Alpha 0

[Alienhead]

I'm wondering, I have the need to make some csg shapes and use them for collision in place of my complex meshes, but since we have no real access to entity alpha to hide the object, and collision dont work on self.entity:Hide(),  what methods are you using to hide an object and keep its collision working ?   Apply transparent shader to the csg ??

 

Also, since I got this thread up already - I been meaning to ask what is the best, or most efficent way,  to deteremine what material or object a player is standing on. I wish to change the footstep sounds based of the material beneath the player.

 

 

[Thirsty Panther]

1. Yes apply an invisible material to your CSG.

The process is explained here.

 

2. We had monthly challenges that covered this topic.

[Josh]

Have you used the convex decomposition tool in the model editor window?

[Alienhead]

To save starting a new thread I'll continue this one.  I'm trying to get alpha/masking done on my tree textures for the leaves but I've had little luck thus far.  Ifollowed the tree settings that come with the engine, but those setting result in the below image.

Any quick study on getting alpha blended/masked or both into LE - m at a stand still until I can resolve this issue.  

 

[Josh]

16 minutes ago, Alienhead said:

To save starting a new thread I'll continue this one.

Threads are free. There is no charge for additional threads.

Check the shader. You probably want to use "diffuse+normal+alphamask.shader".

[Alienhead]

Ahh yes that got it, I was using Shadow+alphamask.shader ,  i noticed in the included engine trees that the planes cast shadows as the same in my pic below.   Is there no alpha mask shadowing casting for the leaves? or once again, am i overlooking a vital feature.

Ty.

 

[Alienhead]

Here is my question, I can make a terrain vegitation layer and paint the default tree to it and it comes out fine, the shadows are masked as they should be. I then drop the exact tree onto the terrain ( not using terrain painter ) and it comes out with square shadows where the terrain leaf planes are. This is a completely new project im testing with so no settings are anythign whatsoever has been altered.  I've got to get around this.

 

 

[Alienhead]

Okay, silly overlook,  it was the texture compression, dx5 did the trick . 

This is the first time I've actually played with the vegitation system in LE,  I have to say I'm more than impressed with it's power, I tested out with about 4000 trees and everythign still ran smooth at very decent framerates..  Nice work Josh,  LE 4.6 seems to be a powerhouse. :0)

This was just getting a custom tree inside the vegitation system,  although it works/looks perfectly fine in the system, dropping it single on the map the shadows mess up again, do i need to have a seperate copy of the trees and remove the vegitatrion shader to have a single standalone of the tree?

And one last querry, the tree that ships with thye engine, the pine tree, I noticed it has animation in the leaves.  My custom trees do not. What steps are needed to get that segment working on a custom tree.. Thanks,.

Now to have some fun dressing up a few of my maps.

 

[Josh]

There are separate shaders you can set for vegetation mode, which will control masking and the branch-waving effect.

4000 trees is nothing, you can have 4 million with no problems.