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Problem with a DAE model in T3D 1.1...

by Jackie Hayes · in Torque 3D Professional · 11/30/2009 (2:10 am) · 12 replies

Not sure what is going on?? I placed a DAE model (a building) in a level. It is identified as TSSTATIC object. When I first place the building on the terrain it lights correctly in advanced lighting except for the shadows along side the building. When you move around and get close to the edge of the building the shadows on the side of the building start flickering. That's one problem. The other problem is that if I rotate the building more than 15 degrees left or right the complete building now becomes shaded. In other words in the position of 1 0 0 0 the front of the building facing the sun is bright and the back side it darker, as expected. If you rotate the building the whole building is now darker and the same tent. There is no more sun reflecting on the building unless you set it back to 1 0 0 0.

Has anybody had this problem and if so can someone maybe point me in the right direction.

I am using the scatter sky and a terrain generatd by L3DT. Very nice product for customizing terrains.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks....
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Associate Rene Damm
#1
11/30/2009 (3:32 am)

Do you have a Sun in the level, too, or only the ScatterSky? The two are conflicting and lead to lighting problems.

Torque 3D Owner Jackie Hayes
#2
11/30/2009 (10:53 am)
Rene. The only thing I have in the level is the terrain, waterblock, scattersky, cloudlayer and the building. I tried it again this morning. When you rotate the building it becomes compleatly shaded like the sun is being blocked and it does not accept shadows from other objects. The building is only being lit by ambient light not sun light. When you rotate it back everything goes back to normal.

Looks Good....

www.igysoft.com/gg/p1ns.jpg

Not so good....

www.igysoft.com/gg/p2s.jpg

Any ideas????

Thanks....

Associate Jaimi McEntire
King of Flapjacks
#3
11/30/2009 (11:05 am)
Are your normals on the model correct? Sounds fishy.

Torque 3D Owner Marc Dreamora Schaerer
Gayasoft
#4
11/30/2009 (11:25 am)
I've seen something like this once in the beta. I've never found out what actually went wrong nor was I able to really replicate it (happened on the regular tx3d demo level building)

Torque 3D Owner Jackie Hayes
#5
11/30/2009 (12:52 pm)
@Jaimi..Not completely sure about the normals. I'll have to check that out. I do know it will not load into the DTS Viewer. Everytime I try to load it the DTS Viewer bombs out. It may be the model. I bought some models from DEXSOFT. This is one of them. The models come in many different formats. Two of them are for Torque (DTS) and one for Collada(DAE). The DTS one will not load. It bombs T3D. The DAE one loads fine but now I have the problem described above. There are two lod's for this model. I tried both of them and they do the same thing.

@Marc..Thanks I'll look into that also.

I'll keep digging. I'll try and load the model into 3DS Max and see if see how the normals are set up.

Thanks Guys....

Associate Manoel Neto
Default Studio Name
#6
11/30/2009 (1:17 pm)
What Collada exporter are you using? Someone had a similar problem witn MAX and it went away when they switched to OpenCollada instead of the default one.

Torque 3D Owner Jackie Hayes
#7
11/30/2009 (9:08 pm)
Hey Jaimi....THANKS MAN! ALL the normals for the complete model are facing in ONE DIRECTION... Towards the front of the model. Even the normals on the back and side walls and the ladder in the back of the model are facing towards the front. I guess it was just easier to copy the front of the building, including normals, and make the back wall and so on. Well I guess if I want to keep using these models I'll have to spend some time fixing the normals..

Thanks everyone for all the help!


Torque 3D Owner Marc Dreamora Schaerer
Gayasoft
#8
11/30/2009 (9:37 pm)
As even the stone age low end Milkshape 3D and ultimate unwrap3d have the functionality, I would bet collada has a recalculate normal function too. That should remove a large part of the work

Torque 3D Owner Jackie Hayes
#9
11/30/2009 (10:47 pm)
@Marc..Just as a quick test I opened the model in MilkShape 3D and checked the normals. They were correct. I then exported the model using the COLLADA exporter that came with MilkShape 3D. I then added it to a test level and it worked great. I guess they might have not tested the normals before exporting. The models have multiple file formats. One of which is MS3D. Most of their models usually also have a MAX file but for some reason this pack does not.

Maybe this might help someone who might be running into a similar problem.

CHECK THE NORMALS!!!

Heck now my shaders even work....:)

Torque Owner Bobby Leighton
Imagn' Games
#10
12/11/2009 (3:08 pm)
It really could be that what ever version of Torque they tested in at the time(probably not T3d) did normals a bit differently maybe? I'm actually interested in the difference and why, or if it was just a mistake, but i dont think so.

Torque 3D Owner Martin Banks
ArchieMD
#11
12/16/2009 (1:48 pm)
I had the same problem which is Torque does not understand the way your collada file describes the normals relationship to the triangles, even though it is valid. See this thread:

http://www.torquepowered.com/community/forums/viewthread/104415

Full Sail QA&U Lab Intern
#12
06/06/2010 (5:51 pm)
Logged in TQA-300.