Offical crap load of questions thread

[LlamaMaster]

I will post all my questions here, and if anybody else wants to they can post theirs here too. My problem is with clay rendering, whenever I put a skylight in an interior room the object turns completely black when I render it. Anybody know how to fix this?

[DaaxGhost]

Did you go to render settings(F9);> and go to advanced lighting. and set it to light tracer.?
and you can't have a sjy. i donno why. but if you have a +sky material, and have it set to a piece it screws it up..for me at least.

[LlamaMaster]

Yes I have, and no I don't have a sky. It's just a closed room.

[DaaxGhost]

Yes I have, and no I don't have a sky. It's just a closed room.
Thats odd. Maybe use an omni. I haven't ever had this problem i'm improvising.

[LlamaMaster]

Thats odd. Maybe use an omni. I haven't ever had this problem i'm improvising.
Bah, doesn't have the same effect.

[DaaxGhost]

Bah, doesn't have the same effect.
Sorry, I was just guessing. I have never had this problem. :(

[kenney001]

you cant have a sealed object's inside be lit by a sky light. You need to hide the faces that make up your sky, or save your project as a seperate .max and delete them if it doesnt work.

[DaaxGhost]

you cant have a sealed object's inside be lit by a sky light. You need to hide the faces that make up your sky, or save your project as a seperate .max and delete them if it doesnt work.


Did you go to render settings(F9);> and go to advanced lighting. and set it to light tracer.?
and you can't have a sjy. i donno why. but if you have a +sky material, and have it set to a piece it screws it up..for me at least.
I had said that already kenney.

[mistercheif]

i have a question! why is there a thread like this?

[FRain]

Because if someone has a problem there doesn't have to be 40 pentillion threads with problems. Someone can just answer here.

[DaaxGhost]

Because if someone has a problem there doesn't have to be 40 pentillion threads with problems. Someone can just answer here.
For once I agree with FlamingRain (lol..jk but i do agree) Read the title and maybe you'll learn something.

[LinkandKvel]

I will post all my questions here, and if anybody else wants to they can post theirs here too. My problem is with clay rendering, whenever I put a skylight in an interior room the object turns completely black when I render it. Anybody know how to fix this?

Are you still wondering? Well if you remember my modeling room, A SKYlight can't show into a room that is SEALED showing no sky. You have to delete the overhead face, but it will be a dull gray. Too get a more white render to bring out the details like my modeling room, delete the face that will not be shown from the camera's POV including the overhead face.
Here's an example:
http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/411/tableviewri3.jpg
This is an example of the one overhead face deleted showing a dull gray render. The more skylights you add to this one won't make it any brighter. The image will only get less sharp.



http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/8015/magazinefr7.jpg
This an example of two faces deleted (the other one is to the left of the view point).
This also had another skylight (total of two) to bring out more details in the gun as seen more than the dull gray one and has a sharp presentation as well.
You can also add omnis too rooms that are enclosed but will not be of best quality. A correct distribution and combination of skylights and omnis will create tremendous clay renders. That is something we all have yet to learn.
I hope this helps you on your journey to create better renders!

[FRain]

I have a question:

I am making an Ammo Meter for my H3 AR... It goes onto two lines, and TheGhost's tutorial only covers 1 line.... Vat do I do?

[DaaxGhost]

I have a question:

I am making an Ammo Meter for my H3 AR... It goes onto two lines, and TheGhost's tutorial only covers 1 line.... Vat do I do?
how bout typing correct... Vat? or what? But watch some others on the h2ek about Weapon Amoo Meters. I learned it. I'll put together a tut. maybe.

[FRain]

I have a question:

I am making an Ammo Meter for my H3 AR... It goes onto two lines, and TheGhost's tutorial only covers 1 line.... Vat do I do?


How about typing correct... Vat? or what? But watch some others on the h2ek about Weapon Ammo Meters. I learned it. I'll put together a tut. Maybe. How about typing correct. I was joking around making a scottish/german accent right there.

