T3D Goodness & quick question on Materials
by Andy Rollins · in Torque 3D Professional · 08/25/2010 (5:58 pm) · 4 replies
Let me just say we've decide to port to Torque 3D from TGEA after much discussion just gotta sort out funding for licenses luckily I'm the only coder and we've had google ads on the site generating cash for us.
Loving the features of Torque 3D so far and think the lost time converting to Torque 3D will easily get regained by how much easier the editors are to use, only concern I've got is the conversion of DIF's as we've a lot of them and the export to collada doesn't do LOD's or COllision meshes so we may have to redo them. Many thanks to GG, Sickhead and all those helping out with, loving things.
Ok that's the thanks over and down to business - I've got the spotlights from the street lamps to flicker on and off (so easy to do in T3D I love it), works wonders for the ambience, especially when it flashes down to black for a second and a zombie appears, unfortunately though I can't find or think of anyway to get the material for the streetlamp to turn off the glow in synch with the light flickers.
As you can see in the pic the spotlight on the left streetlamp is off but the material for the lamp post still glows.
Or perhaps easier to see in a video:
You can see the flickering around 0:16 and again at around 0:34 --- any ideas how to get these two things working together?? HELP!
(on a small side note pls ignore some of the normal materials --- coder let loose with crazybump and somehow I've borked some of them so that up is down, will let one of artists fix it when we get them licensed)
Loving the features of Torque 3D so far and think the lost time converting to Torque 3D will easily get regained by how much easier the editors are to use, only concern I've got is the conversion of DIF's as we've a lot of them and the export to collada doesn't do LOD's or COllision meshes so we may have to redo them. Many thanks to GG, Sickhead and all those helping out with, loving things.
Ok that's the thanks over and down to business - I've got the spotlights from the street lamps to flicker on and off (so easy to do in T3D I love it), works wonders for the ambience, especially when it flashes down to black for a second and a zombie appears, unfortunately though I can't find or think of anyway to get the material for the streetlamp to turn off the glow in synch with the light flickers.
As you can see in the pic the spotlight on the left streetlamp is off but the material for the lamp post still glows.
Or perhaps easier to see in a video:
You can see the flickering around 0:16 and again at around 0:34 --- any ideas how to get these two things working together?? HELP!
(on a small side note pls ignore some of the normal materials --- coder let loose with crazybump and somehow I've borked some of them so that up is down, will let one of artists fix it when we get them licensed)
#2
I guess you'll have to either; modify the source and edit the light animation code to interact with the material swap resource to swich glowing and non-glowing material. Or you can use a different flicker that isn't random and use schedules to swap materials.
Nice to see this project in T3D!
08/25/2010 (6:24 pm)
This is the material swap resource Steve is talking about (linky), but still it might be difficult to synchronize since the flickering is random.I guess you'll have to either; modify the source and edit the light animation code to interact with the material swap resource to swich glowing and non-glowing material. Or you can use a different flicker that isn't random and use schedules to swap materials.
Nice to see this project in T3D!
#3
08/25/2010 (11:30 pm)
to fix your normals problem its very easy, just invert the green channel in either crazy bump, photoshop, gimp or whatever, 
#4
and if youre going from the map source to a mesh based format in deled,be sure to null any unseen faces or it will still convert them into unwanted poly's...
also depending on what the mesh is like, your just as good off using polysoup for collision
08/25/2010 (11:41 pm)
you could use Deled CE for converting your dif's aslong as you have the map source for themand if youre going from the map source to a mesh based format in deled,be sure to null any unseen faces or it will still convert them into unwanted poly's...
also depending on what the mesh is like, your just as good off using polysoup for collision
Associate Steve Acaster
[YorkshireRifles.com]
There might be a resource for material swapping somewhere ... but have you thought of using mesh hiding? Exporting the model with 2 meshes, one lit, one unlit and hide/showing them as appropriate?
Hacky I know... but I am king of the workaround.