) #4

Ahh haa this looks better now :slight_smile:

Working with Hewster and your comments found that it was a combination of lightmaps falling on a large plain - I had split the brushes up but guess that since they were all on the same plain this made no difference, and lowering the lightmapsamplesize. The ground is now constructed with an ASE model with slight variations in height.

I am very happy about this and as such may treat my native american cliff dwellers to a copious amounts of liquor.

Nb. also increased sky shader q3map_surfacelight from 80 to 160 to soften those jet black shadows on the buildings.

Thanks again.

(Hewster) #5

Now thats better :slight_smile:

(ydnar) #6

Looking good, looking good. Just how much of that is models?

y

(BoltyBoy) #7

Originally i was making all of this map in Max but I encountered a selection of problems, being:

1 - If I texture different surfaces of an object in Max with different materials and then import in to Radiant (as ASE) it defaults to only one of the specified textures across all the surfaces. The immediate soluition I see here is to split up the object surfaces in Max accordingly by material. Of course the time it takes to do this is considerably longer than creating the object and texturing in Radiant.

2 - I had some issues with clipping in the interiors of my ASE buildings. I found that, for example, my interior was around 150 units high and yet when the player jumped inside the building it was as though he was :banghead: the ceiling at around 90 units! I did check that there wasn’t a lower surface with flip normals, so invisible from underneath.

3 - More of a fundamental Max problem - I find Navigating a scene in Max is bad at the best of times. Trying to fly in to a building interior seems like a fine art at times. Just too damn time consuming!

So in this scene it is basically the terrain that is ASE and a few minor objects that had compex shapes which Radiant brushes couldn’t handle.

I have another question - If I make an ASE model as part of a script_mover and I wish the mover to be solid, can it use the clipping of the model in the same way it works for misc_model? If not I wonder if there’s a way to make this so, as I guess you must be half way there with ASE clipping. Well as usual I’d not be surprised if you’ve already implemented this so I’ll be testing it out later today.