Shading issues on silverware with reflective mirrors in view

[bwyan]

Hello all,

I am in the final stages of beta testing my FM "Cole Hurst 1: Eaton" and I've been pointed to a (possible) game bug that causes some objects to shine in an unusual way.

As seen in the screenshot below, in rooms with proper reflective mirrors, if the player has both the mirror and (in this particular case) these silverware serving platters in view, they start to glow in a very odd way:

Does anyone know if this is perhaps a known game bug? I've tested TDM 2.09a and 2.09b and this issue is present in both those cases. I suppose it could also be something to do with my map in particular (perhaps those silverware platters needs some special spawnarg?), but I'm not entirely sure.

[bwyan]

Apologies. I just realized that this is perhaps not the correct forum for this kind of post. Please feel free to remove it. I will ask the same question over on "DarkRadiant Feedback and Development" instead.

[Dragofer]

I'd say the Tech Support forums are the correct place for rendering issues like this. The DarkRadiant forums are for development and feedback on DR, while the Newbie DarkRadiant Questions thread in the Editing Guild is for general mapping questions.

Regarding the silver platter, if I'm not mistaken it contains a reflective stage in its material, which might be conflicting with your mirror. It's not a very noticeable reflection imo, so could derive a new material without that stage and apply it via a skin as a workaround (if nothing else works).

[bwyan]

@Dragofer Thanks for your feedback. I thought I should also mention that there is one other instance where this also seems to be to be the case.

In this example, I have a door frame with a glass awning on top (model name "models/darkmod/architecture/modules/interior_mansion01/mansion01_door02.lwo"):

I managed to solve this in my mission by inserting a black texture just behind the glass part, so for me this is not an issue - but perhaps others might stumble into this same problem.

Edited November 27, 2021 by bwyan

[bwyan]

If anyone is aware of how to create the skin that Dragofer mentions above, then please do let me know

[nbohr1more]

Here is the skin wiki

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Creating_Multiple_Skins_For_A_Model

Here is the material wiki:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Material_Files

That said, the silver platter material has been changed in TDM 2.10. Please test this issue on the latest dev build:

 

[bwyan]

17 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

That said, the silver platter material has been changed in TDM 2.10. Please test this issue on the latest dev build:

Hello,

I just tested my mission using the most recent development build and in this case the problem is not present, but the reflective mirror texture that I am using is also entirely gone/missing (all mirrors appear completely black).

I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this... Does the "textures/common/mirror" texture behave differently in 2.10 or should I perhaps use an entirely different texture to be 2.10 compatible?

[Dragofer]

10 minutes ago, bwyan said:

all mirrors appear completely black

I have a suspicion that mirrors could've fallen victim to the same thing that also knocked out my parallel camera display screens (rev 9232, mentioned in tracker 5676). Maybe we can't have multiple subviews in parallel at the moment?

@bwyanIt would be interesting to see what happens to the mirrors if you try out a dev build before rev 9232 (and maybe also just after?).

[bwyan]

14 minutes ago, Dragofer said:

It would be interesting to see what happens to the mirrors if you try out a dev build immediately before rev 9232 (and maybe also immediately after?).

@Dragofer I don't see rev 9232 on this list. Do I need to get a hold of that version in some other way besides using the installer?

Just FYI, I tested using dev16390-9648.

[Dragofer]

33 minutes ago, bwyan said:

@Dragofer I don't see rev 9232 on this list. Do I need to get a hold of that version in some other way besides using the installer?

Just FYI, I tested using dev16390-9648.

Dev builds are snapshots of development taken at intervals, rather than with every single revision. In this case I'd suggest trying the dev builds before and after code rev 9232, so dev16215-9224 and dev16225-9284

[bwyan]

@Dragofer

In dev16215-9224, the mirror texture is working as intended and the shading issue is present on the serving platters:

In dev16225-9284, the mirror texture is no longer working and (curiously) the shading issue is still present:

I hope this is helpful to you. Let me know if I can provide any other information that might be useful.

