[ALPHA 1.1 BUG - Imposters are Turned Upside Down]

#1 I can't say i've seen any upside down imposters ever. Does this happen with the default tree mesh we provided in the alpha? Or just your custom shapes?

#2 On the stock ones it turns them sideways.

#3 @JC
Have you downloaded the newest 1.1alpha?

I had that happen in the first - but seems to be cleared up in the new version.

#4 Yeah, that's using the latest version.

#5 Not really related to the problem at hand, but what is an imposter?

Thanks,

#6 @JC - To be clear there was a problem with a bad version of the 1.1 alpha being posted originally. It was updated some time on Saturday. So if you downloaded it prior to that then you have the wrong version of it.

Looking at your screenshot it looks like either the UVs or the imposter texture itself is bad. Can you post your .imposter.dds file here for the default tree so i can compare it to a working one?

@Chris - Its a 2d version of a tree rendered as a billboard. In T3D imposters are autogenerated and cached (aka autobillboards). We generate a normal map so that the imposters get fairly accurate lighting compared to other imposter implementations.

#7 I did download the latest version for sure, as I had already merged the first 1.1 alpha into our client, so I did a diff of the first and second download to see what files had changed. So definately got the updated version.

I just reinstalled it again and here's what I noticed:

- On the first load it was fine. I even deleted the imposter dds files and it generated them properly.
- I went into the shape editor and remove the imposter and then re-add it with the stock settings, it looked fine. (probably still using the original one)
- I restarted T3D and re-added a tree, and it was back to looking like it did in the screenshot, with the billboard pointing sideways.

I placed the generated imposter here:

71.18.167.9/defaulttree.dae.imposter.dds

#8 got it thanks Tom.

#9 I take it this "imposter" stuff is all about Max?

I've been making my own billboards manually (Blender).

#10 @JC - Did you save your changes in the Shape Editor before restarting T3D? Adding/removing/editing imposter settings in the Shape Editor causes the imposter DDS files to be regenerated. If you don't save your changes, then there is a mismatch between the (old) imposter settings in the DAE file and the (new) DDS files.

I was able to exactly reproduce your issue by following your steps and NOT saving in the Shape Editor before restarting.

#11 Ah, yes that's exactly what I did. I regenerated but didn't save.

#12

Quote:I take it this "imposter" stuff is all about Max?

I've been making my own billboards manually (Blender).

All you need to have Torque generate imposters is an appropriately named node with some user_properties set on it. MAX is the only collada exporter that I know of that generates the properties in the expected format though.

However, you can use the Shape Editor to add imposters to any shape, DTS or DAE, no matter where it was exported from.

Imposters are different from normal mesh billboards since Torque can automatically switch between a series of snapshots of the model based on the current camera angle.

#13 Thanks for that bit of info, Chris. After a quick look at the dds JC posted I get what you mean.

#14 @JC

So first issue the default settings in the defaulttree.dae file is to have 4 imposter images. What you have there is a ridiculous amount of imposter images. Did you get that the first time you ran it... or is this occuring because you edited the model to have that many?

If you modified it there is a known issue with polar images which is probably your problem... set polar steps to 0 for now.

If you didn't then the issue could be either the cached.dts not restoring the imposter data or patches in the TSShapeConstructor not being cleared.

#15 I used whatever was the default on the imposter settings, just unchecked and rechecked that box, though I didn't save it.