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Trick to rayCast against waterBlocks ?

by Orion Elenzil · in Torque Game Engine · 11/18/2007 (11:49 am) · 2 replies

I suspect we probably just broke something,
but i'm not getting any hits when casting a ray into a waterblock.
is there a trick ?

the raycast is something like:
containerRayCast("0 0 100", "0 0 -500", $TypeMasks::WaterObjectType, 0);

- so casting a ray straight down from 0, 0, 100 to 0, 0, -500,
typemask = just water, no exempt object.

the same line returns the expected results when using $TypeMasks::InteriorObjectType instead.

here's my waterblock from the mission file:
new WaterBlock(Water) {
      position = "-416 -544 -99.4";
      rotation = "1 0 0 0";
      scale = "1024 1024 100";
      UseDepthMask = "1";
      surfaceTexture = "~/common/water/water4";
      ShoreTexture = "~/common/water/water4";
      envMapOverTexture = "~/minimal/skies/01-02b/env_water_cityreflect";
      specularMaskTex = "~/common/water/specmask";
      NormalMapTexture = "~/common/water/waternormalmap";
      WaterDynamicFXShader = "~/common/shaders/waterDynamic.fx";
      WaterStaticFXShader = "~/common/shaders/waterStatic.fx";
      StaticReflectionCubeMap = "~/minimal/skies/01-02b/skycube";
      liquidType = "StagnantWater";
      density = "1";
      viscosity = "10";
      waveMagnitude = "0.2";
      surfaceOpacity = "0.6";
      envMapIntensity = "0.4";
      TessSurface = "50";
      TessShore = "15";
      SurfaceParallax = "0.9";
      FlowAngle = "0";
      FlowRate = "0.01";
      DistortGridScale = "0.01";
      DistortMag = "0.005";
      DistortTime = "0.9";
      ShoreDepth = "6";
      DepthGradient = "1";
      MinAlpha = "0.1";
      MaxAlpha = "1";
      removeWetEdges = "1";
      specularColor = "0 0.1 0.2 1";
      specularPower = "50";
      deepColor = "0.05 0.05 0.1 1";
      shallowColor = "0.1 0.4 0.7 1";
      reflectionColor = "1 1 1 1";
      reflectionAmount = "1";
      waterAmount = "0.5";
      fresnelBias = "0";
      fresnelPower = "4";
   };

also, echo(water.getType() - $TypeMasks::WaterObjectType); yields 0, as one would hope.

have we just hosed our water block in some way, or is there some bit of arcania i'm missing ?

and my second question,
if you were me, where would you start looking for the problem ?

aha: WaterBlock::castRay() is never called, it looks like.
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Associate Orion Elenzil
Real Life Plus
#1
11/18/2007 (11:52 am)
Fwiw, i've tried both server & client containers.

Associate Orion Elenzil
Real Life Plus
#2
11/18/2007 (2:04 pm)
I haven't figured this out,
but i realized that what i really wanted wasn't the intersection w/ the waterblock anyhow,
but instead the intersection with the XY plane. so wrote a lil' console math function to help with that, if anyone's interested:
ConsoleFunction(intersectPlaneLine, const char*, 5, 5, "(Point ptPlane, Vector normalPlane, Point pt1, Point pt2) Calculate the intersection point of a plane and a line.")
{
   char*   returnBuffer = Con::getReturnBuffer(256);

   Point3F ptPlane;
   Point3F nmPlane;
   Point3F pt1;
   Point3F pt2;

   dSscanf(argv[1],"%f %f %f",&ptPlane.x, &ptPlane.y, &ptPlane.z);
   dSscanf(argv[2],"%f %f %f",&nmPlane.x, &nmPlane.y, &nmPlane.z);
   dSscanf(argv[3],"%f %f %f",&pt1    .x, &pt1    .y, &pt1    .z);
   dSscanf(argv[4],"%f %f %f",&pt2    .x, &pt2    .y, &pt2    .z);


   PlaneF  plane(ptPlane, nmPlane);
   F32     dist        = plane.intersect(pt1, pt2);
   Point3F ptIntersect = (pt2 - pt1) * dist + pt1;

   dSprintf(returnBuffer, 256, "%g %g %g", ptIntersect.x,  ptIntersect.y,  ptIntersect.z);
   return returnBuffer;
}

which PS hats of to the author of PlaneF::intersect()! i didn't realize it could be done so simply.