Model Request: Furniture covered in sheets

[Bikerdude]

As Louis Balfour from Jazz club would say...

 

[Springheel]

TDM only supports tris.

[Obsttorte]

You could change them to quads and then revert them back to tris. Two tris would than form a quad so to say. Donno if that helps, though.

[Atheran]

TDM only supports tris.

 

I thought so... I'll try to smooth them a bit in Zbrush then and hope it fixes it.

 

Here's the bed. At screenshot 2 you see I get the same problem with shadows. And now I'm sure it's what I was talking about Just triangles in the model with the two big edges very close to each other. And no... Smoothing with Zbrush didn't help :/

 

 

 

 

Edited August 25, 2014 by Atheran

[chedap]

At screenshot 2 you see I get the same problem with shadows.

You need to make it two-sided to drop shadows correctly. Only tris that are not lit by a light will form a shadow from that light (that's what you see on the second shot). Or think of it this way: if from a certain point you can "see" the light through the model/shadowmesh, that point won't be in the shadow.

 

Also, set shadowmeshes material to shadow2, that will prevent "weird" sharp shadows in places. Since these are mostly convex, models not dropping shadow on themselves won't be noticeable.

[Atheran]

You need to make it two-sided to drop shadows correctly

 

Two-sided as in two faces or two-sided as in disabling backface culling? (double-sided option in LW surface editor)

[chedap]

Two-sided as in two faces or two-sided as in disabling backface culling? (double-sided option in LW surface editor)

Never worked in LW, so I wouldn't know. The resulting mesh needs to have faces at both sides, if ticking double-sided option will export the mesh that way, then that's it. Backface culling is probably just a viewport render option that doesn't affect the model itself.

[Atheran]

Allright. And that needs to be in the shadow mesh right? shadow2 didn't get rid of the weird self shadows btw

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

Now the shadow drops correctly. Now I just need to fix the crisp shadows thingy

 

Edited August 25, 2014 by Atheran

[Bikerdude]

nice work btw :-)

[Springheel]

Also, set shadowmeshes material to shadow2

 

You shouldn't use shadow2. That's basically a shadow texture with "noselfshadow" attached, which means the object won't cast a shadow on itself or anything else that has that keyword attached to it (or vice versa)...you can wind up with AI walking past the bed and only their legs casting a shadow on the bed but not their torso, and other weirdness. While some textures need that keyword, objects with a shadowmesh generally do not.

 

Also, don't set the mesh to double-sided. You'll get one of two things happening--the mesh will behave as if forceshadows is on, meaning your shadowmesh is wasted, or worse, there will be weird z-fighting all over the mesh. The easiest way to double-side something like this is to copy the mesh, paste it, flip it, and offset it slightly downwards so it doesn't occupy the same space as the original mesh (which causes the z-fighting).

 

Also, what smoothing level are you applying to the surface?

[chedap]

the object won't cast a shadow on itself or anything else that has that keyword attached to it

Didn't know that. Well, this complicates things, I'll need to redo all of my shadoweshes (to fit inside visible meshes) then.

 

Also, don't set the mesh to double-sided. You'll get one of two things happening--the mesh will behave as if forceshadows is on, meaning your shadowmesh is wasted, or worse, there will be weird z-fighting all over the mesh. The easiest way to double-side something like this is to copy the mesh, paste it, flip it, and offset it slightly downwards so it doesn't occupy the same space as the original mesh (which causes the z-fighting).

We're talking shadowcasting here, it's the shadowmesh that's going to be double-sided, so no z-fighting.

And ideally, after cloning, the backside should be optimized as well.

[Springheel]

Oh, I thought he was double-siding the actual sheet mesh. Yes, that should be fine for shadowmeshes.

[Atheran]

No i did it for the shadow mesh. As for shadow2 do it or don't didn't fix my weird shadows and I'm afraid i don't know how to fix it. I'll try collapsing some edges but I'm afraid it'll look too squarish at those parts.

 

For smoothing i did average the normals on polygons and used smooth modifier on LW surface with the default 80 iirc parameter. Quick question. Of all the furniture models i loaded in LW none had the smooth modifier... why so?

 

I also did a normal angle of 30 in maya after averaging the normals on faces.

[Springheel]

 

 

For smoothing i did average the normals on polygons and used smooth modifier on LW surface with the default 80 iirc parameter. Quick question. Of all the furniture models i loaded in LW none had the smooth modifier... why so?

 

 

No idea...they all should.

[Atheran]

Hmm... I got the last 2 ready I believe but I can't test them :/ They have a white texture and I get a message it can't find the correect texture. Thing is... I didn't mess up with the textures folder at all :/

 

EDIT: I tried updating my TDM installation but didn't fix it. It seems to be missing lots of textures

Edited August 26, 2014 by Atheran

[Springheel]

They have a white texture and I get a message it can't find the correect texture.

 

You're pointing to a shader name, not a texture, correct? What is the precise message?

[Atheran]

Surface texture is pointing to textures/darkmod/fabric/cloth_plain_creased_white_dull

 

Ingame it looks like the attached screenie and I get messages like

 

WARNING: Couldn't load image: guis/assets/splash/launch

WARNING: file materials/tdm_ghouse_stone.mtr, line 758: material 'textures/darkmod/stone/cobblestones/cobblestones_rounded_brown' previously defined at materials/tdm_ghouse_stone.mtr:616

 

etc etc etc even at launching the TDM in the console.

 

When I load mission I get several warnings about not being able to load sounds, images, ambient lights etc

 

I also get messages about the models having too many verts and that I need to triplet? them down. Even from the models I made the previous days that I didn't get any messages from them before.

 

The model I tried to import (cabinet) is much smaller than the ones before it. Others are at 1.5k polys with a shadowmesh of ~800-1k. This one is at 1.2k polys with a shadowmesh of 500

Edited August 26, 2014 by Atheran

[grayman]

The warnings you quote are normal. TDM often looks in several places for assets, and complains when it can't find something before it eventually finds it. (Assuming it's not truly missing.)

[Atheran]

The cabinet with the exploding sun inside it tho' is not ,considering I used the same textures as in the previous models right?

Edited August 26, 2014 by Atheran

[Springheel]

Sounds like a weird jumble of things wrong.

 

I also get messages about the models having too many verts and that I need to triplet? them down. Even from the models I made the previous days that I didn't get any messages from them before.

 

I can't think of any way you would get no errors one day, and then this error the next on the exact same model.

[Atheran]

What does this error mean anyways?

[Springheel]

TDM needs meshes to be using tris (3 sided polys). That message means that something in the mesh is not a tri (usually it means there are quads, but I think I've seen that message with 2-sided polys as well).

[Atheran]

Allright. But it's showing the model fine ingame.. Anyways gonna fix it tomorrow and then redo my last 2 models from scratch.

[Springheel]

Sometimes it will render okay, sometimes not.

[Atheran]

I redid the cabinet from scratch and this time much much better modeling wise and with lower polygons. In the viewport in DR it seems fine but when I go to test the map I get the same glowy white texture on it. The only error I get in map generation is a sofa model I had in the scene that I later deleted and it tells me that it can't find it and another error (not in red letters) that it tells me it can't find the ambient light.

 

Ambient light 'ambient_world' not found, attempting to create a new one.

Note: The main ambient light could not be determined.

 

Not sure if that's normal or not, but as of now I have no way to test any new models.