Lighting

#1 If I understand you correctly, you're saying that buildings that are properly lighted in TC are dare when you put them into TGE (or TSE). After you have put the building in place, select Edit-->Relight Scene (or press Alt-L). The building will be correctly lit and the surrounding area will have the building's shadow.

#2 HI Ray,

What i mean..is that the building doesnt show, in Constructor as it does in the torque engine. It is my understanding that construtor shows the building utilising the portals etc, so hencefore.. if i havent put any lights in the interior, in constructor the object will apear dark - but it doesnt.

When i load my model into toqure it does show black inside - which is as it should do.

What im trying to pertain here.. is why doesnt contructor take into consideration portals and lighting and display the model exactly like it does in the engine?

Steve

#3 Do you mean that the sun's ambient lighting is illuminating the interior where it shouldn't?

That is working correctly, when using the in-editor lighting zones do not exist yet, so there is no way for Constructor to know if the ambient lighting should be used or ignored. In-editor lighting shows a good approximation of what the interior will look like in Torque.

To see how interior zones will look you need to use the lighting prefs dialog (which shows the performance/quality options) to disable the sun while working in areas that don't receive ambient lighting.

After the direct to dif export is completed there *should* be a way to see your dif as it will appear in Torque. I think that is what the currently unused BSP Brushes viewport option is for.

#4 I have a lighting problem almost every time i make somthing and use shadowmaps/light the scene ..

it goes somthing like this:
I open constructor.. start to make boxes .etc.... and then i maybe have a house a minute or two after that
Then i texture it... and i place lights in it... to light it up
I turn on sunlight (mostly) and then make a lightmap/shadow map.... wich by all means looks awsomely great.
BUT after a while moving boxes/walls and what not and i then relight the scene again... the shadowmaps suddenly stop working... i have tried to close constructor and open the file again... nope doesn't work
No matter what i do.. the shadowmaps just wont work again after they dissapear ...
(and by dissapear.. i mean they go away so it leaves the scene fully lit... no shadows at all (i think) )

Its a pretty stange thing

Regards

#5 If you post one of the bad scenes I'll take a look at it here.

Also make sure that the shadow quality is set to High in the lighting pref dialog.

#6 John, will there be a "TLK" option to brighten the lighting?

#7 I'll post one of the bad scenes... as soon as i get hold on my new computer... (wich may take a week.. or two..)
.. or... nahh.. i'll install constructor somewhere else and hook you up with a bad scene ASAP

Quote:Also make sure that the shadow quality is set to High in the lighting pref dialog.

I have tried that too... infact.. i have tried everything that i can think off (sort of)

Regards

#8 Seems like i cant reproduce "the irritating" shadow map dissiperance bug.... Very strage...
When you need something it doesnt work... when you DONT need it.. it appears all the time

NAhh... maybe its a good thing... maybe its gone! :/

But while testing/making this level.. i had a VERY hard time selecting stuff... when i selected in the stack it most of the time didn't select anything... or it would select 2 different objects!!... whats up with that

and also when selecting in the scene... i often couldnt select objects... i had to go like inches away from it to select it

And i dont recall this in Beta 10

Just to let you know

Regards

#9 Hi Eric, yes there already is - it should be on by default (it was enabled in earlier betas). Ultimately there will be a pref to toggle between it and the lower intensity TGE lighting.

Keep in mind that both the Constructor pref and TLK lighting actually affect the rendering, so assets that look bright and interesting in Constructor and TLK still look very dark in TGE.



Hi Bardur, you might want to break the selection issues out into another thread, so Matt and Dave see it. If you do find a flaky scene send it over and I'll be happy to take a look at it.

#10 JOHN!!... i managed to reproduce the Shadow map bug!
Heres the file...

rapidshare.de/files/33656454/Light_error.rar

I was working on the scene.. to test Beta 13.. and then i added a second light and BANG! the shadow map dissaperared! :/

SO... i HOPE you can find the cause.. and fix it if its a bug

Regards
Bardur M

#11 Your WorldSpawn entity's geometry scale is set to 0, which is throwing the lighting off. I'm adding a fix to default any 0 scales to 1, but there may be other areas of Constructor affected by a 0 scale, so you really should avoid using 0.

#12 But i have NEVER set it to 0... :/..
Infact i dont even really know what the "WorldSpawn entity's geometry scale" is.. (going to read the faq's about it now.. hehe)

so... it must be something that triggers this worldspawn scale to change to 0'
and as a said... when i added the second light.. it started getting hard to select stuff.. and then i relitt the scene... and BANG... the shadow map was gone..

Regards
Bardur

#13 It sounds like there is a definite bug, maybe related to object creation/selection? Definitely post a bug report explaining what happened and hopefully one of us can track it down.

#14 Ok.. i'll see if i can "explane" it on Mantis..
But its hard to tell exactly what happens... because it kinda... ehh.... just happens... :(

but i'll look more into it and post on mantis

Regards