With Light Object is Black?

[Davaris]

Hi,

I'm having a little trouble understanding what is going on here.

 

As you can see, when I have a light in the scene, the object appears black.

 

http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/4549/cactusblack1.png

 

When I delete the light, its texture becomes visible.

 

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/1593/blackcactus2.png

 

The shadow you see is a light map, so there is no light source in the second image.

 

 

This is its mat file.

 

 

***********************************************************************

Material Generated by ADN 1.1 R3

SetShaderFloat(GetMaterialShader(mymaterial),"alphatest",0.50)

***********************************************************************

texture0="abstract::cactus4_color.dds"

clamp0=0,0,0

texture1="abstract::lma_cactus12.dds"

clamp1=0,0,0

color=1.00000000,1.00000000,1.00000000,1.00000000

blend=0

depthmask=1

depthtest=1

alphatest=1

overlay=0

zsort=0

cullface=0

castshadows=1

specular=1.00000000

bumpscale=1.00000000

gloss=0.500000000

shader="abstract::mesh_diffuse_bumpmap.vert","abstract::mesh_diffuse_bumpmap_specular_alphatest.frag"

shadowshader="Abstract::mesh_shadow.vert",""

 

 

Can anyone tell me what I should be looking at? Do I have the wrong combination of shaders?

[Joh]

Do you have bones on it?

[Davaris]

No, its just a mesh.

[Joh]

Could you post your normal map to dl? Maybe something wrong on it? You could also try to test it without normal map (changing the shader too).

[Davaris]

Could you post your normal map to dl? Maybe something wrong on it? You could also try to test it without normal map (changing the shader too).

 

I can't post it because it is commercial. However you have given me a couple of ideas to try. I'll post any progress I make soon.

[Davaris]

Okay I learned a couple of things about which frag and vert files to use, which I'll post in the pureLIGHT forum soon.

 

However the problem with the lights remains.

 

I did learn this though:

Lights that work:

Spot, Ambient

 

Ambient has no effect.

 

Lights that turn it black:

Point, Directional

 

This only affects the cactus. I have a plane and a box in the scene which work fine.

 

 

 

EDIT:

Could you post your normal map to dl? Maybe something wrong on it? You could also try to test it without normal map (changing the shader too).

 

One thing I just remembered, I didn't have the normal map as active and I was still getting the black parts on the cactus. It had the same shaders as the box and the plane.

[Davaris]

This is what the point light does when part of it intersects the cactus. As you can see it is half black half texture.

 

http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/6220/spotweirdness.png

[Joh]

Did you try to remove the normal map?

[Davaris]

Did you try to remove the normal map?

 

 

No normal, no gi, it works with all lights:

shader="abstract::mesh_diffuse.vert","abstract::mesh_diffuse_alphatest.frag"
shadowshader="Abstract::mesh_shadow.vert",""

 

No normal, but with gi, it works with all lights:

shader="abstract::mesh_diffuse.vert","abstract::mesh_diffuse_gi_alphatest.frag"
shadowshader="Abstract::mesh_shadow.vert",""

 

 

Diffuse bumpmap, it goes black!

shader="abstract::mesh_diffuse_bumpmap.vert","abstract::mesh_diffuse_bumpmap_alphatest.frag"
shadowshader="Abstract::mesh_shadow.vert",""

 

I could have sworn it was black without the normal map before!

 

 

I just opened up the .dds file for the normal map and it says, (A8, R8, G8, B8 Mip 1 of 10)

 

I have two other kinds for the normal map, tga and png and they look the same as the dds.

 

I used the tga files and pureLIGHT did the conversion to dds.

 

 

I have a file ending in H which I assume means height map, it is black and white.

The normal map is shiny blue and pink.

 

I see Lumooja says in another thread that:

 

Black means the textures don't have mipmaps.

 

I don't know what to do about this.

[Joh]

Mmm, i saw this type of error when the map have no (or bad) mipmap. Don't you have another way to convert it? Gimp is free maybe you could give it a try?

I don't have pureLight so i can't check..

[macklebee]

In one of the old SDK's there's a tool that Josh made called TextureTool.exe, and it works just fine for making mipmaps. Also the current Tools folder has MakeDDS.exe which also has an option button that will allow you to save mipmaps.

[Joh]

EDITED: Removed comment.. Don't mind i was drunk

[Davaris]

In one of the old SDK's there's a tool that Josh made called TextureTool.exe, and it works just fine for making mipmaps. Also the current Tools folder has MakeDDS.exe which also has an option button that will allow you to save mipmaps.

 

Mmm, i saw this type of error when the map have no (or bad) mipmap. Don't you have another way to convert it? Gimp is free maybe you could give it a try?

I don't have pureLight so i can't check..

 

Okay thanks for your help guys. I'll give it a try and report back.

[Davaris]

Okay I just tried MakeDDS.exe to convert cactus1_N.png and cactus1_N.tga to cactus1_N.dds and no setting I tried made a difference.

 

 

I tried ticking 'save mipmaps' and it had no effect. I tried ticking every other box and no effect either.

 

This is a shrunk down version of the normal map. Is this what they are supposed to look like?

 

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/9328/25728215.png

[Joh]

Well it's seem right.. Could you try to invert the Y value of the normal map, maybe it's simply reversed..

[Davaris]

Well it's seem right.. Could you try to invert the Y value of the normal map, maybe it's simply reversed..

 

Thats a good idea. I'll download this plugin for Gimp and see if what I can do with it.

 

http://code.google.com/p/gimp-normalmap/

[Davaris]

Well it's seem right.. Could you try to invert the Y value of the normal map, maybe it's simply reversed..

 

 

Turns out there was nothing wrong with the normal map at all. I'm not sure if it was my experimentation with different combinations of .frag and .vert files, because while some look like they should be compatible, they aren't.

 

For some reason mesh_diffuse_bumpmap.vert does not work.

 

Anyway it works now and I've learned quite a bit.

 

Here it is:

http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/8853/0cactus.png