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Portals seem to cut off particles. ???

by Jason Davis · in Constructor · 09/14/2007 (12:50 pm) · 8 replies

Forgive me if this should be in another forum, but this is the best stab I could think of as far as where to post to......

I have two rooms in this dif that are portalized... each one has a portal in the doorway to the outside world, and there is a doorway between the rooms. Particles, such as torch fire, are working great in the first room I was putting them in. However, when I put particles in the second room and reload the mission, the particles are only working in the first room.

If I remove the portal between rooms, the particles show up fine in both rooms. I have a couple of pics to illustrate the written description:

http://doubleedgesoftware.com/problem_pics/with_the_portal.JPG

http://doubleedgesoftware.com/problem_pics/without_the_portal.JPG

Please let me know what you think, and if I need to post this elsewhere. (Once again, sorry if this is the wrong place to post.)

-Jason
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Torque 3D Owner Caylo Gypsyblood
#1
09/14/2007 (1:14 pm)
The best solution is cleaver Portal placement. But i expect a BIG bounding box, that extents into the zones you wish the particle to be visible from would work...


Oddly when i went to test this advise, I dont seem to have the problem, my particles are not culled by zone portals.

Associate Matt Fairfax
PopCap
#2
09/14/2007 (1:18 pm)
Interesting...

I will take a look at that when I get a chance to spend some time on fixing the portal problems in Constructor.

Torque Owner Jason Davis
#3
09/15/2007 (12:07 pm)
Thanks for commenting on this, guys. I think it would be worth mentioning that even if my player character walks into the room where the particles are culled, they still do not work. I can stand in there and look out into the room [where the particles work] and still see them emitting... weird...

Torque 3D Owner Caylo Gypsyblood
#4
09/15/2007 (1:31 pm)
Ah, hmm.. How are you building your portals?

Torque Owner Jason Davis
#5
09/16/2007 (11:41 am)
Caylo,

Forgive me, but I am not quite sure how to answer your question. I only know of one way to create portals. Can you be more specific as to what you mean by your question, please?

Thanks in advance,
Jason

Torque Owner ATW
#6
09/16/2007 (12:12 pm)
I have noticed that if you have a transparent Texture on an object even a DTS that the portals in form or in back do not render the Object that has the Transparent Texture will render after the Objects. and The NULL texture's is a PNG with alpha layer texture on it I could be 100% wrong on this but this might be what is happening that the portals is rendering after the particles best way to test this is place the particle right in front of the portal so that the emmiter starts in front and ends outside of the portal. if they start to render at the eadge of the portal than the transparent NULL texture is causing this.

Torque 3D Owner Caylo Gypsyblood
#7
09/16/2007 (1:09 pm)
As ATW mentioned. I was getting to the idea of; some 3D engines only require you to place a TEXTURE with a special name ("PORTAL" or is it "ZONE"? Dont recall anymore), to place a BSP Portal. This is NOT the way Torque works, so if you are using a NULL or transparent texture you would be experiencing odd behaver.

Torque Owner Jason Davis
#8
09/16/2007 (2:13 pm)
Hmmm... I'll have to experiment with that, since I THINK I understand what ATW was saying. Here's another clue to add rice to the beans: If I grab the particle emitter in the mission editor, drag it outside of the portalized zone entirely, it starts to produce particles... then when I move it back where it came from [into the portalized zone] then it continues to produce particles. It seems to only not produce particles when the mission first loads. WEIRD.

-Jason