Problems With Iron Gate And Fence

[Springheel]

This seems like a useful model to use in prefabs, or for city environments, but it has some kind of lighting problem. Parts of the gate reflect light but the top parts remain black.

 

If someone has a spare moment, could they check into this and see what's going on? The files are in darkmod/architecture

 

 

[OrbWeaver]

Looks suspiciously like the compressed normalmap problem.

[Springheel]

That was my first thought too. But the normal is just a regular .tga file. Actually, it's totally flat so I'll just comment it out and see if that does anything.

[OrbWeaver]

The reason is that it doesn't have a diffusemap.

 

models/darkmod/props/textures/irongate_d.tga is completely black.

 

As an aside, is it intended for model skin images to be in models/darkmod/props/textures, even if the model itself is in architecture? If so this is pretty confusing.

[Springheel]

models/darkmod/props/textures/irongate_d.tga is completely black.

 

Well, that's a diffusemap, just not a very good one. I tried switching to a different diffuse, and commented out the normalmap, and the problem still occurs. It's not the specular, since that's just a grey square. I'm confused.

 

Can't open the model myself as it's an ASE.

 

 

As an aside, is it intended for model skin images to be in models/darkmod/props/textures, even if the model itself is in architecture? If so this is pretty confusing.

 

The textures for all static meshes go in that directory.

[OrbWeaver]

Well, that's a diffusemap, just not a very good one. I tried switching to a different diffuse, and commented out the normalmap, and the problem still occurs. It's not the specular, since that's just a grey square. I'm confused.

 

It is the specular, try "r_skipSpecular 1" and watch the strange lighting revert to a simple black mesh. Essentially you are seeing a physically-invalid effect because the diffusemap says "reflects no light" but the midgrey specular map says "reflects quite a lot of light".

 

The textures for all static meshes go in that directory.

 

That's very strange - it implies that the texture for an architectural mesh is a type of "prop".

[Springheel]

I don't think so. I've switched all the textures to ones that I know work fine, and I still get strange lighting effects, as if parts of the gate were being hit with tons more light than others. When I zoom in I can also see some odd streaky distortion where the white meets the grey:

 

 

 

That's very strange - it implies that the texture for an architectural mesh is a type of "prop".

 

The architectural folder is a bit of a no-mans' land at the moment. I agree that huge buildings or abbey models shouldn't have their textures in props/textures. And windows would likely be in the 2dtexture directory. So perhaps we need to revisit that.

[OrbWeaver]

I don't think so. I've switched all the textures to ones that I know work fine, and I still get strange lighting effects, as if parts of the gate were being hit with tons more light than others. When I zoom in I can also see some odd streaky distortion where the white meets the grey

 

Do you mean you have switched textures to one with low or no specular, and still see the effect? Have you tried disabling specular with r_skipSpecular?

[Springheel]

Here it is with no specular at all. You can see that the gate simply isn't responding to the light properly.

 

[OrbWeaver]

OK, I think that's a problem with the mesh smoothing. This would need to be checked in a modelling app, and vertices unwelded if necessary.

[Springheel]

Unforunately I can't open .ASE files in Lightwave (and wouldn't know how to fix it even if I could).

 

If anyone else wants to have a go at this, feel free.

[OrbWeaver]

I'll see if I can take a look at it, there is an ASE importer for Blender (which I haven't tried yet, but feedback is positive).

[New Horizon]

Once I saw it without the specular, I definately thought smoothing too.

[PinkDot]

I may be wrong but I think that's just how the shaders work - assuming that the light is computed on the basis of vertices. If the top of the bars is lit and the bottom is not then it's simply shaded from top to the bottom. If these bars had some additional vertices in the middle, they would catch the light in the middle as well which would produce nicer shading effect.

[OrbWeaver]

Look at the spiral - there's some quite obvious incorrect Gouraud-shading going on there.

[OrbWeaver]

Successfully imported and again - no UV map.

 

Is something wrong with my Blender setup or do half of these models not have a UV map?

 

EDIT: Just opened the ASE in notepad and yup, there is no UV map for this object, I'll have to create one myself in order to solve this problem.

[OrbWeaver]

I have fixed the model and added a basic rusty metal texture. I cannot claim to be much of a skinner but the model is now UV-mapped so is free to receive a better texture if required.

 

 

The UV-map is non-unique which means it will only accept tileable textures, but there are 4 submeshes which may be given independent materials - the main gate, the spikes on the top, the rings at the bottom and the curly thing.

[Springheel]

Great, thanks Orb. Can you upload it to CVS?

[OrbWeaver]

Yup, I'll do this tonight.

 

I think we should have a rule that non-UV-mapped unskinned models should not be committed into the models/darkmod tree. Perhaps there could be an extra repository for WIP/untextured models, but having them in the main tree is confusing and useless to mappers.

[Springheel]

No, you're right--unfinished models should never be uploaded to CVS. These only got by because I was told they were finished.

 

BTW, would you also be able to do the same thing for the irongatesegment.ase? It has the exact same problem.

[OrbWeaver]

Sure, I'll have a look at it. Presumably it can use the same texture anyway.

[Springheel]

When I load the gate in the editor, Orb, it looks like this:

 

 

The top spiral shows up as black and doesn't get lit. Is the material missing from CVS?

[OrbWeaver]

It works ok in my local workspace, I'll check the CVS version as soon as the CVS server starts responding again.

[OrbWeaver]

I've checked in the irongatesegment.ase as well as the latest version of architecture.mtr which contains all of the materials for these objects.

[Springheel]

I've got the latest updates and there's no change on my end. I looked at the mtr file, but I can't make heads or tails of this section:

 

<<<<<<< architecture.mtr

qer_editorimage models/darkmod/props/textures/anvil_d.tga

diffusemap models/darkmod/props/textures/anvil_d.tga

//specularmap models/darkmod/props/textures/anvil_s.tga

bumpmap models/darkmod/props/textures/anvil_local.tga

=======

sk/irongate_curlybit

{

metal

 

{

blend diffusemap

map models/darkmod/architecture/metalrust_d.tga

vertexColor

}

bumpmap models/darkmod/architecture/metalrust_n.tga

>>>>>>> 1.10

 

Do the <<< >>> tags comment out what's inside them? That would explain it if so (though not why it works on yours).

 

edit: Yep, removing the tags seems to fix it.

 

 

Also, is there a way to use a single material for the whole model? Each of the materials uses the same texture so I'm not sure why they're separated. It makes it more of a hassle to create skins.