Anyways, I'll look for more ammo meters.

[CtrlAltDestroy]

I have a question:

I am making an Ammo Meter for my H3 AR... It goes onto two lines, and TheGhost's tutorial only covers 1 line.... Vat do I do?

Just do it as the tutorial says, then split it up into two lines...

[FRain]

Now I'm making a shield meter. I referenced the shieldoutline and shieldmeter in the cyborg.unit_hud_interface and I exception on startup. I try to compile the bitmaps again but...

ERROR can't extract sprites without a valid plate!

[CtrlAltDestroy]

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/5176/spritessn8.png

[FRain]

Yes, I know. I did that, now I set it ingame and it exceptions on startup. I then tried to recompile bitmaps and it said "ERROR can't extract sprite without a valid plate!"

[CtrlAltDestroy]

Make sure you have a 1 or 2 px blue (pure 0,0,255) border around EVERY sprite in your bitmap.

EDIT: Also, make sure that the corresponding blue area is black (pure 0,0,0) in your alpha channel.

[FRain]

Here, I'll PM you the .tif files, f33t. Could you look at them for me?

[LlamaMaster]

For anybody who is still wondering, I fixed the lighting problem. Vray is awesome! :awesome:

[DaaxGhost]

For anybody who is still wondering, I fixed the lighting problem. Vray is awesome! :awesome:
Cool, thats awesome!

[LinkandKvel]

For anybody who is still wondering, I fixed the lighting problem. Vray is awesome! :awesome:
Aren't I awesome too?


Are you still wondering? Well if you remember my modeling room, A SKYlight can't show into a room that is SEALED showing no sky. You have to delete the overhead face, but it will be a dull gray. Too get a more white render to bring out the details like my modeling room, delete the face that will not be shown from the camera's POV including the overhead face.
Here's an example:
http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/411/tableviewri3.jpg
This is an example of the one overhead face deleted showing a dull gray render. The more skylights you add to this one won't make it any brighter. The image will only get less sharp.



http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/8015/magazinefr7.jpg
This an example of two faces deleted (the other one is to the left of the view point).
This also had another skylight (total of two) to bring out more details in the gun as seen more than the dull gray one and has a sharp presentation as well.
You can also add omnis too rooms that are enclosed but will not be of best quality. A correct distribution and combination of skylights and omnis will create tremendous clay renders. That is something we all have yet to learn.
I hope this helps you on your journey to create better renders!

[FRain]

Does anybody know why whenever I place my shield bar in guerilla it exceptions on startup?

[}_50Æ{_|ñeا†«O]

Okay, a couple noob questions :
1) What's a smoothing error?

3) I watched the videos but i din't get what plain modeling was. You're not supposded to start with a box.. So then what do you start with?

[Archon23]

At number 2: A PLANE.

[}_50Æ{_|ñeا†«O]

Oh right, I thought plane referred to the fact that you're ref pic is on a plane. What's the advantage of starting with a plane over a cube?

[Archon23]

I'm sure he states in the videos it lessens the amount of polygons in the model.

Also this is gonna sound noobish but how the hell do I get a plane to be transparent in 3ds because I'm completely lost in 3ds's interface.

[FRain]

One -- Right Click on PERSPECTIVE or LEFT or FRONT or TOP or whatever. Go to transparency>Best or Simple

Right click your object, in properties there is a See-Through checkbox, check it so it is ON. Done, that object is see-through.

[Archon23]

I feel so retarded now............oh well at least now I can start trying to model.

[}_50Æ{_|ñeا†«O]

Take it easy, not everyone knows everything.

[DaaxGhost]

Take it easy, not everyone knows everything.
Accept for the people who do..hahahaha .

