Shadowing question

[Swampdonkey]

I'm trying to convert some of my older mesh media into the gmf format, seems to be working ok until I turn on shadowing. The link below shows my results -

 

http://gothasoft.com/temp/prob1.jpg

 

When i turn the camera certain angles I get black surfaces covering my house surfaces - this usually happens the most when a light surface is shinning on the surface directly and within near range.

 

Appreciate any advice you may have.

 

Win 7(x64), gx260 ( latest nvidia drivers )

[Josh]

Can you post your meshes? What did you convert them with?

[Swampdonkey]

Hi, I can send you the one in the screenshot if you prefer, they are apart of a huge media pack i had created in the past so I really don't really want to make them public as of yet. < emailing >

[Josh]

Your mesh seems to work perfectly, and there are no special requirements a mesh must have for shadows to work.

 

The only weird thing I see is your gloss value in the material file is set to 0. You can delete that line and the default value will be used.

 

Why is that point light down there? It looks like it is almost inside the mesh. That would give odd shadowing, but I am not sure what we are seeing in this shot.

 

No one has ever posted an image like this, and the lighting routines have been stable for a long time. Can you post your .sbx file with the camera in the right position to display the error?

[Swampdonkey]

Hi Josh,

 

I've moved the camera around to where it shows the most artifacts, but bare in mind no matter what direction the camera is pointing, theres shadowing problems on the house mesh alone, all other meshes from the eval kit seem to shadow properly, its just this house model i converted and imported is causing the problem.

 

http://gothasoft.com/temp/prob2.jpg

 

I can remove the point light and leave the defaulted directional light in there and it gives simular results, portion sof the surface go black when the camera is angled at certain degrees.

[Josh]

I will check on the NVidia hardware tonight.

 

Aside from obvious errors, it does look pretty.

[Swampdonkey]

Yah nothing wrong with the rendering quality, top notch there. I just installed the eval on my 2nd computer with a 8080gtx in it, getting identical results.

[Swampdonkey]

Decided to leave that model alone and try another conversion. This model also produces the same effect as the first one:

 

http://www.gothasoft.com/temp/prob3.jpg

 

I'm at a loss here as the media included in the eval works fine.

[Niosop]

If you could post one of the models I'd be glad to look at it and see if I can figure out what's going on.

[macklebee]

what are the models original format? OBJ, X, 3DS, DAE? What are you using to convert? What options are you using when converting? Ive personally never seen anything like those pictures, but I have seen issues whenever the normals, binormals, and tangents were not being created during the conversion. The old converter for 3DWS would do this for any model that had more than texture applied. If you open up the model with the modelviewer, does each surface list normals, texcoords, binormals, tangents, and triangles? Also do you have anyway with your modeling program to check which direction the normals are facing?

[Swampdonkey]

Great news guys, i started looking at the mat files a little closer and removed a few of the defaulted settings and it just worked. In particular i removed these two lines and the artifacts went away:

 

overlay=0

zsort=0

 

.. I'll post back a few shots when i get the normals and spec maps back in..

Thanks for the suggestions ..

[Swampdonkey]

OKay after tweaking the normals a bit more and playing with the spec maps to get until i figured out what LE likes most - i was able to complete the first two houses in my conversion attempt. Have a look below. And thanks Josh and others whom helped me sort out the shadowing mayhem.

 

http://www.gothasoft.com/temp/housepic1.jpg

 

I'm going to break from converting any more of the houses for a little bit while i construct some roads, mailboxes, sidewalks and street-signs. Then I'll return to convert the remainder of the houses.

[Canardia]

You should use transparent windows, and some more ground foliage, since the flat terrain shines too much through. A less stretched ground texture would also look better.

[Josh]

overlay=0

zsort=0

Those are the default values, anyways. I suspect some other values you deleted fixed the problem, probably gloss and/or maybe specular.

 

Your shots look great, but would look better with antialias enabled and trilinear and anistropic filtering enabled, if they aren't already. The houses look almost like a photograph. I really like the brick bumpmapping.

 

There are some more tree packs in the downloads section, so you might try those out if/when you decide to get a license.

[Swampdonkey]

Hi, thanks for the comments and suggestions.. Just applied your suggestions Josh and it does look better.

 

http://gothasoft.com/temp/housepic2.jpg

 

As for the terrain and foliage, and trees.. just really tossed them in there to fill the scene, i plan on creating my own trees and foliage and terrain skins.. Most of the ground cover in that pic will be cement as I plan to add roads, sidewalks and fence sections ( suburb like ).

 

This is really only my 2nd day playing with leadwerks engine, i predict a few more months to find its inner tweaks and subtle adjustments that will suit the scene just right. I've always wanted to try my hand at a game project based something off the Hunter Reckoning series on the xbox.. 1 - 4 player lan/internet 3rd person shooter/city/dungeon crawler with perhaps some mild cyber-punk overtones. After spending the better of the past 3 years on an arcade game and a tower defense title I'm ready to try something a little more graphically advanced, just need to convience my team of it now.. >

 

I do plan on getting a license but it'll be towards the end of the month when income tax checks rolling in. For now I'm having fun with this excellent rendering quality and mild effort needed to do it.. That scene in any other engine would had took weeks if not longer to get looking near that good. Leadwerks has really grown up over the years.