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Vertex Solve question [message #473243] Sat, 18 August 2012 07:21 Go to next message
jonwil is currently offline  jonwil
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I have seen lots of tutorials that say you need to hide water meshes before you run "compute vertex solve" but can anyone tell me how to tell exactly what meshes you need to hide (i.e. which material settings etc)?


Jonathan Wilson aka Jonwil
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Re: Vertex Solve question [message #473244 is a reply to message #473243] Sat, 18 August 2012 08:51 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Mauler
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Well you only have to hide the mesh that has the 2 pass material, when you vertex solve.

Not to sure but I believe it has something to do with the Bump/Shader properties for the bump map texture and reflection texture

Here is the settings used in that pass

http://renhelp.laeubi-soft.de/image.php?id=44&file=IMAGE004.JPG
http://renhelp.laeubi-soft.de/image.php?id=44&file=IMAGE006.JPG
Re: Vertex Solve question [message #473247 is a reply to message #473243] Sat, 18 August 2012 09:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Aircraftkiller is currently offline  Aircraftkiller
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Generally, anything with transparency - alpha blend transparency, mostly, but IIRC it also affects add/multiply as well. Bumped materials don't seem to have an issue unless they're transparent.
Re: Vertex Solve question [message #473601 is a reply to message #473247] Mon, 27 August 2012 10:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Jerad2142 is currently offline  Jerad2142
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You only need to hide them if you have not figured out to select "scale" (under advanced) instead of "add". Once you select scale you can make ambient white as well as diffuse and the water will shadow correctly and everything.

Re: Vertex Solve question [message #473617 is a reply to message #473243] Mon, 27 August 2012 20:22 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jonwil is currently offline  jonwil
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its clear that its not "everything with transparency", if it was, things like tree leaves and the glass in the APB buildings would need to be hidden before you solve.

The APB building glass has "Alpha Blend" shader settings, a transparent/translucent texture and "Environment" material settings but does not need to be hidden.

The glass on the nod airstrip tower does need to be hidden though, it has material settings "World space environment" and "environment" and shader settings for "alpha blend"

The tree leaves (which do not need to be hidden) have "UV" for vertex material and "Alpha Test" shader settings.

So its still not at all obvious exactly which combination(s) of settings under "shader" and "material" mean "this mesh will need to be hidden before you vertex solve" and its clearly not "all transparent meshes"

BTW these questions and etc are in connection with a feature that's currently in the testing builds of 4.0RC1 which is supposed to auto-detect the meshes that cant have vertex solve applied and auto-ignore those meshes. However, currently its ignoring meshes (like trees) that it should not be ignoring, hence all the questions so I can get the auto-detection detecting the correct meshes and only the correct meshes.


Jonathan Wilson aka Jonwil
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[Updated on: Mon, 27 August 2012 20:32]

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Re: Vertex Solve question [message #473697 is a reply to message #473243] Wed, 29 August 2012 02:37 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jonwil is currently offline  jonwil
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ok, after doing some testing with Saberhawk, we have identified (and fixed) the 2 bugs with the lightsolve that were causing the issues.

The first issue is that any mesh that had bump mapping should not have certain flags turned on (flags that are normally turned on by user lighting). This fixes 100% all the issues with water, meaning if you dont hide it before you vertex solve, it will no longer turn white and look ugly. (i.e. you no longer need to hide water before you compute the vertex solve)

The second issue is that meshes that do not have vertex colors were not correctly using the opacity value set on the materials. This has now been fixed and the meshes will correctly use opacity values of less than 1.0.
The most well known example of this is the windows on the Nod Airstrip control tower which would turn opaque under the old code (if you didn't hide them first) but will now correctly remain transparent.
As of the changes that are in the next version, you no longer need to hide ANY of the window glass on the stock renegade MP buildings before you compute the vertex solve.

There is also a feature where you can disable vertex solve on a mesh completly (e.g. because you are using a pre-made lightmap texture) by adding the string "Prelit=true" (without the quotes) to the "user defined properties" box in 3D Studio Max)


Jonathan Wilson aka Jonwil
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[Updated on: Wed, 29 August 2012 02:40]

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Re: Vertex Solve question [message #473701 is a reply to message #473243] Wed, 29 August 2012 02:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Mauler
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Very cool stuff Thumbs Up , Perhaps the alternate materials is also enabled by user parameter? just taking a wild guess.

[Updated on: Wed, 29 August 2012 03:03]

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Re: Vertex Solve question [message #473704 is a reply to message #473243] Wed, 29 August 2012 03:11 Go to previous message
jonwil is currently offline  jonwil
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Alternate materials are handled by a new tool that I created and that is in the next build.

All the details will be posted when the next release of the 4.0 tools pack is released (including the new tools)


Jonathan Wilson aka Jonwil
Creator and Lead Coder of the Custom scripts.dll
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Creator and Lead Coder of TT.DLL
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