[LlamaMaster]

I seriously doubt anybody here can help me, but I've tried searching EVERYWHERE else. I'm trying to drape cloth over objects in max, but the cloth keeps "ripping." Example:

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/8918/clotherrorrk9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

And sometimes it's REALLY bad:

http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/2639/clotherror2dl9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I've gotten it to work perfectly before, as shown by this picture:

http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/1374/clothrenderas4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

But I can't seem to duplicate the results. Anybody know how to fix this? (btw, I'm doing this with the cloth modifier)

[DaaxGhost]

Looks good tho. Partially.

[Inferno]

try changeing the "weight" of the cloth. it may be ripping cause its got too much weight and its pulling through polys.

[OmegaDragon]

Make sure that the cloth has concave mesh selected in the reactor property editor and select avoid self intersections in the reactor cloth modifier.

[Tweek]

lower your collision acuracy or whatever it's called, cba looking for what it's called.
collision threshhold or something

[kenney001]

Does anybody know why whenever I place my shield bar in guerilla it exceptions on startup?

open the bitmap it compiled (the one with the error cant extract sprites...) and you will notice there is no bitmap. THAT is causing your exception. i have had it happen many timees.

The way i fix this is i go into photoshop, use the magic wand brish, set tolerance to 0. select the blue, and use fill bucket with a tolerance of 255 with pure blue. Then use select inverse, and hit CTRL-copy. then go to file-new and look at the size. If it is not in the power of two, your sprite is the wrong demensions. if it IS in the power of two, then paint all the edges that border the blue with a solid black or grey. also make sure your blue border has no solid blue pixels out of line....

[LlamaMaster]

Bumping a three year old thread.


I am trying to give a texture on my scenery model a general glow. From what I've seen so far, lens flares on shader_environment tags don't work on scenery models, despite being the only shader with that capability (from what I can see, anyway). Since that didn't work, I then tried to use a solid green multipurpose map in a shader_model tag for uniform self-illumination. That didn't work either, but I'm not sure whether I'm just doing it wrong or if it's just not possible.

TL;DR: How make scenery glow through shaders?I posted that over at Halomaps, but I haven't gotten a good reply yet. Even if I can't get the texture to glow, I would like it to be brighter than the lightmaps around it. I know some of you are good with shaders, so me know if what I'm trying to do is possible. Also, do cubemaps on shader_environment tags work with scenery models? It's not shining like it does on the BSP.

Edit: On closer inspection it appears as though I missed the lens flare field in shader_transparent_chicago. That should work...

[Higuy]

Add lensflares

[DarkHalo003]

My question is simple: Why is it so difficult for AI driving warthogs to understand a command list? Granted, the list has many curves to it, but nearly every run is different than the first and they have runs that wind up at the finish point without actually running the exact list.

[Higuy]

are you adding puases between each command to go to each point?

if not that could be a problem.

[LlamaMaster]

I'm in the process of making lightmap UV's right now, and I'm wondering what the best way to go about doing this is. Unwrapping my cliffs using my usual method of minimalizing seams creates several large complex irregular-shaped sections. These sections would be great for normal texturing using tiled bitmaps, but since I'm dealing with lightmaps I need to conserve UV space as much as possible. To do that I figure I need to chop up my cliff UV's into rectangular sections, but I'm not sure how much the obvious seam placement will show through in game.

tl;dr version: How much do seams show through in lightmap UV's?

[Siliconmaster]

The thing to remember is that lightmap uvs rewrite themselves to the size of whatever your uvs are. Therefore, do what you were doing with the cliffs, but then shrink the entire cliff down. My overall suggestion is to take the largest chunks of the lightmap, seamlessly uv them, fit them together like a puzzle, and then fit all the little pieces left over in between the larger chunks. It's a total pain in the ass, but it results in fairly seamless uvs. That's what I did for Precipice.

[TheGhost]

First of all, how is this thread "official"?

Second, start a new thread, this one is way too old.

[LlamaMaster]

The thing to remember is that lightmap uvs rewrite themselves to the size of whatever your uvs are

Could you clarify this? Do you mean that lightmap UV's scale themselves to better fit the BSP UV's?