Edited November 28, 2021 by bwyan

[bwyan]

Perhaps I should also mention that I'm using the Linux version of the game - just in case that turns out to be relevant.

Edited November 28, 2021 by bwyan

[bwyan]

@Dragofer I have removed the mirrors from the rooms in my mission where they are causing this issue. In case you need further assistance I've got a backup copy.

Just for reference, it is version 0.9.

[Dragofer]

5 hours ago, bwyan said:

@Dragofer

In dev16215-9224, the mirror texture is working as intended and the shading issue is present on the serving platters:

In dev16225-9284, the mirror texture is no longer working and (curiously) the shading issue is still present:

I hope this is helpful to you. Let me know if I can provide any other information that might be useful.

Thanks for investigating, that makes it more plausible that rev 9232 is the cause.

What would also be interesting is at what position in the map this room is: this can be done by entering getViewPos into the console. This should output a 6-figure vector (position + view angles) which somebody else can use with setViewPos to jump to that position in your map.

You can save your console log as a .txt file after the getViewPos command by typing condump mirrors.txt. Then you'll find mirrors.txt in your darkmod folder, and its last lines should have that vector.

Once you have that vector and a download link to 0.9, I think it's time to call in the dev cavalry (stgatilov/duzenko/cabalistic).

[bwyan]

3 hours ago, Dragofer said:

Once you have that vector and a download link to 0.9, I think it's time to call in the dev cavalry (stgatilov/duzenko/cabalistic).

The view coordinates are:
5789.9 -1601.58 82.72   20.2 43.0 0.0

And here is a link to version 0.9: https://bwyan.dk/wp-content/uploads/ch1_eaton.pk4-0.9

Please note that I have manually renamed "ch1_eaton.pk4" to "ch1_eaton.pk4-0.9", so that it wouldn't conflict with my current beta version.

If you need additional testing help - do let me know!

Edited November 28, 2021 by bwyan

[Dragofer]

@bwyanThanks!

I was wondering, if you delete the silver platters and add back one or all mirrors, do the mirrors work again in post-9232 dev builds? Could be you cant have both at once.

[bwyan]

9 hours ago, Dragofer said:

@bwyanThanks!

I was wondering, if you delete the silver platters and add back one or all mirrors, do the mirrors work again in post-9232 dev builds? Could be you cant have both at once.

I just tried deleting all the entities with shading issues in the room being discussed on version dev16390-9648 (map version 0.9 - link above) and this seems to have no effect on the mirror. The mirror texture was still black weather the serving platters were present in the sealed room or not.

[duzenko]

@bwyan

Where is the mirror you think is screwing things? I can only see the silverware in the 0.9 pk4

[bwyan]

@duzenko It is encircled in red the top-right of this screenshot:

Room is at: 5789.9 -1601.58 82.72   20.2 43.0 0.0

[duzenko]

In this case, isn't it the primary issue that the mirror itself is black?

[bwyan]

@duzenko I suppose so yes. Although in version 2.09b, the mirror is present but causes visual glitches on the silver serving trays on the table when the mirror and the serving trays are in view at the same time.

[duzenko]

The black mirror happens to me as well in svn. Will look into it.

[duzenko]

I think I fixed black mirrors in svn but I'm not sure how problematic the silverware is now

I'd think it hasn't changed much for a while

[bwyan]

@duzenko Sounds great. Let me know if I can help test something out. I haven't tried "svn" builds of TDM before, but I'm sure I'd be able to figure it out.

Edited November 29, 2021 by bwyan

[datiswous]

Not sure if the following is helpful info, but I found that adding // before map textures/common/mirror.tga for shader textures/common/mirror returns the mirror effect on (those) mirrors in 2.10 . So after edit it looks like this:

Spoiler

textures/common/mirror
{
	description		"used for mirror subrenders"

	discrete		// never merge with other surfaces
	qer_editorimage textures/common/mirror.tga
	solid
	mirror
	{
		blend blend
		mirrorRenderMap
		// map textures/common/mirror.tga
	}
}

The camera# shaders also work again after a similar edit in the tdm_camera.mtr file.

Edited December 20, 2021 by datiswous