light not illuminating post?

[Springheel]

...continuing previous post...

@spring, if you replace the candle with a light entity, does it do the same thing?

I tested this, and yes, it does. This is a default light placed right up against the pillar, where the red dot is.

Maybe puffing out the vertex normals on the model

I have no idea what that means.

[nbohr1more]

 

 

I have no idea what that means.

 

 

The vertex normals in the center of the model should be perpendicular to the surface then slightly angled away from the center as you

move towards the edge:

 

 

\ \ \ \ \ \ | / / / / / / / <- normals

_______________________________ <- surface

center

[Springheel]

Did a bit of reading on what vertex normals are. It sounds like 1) they primarily affect the smoothing of angles between polygons, which wouldn't impact the issue here, and 2) Lightwave doesn't include tools for editing them, so all our .lwo models are using whatever the default is (probably face normals).

[nbohr1more]

Hmm, it looks like you can change the "Angle Threshold" for overall Smoothing in Lightwave:

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=myLcfmxy_mQC&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=lightwave+angle+limit&source=bl&ots=ciYocn4Fat&sig=qc5V7mUU4x7NGdjjQBjg8QuLBno&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiepbvSrcTPAhVFHD4KHbe3C_4Q6AEIHjAA

 

I saw some old Doom3world talk about using n-gons to cure workflow issues where smoothing groups are usually required but I'm not sure how relevant that is.

 

Another reference:

 

http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/idtech/export-lightwave-lwo-models.php

 

It seems you could do something like:

 

blend bumpmap

 

map addnormals( path_to_regular_normal_map, smoothnormals(renderbump [-size <width> <height>] [-aa <aa_value>] [-trace <trace_value>] [-colormap] <image> <lwo model> ))

 

to add smoothed contours based on the underlying model.

[Springheel]

Is there a reason to think that would have some effect when removing the normal entirely had none?

[nbohr1more]

I think the engine treats vertex normals from lwo different than it's default brush behavior. We are trying to bias the normals

to coax the engine to produce the same behavior (or better) than brushes.

 

Yes, the true fix would be to address why lwo is treated this way but it would probably require someone who understood the lwo decoder

in the engine. Eg. Not me.

 

Hmm our code...

 

 

 

 

 
/* ======================================================================
lwGetVertNormals()
Calculate the vertex normals.  For each polygon vertex, sum the
normals of the polygons that share the point.  If the normals of the
current and adjacent polygons form an angle greater than the max
smoothing angle for the current polygon's surface, the normal of the
adjacent polygon is excluded from the sum.  It's also excluded if the
polygons aren't in the same smoothing group.
Assumes that lwGetPointPolygons(), lwGetPolyNormals() and
lwResolvePolySurfaces() have already been called.
====================================================================== */

void lwGetVertNormals( lwPointList *point, lwPolygonList *polygon )
{
   int j, k, n, g, h, p;
   float a;

   for ( j = 0; j < polygon->count; j++ ) {
      for ( n = 0; n < polygon->pol[ j ].nverts; n++ ) {
         for ( k = 0; k < 3; k++ )
            polygon->pol[ j ].v[ n ].norm[ k ] = polygon->pol[ j ].norm[ k ];

         if ( polygon->pol[ j ].surf->smooth <= 0 ) continue;

         p = polygon->pol[ j ].v[ n ].index;

         for ( g = 0; g < point->pt[ p ].npols; g++ ) {
            h = point->pt[ p ].pol[ g ];
            if ( h == j ) continue;

            if ( polygon->pol[ j ].smoothgrp != polygon->pol[ h ].smoothgrp )
               continue;
            a = vecangle( polygon->pol[ j ].norm, polygon->pol[ h ].norm );
            if ( a > polygon->pol[ j ].surf->smooth ) continue;

            for ( k = 0; k < 3; k++ )
               polygon->pol[ j ].v[ n ].norm[ k ] += polygon->pol[ h ].norm[ k ];
         }

         normalize( polygon->pol[ j ].v[ n ].norm );
      }
   }
}

 

 

 

Seems to be looking for max smoothing angle too.