Therefore, do what you were doing with the cliffs, but then shrink the entire cliff down.

Shrinking the cliffs down would limit the amount of detail that can be in its UV space. I assume you just mean that every poly in a single lightmap mesh should fit within the 0-1 UV space without overlapping?



My overall suggestion is to take the largest chunks of the lightmap, seamlessly uv them, fit them together like a puzzle, and then fit all the little pieces left over in between the larger chunks. It's a total pain in the ass, but it results in fairly seamless uvs. That's what I did for Precipice.

So basically, seams do matter for lightmaps. The method you just described is what I thought would leave a lot of wasted UV space, but from what you are saying it seems like the benefits would outweigh the cost. Jesus though, I'm not looking forward to this.

I do have one more question about lightmap meshes though. How exactly does Sapien decide how to separate the BSP into sections? Some of my lightmap models cover large areas of the map, some cover very small areas, and one only covers a single rope (where the other rope belongs to a larger lightmap mesh). Is there any logic to this? It seems pretty wasteful and disjointed.



First of all, how is this thread "official"?

Second, start a new thread, this one is way too old.

It's "official" because I thought that was a good thread name at the time. Also, why does it matter how old the thread is? I've posted my questions in this thread over the years so I don't have to create a thread for every little question I have.

[Siliconmaster]

Could you clarify this? Do you mean that lightmap UV's scale themselves to better fit the BSP UV's?

Well, if you're redoing the lightmap uvs, then it is my understanding that you also must be doing custom lightmaps in 3ds max, since running radiosity in sapien resets all lightmap uvs upon starting. Therefore, while shrinking a section of uvs will lose detail, 3ds max will still rerender it at the new size on the bitmap- therefore, keeping the sizes of the uvs that sapien made is not necessary at all, and those sizes are usually pretty screwy to begin with.

A better-worded version of my original sentence would be more like :
The thing to remember is that when 3ds max renders out new uvs, they match whatever you set your lightmap uvs to, so conserving space by way of shape is not as important as conserving by size.



Shrinking the cliffs down would limit the amount of detail that can be in its UV space. I assume you just mean that every poly in a single lightmap mesh should fit within the 0-1 UV space without overlapping?

Yeah, basically. Then just up the size of the overall map to something far higher than 32x32 or 64x64. I had a few 1024x1024 maps in Precipice.


So basically, seams do matter for lightmaps. The method you just described is what I thought would leave a lot of wasted UV space, but from what you are saying it seems like the benefits would outweigh the cost. Jesus though, I'm not looking forward to this.

It sucks, but it's worth it in the long run. Just make sure not to modify your bsp after you start, or it'll all go to hell.


I do have one more question about lightmap meshes though. How exactly does Sapien decide how to separate the BSP into sections? Some of my lightmap models cover large areas of the map, some cover very small areas, and one only covers a single rope (where the other rope belongs to a larger lightmap mesh). Is there any logic to this? It seems pretty wasteful and disjointed.

Sapien is retarded when it comes to doing that. My guess is that it tries to do it by portal areas- if you have a single room portalled off, it's likely you'll get most of those faces on a single lightmap uv- not guaranteed at all though. When doing Precipice's lightmap uvs, I found that one side would be perfectly split up while another would have, say, every other vertical surface on one map and every third horizontal on another. It's totally bizarre, and unfortunately there's not much you can do about it.

[TheGhost]

Also, why does it matter how old the thread is?

For the same reason that many forums auto-lock threads which are older than 1 year, or some other specified amount of time.

Notice, however, that I did not lock the thread yet. You can finish this question out but please don't bump again.

[LlamaMaster]

For the same reason that many forums auto-lock threads which are older than 1 year, or some other specified amount of time.

...I honestly don't know what that reason is, but the question is finished, so I'll make another thread next time.

Anyway, thanks a bunch Siliconmaster. I'd rep you, but it seems that was taken out in my absence. :v: