any idea why the interiors won't render?

[duffstone]

So far I've come across 3 houses where the interiors don't render at all.

the portals appear work fine including the windows which DO render properly, the collision files (floors, walls, pillars, or whatever you might have to collide with inside) seem to work fine work fine, the cells seems to be properly defined, you can teleport into and out of it, the exteriors render properly, and "some" of the interior's will render but they're spotty at best.

I get no lockups or crash to desktops, but I get grey nothing for the walls and camera tends to warp outside the structure even tho my player won't.

any idea's where to look? I've given the msh files a once over but I'm not seeing anything poping out as obviously different from the house meshes that DO work... It's almost like the cell is painting the walls inside out...

Just a shot in the dark to see if somebody has something that might get me something to go on.

thanks,
Duff.

 

[duffstone]

Ok, if nobody knows or has a hint for me, can someone point me to a program that will allow me to create 3d points and render the triangles? I have a legal copy of Lightwave3d (which includes modeler) but I haven't used it in 5+ years LOL... If there's a program that's easier to use maybe I could start ploting points (verts) and trying to interpret the indx triangles to see where I might be running into my problem.

 

[duffstone]

ok, so when you enter a building with the bug, your character definately collides at the extents of the cell. but the camera is allowed to soom out past the walls and does not collide with the walls themselves.

I'm guessing from my days working with Lightwave, that the interrior walls are being built backwards. so for instance, as I recall in LW Modeler, if you selected your points in one direction, then said make polygon, then it it would automatically set the surface of the polygon to be visible from one side, but you'd see nothing but the points and poly outline from the other side. so you didn't get a two faced polygon unless you selected the points again in the opposite order and made a new polygon, giving the object two polygons with the same points...

I'm may be way off on this but it seems like a similar problem. My issue is that I don't know if that's a problem with the mesh, or the LOD or with the POB... I'm guessing it's the mesh since the cell is working without any crashes. I'm not exactly what the LOD does other than tell it what meshes to load. so...

anyone out there shed some light on this?

 

[Lasko]

Just a thought if your using the consolidated tre's, would it be because some older files are not rendering properly with the newer structures....

I'm probably way off, but, I'm playing catch up with your guides....
[hr]
Which are ace btw

 

[Uli]

No idea what you did to break it, I have ported every house into the pre-cu client and not once ran into an issue like this.

 

[duffstone]

[attachment=22]
*edited*

lasko, I've looked into it both prior to your post and just this morning. right now I'm loading the TOC data strait up with the ONLY edit being the lod file change to 0007 from 0008. (I get CDT if I don't). still no goodness. :-(

it's either that a file needs to be edited that hasn't been, or I'm missing a file. I've been over the files with a Hex editor and Can't find anything I'm missing thus far... *shrug*

I'm about to give up on this one and go back to core scripting... Someone else will figure it out and post it before we hit 1.0 i'm sure. and if not then my repack just won't have that house. LOL... either way I gotta move on before I get burned out and quit altogether.

-Duff

 

[Uli]

./shrug

 

[Timbab]

Tbh, start over, or reverse your progress, see if you screwed up somewhere.

 

[duffstone]

yeah, hail mary time... If not then I'll spam Uli's PM inbox until I get it right. LOL... it's silly tho because these structures that aren't working aren't really that great anyway.

-Duff

 

[Timbab]

Haha yeah, Uli showed me the texture it uses for the ceiling. Straight up 'what...', but for me it's always just getting it right, even if I don't want it in the end.

I'd love to help, but I really have zero clue about any of that stuff, been keeping busy with .prt files lately, which has been taking up way too much time.

Speaking of which, I doubt I'll publicly release an object .iff editor, at least a full one, due to some stuff I found. I looked into it and have them worked out 'for the most part'.

I can help ya out if ya ever need help with any them, though.

 

[duffstone]

It's the shaders I think. Removed that folder from my tre and now have an interior. At the bar now, but will try to figure it out tonight if I'm able. Not sure how to change them or if that was something uli had to do or not. He makes it sound so simple yet all my observations point to difficult things to change. Lol! But we shall see later tonight.

 

[Timbab]

Edit/switch the .eft file link in the .sht's.

Some of the NGE shaders (.eft > .vsh/.psh) need certain stuff from the client to work the right way, but it's not in the preCU client.

Switch them to .eft files used in other buildings that work.

Out of curiosity, what are the file names that you're having problem with? I'll look into a comparable .eft tomorrow if you haven't found one.

 

[duffstone]

There's something going on with c_specmap_bump.eft. Copy / rename a_simple.eft and everything works great. *yay* I can move on! LOL

-Duff
[hr]
took me a few but I'm finally back up and running with things the way I like it. I need a better way of flipping back to the default load and setup when it becomes necessary instead of having to rescript my server and client every time.

simple enough I know but this time I wasn't looking "forward", I was in panic / frustration mode and didn't bother to set things up for default should I need to go back.

But either way, unless you can tell me what c_specmap_bump.eft is doing wrong, I'm good to go by using the a_simple.eft effect just renamed. Now I need to finish scripting all my deeds, place terminals and i'm done!!!

thanks for your help timbab, again pointing me to the correct solution without giving it away! love it.

-Duff

 

[Timbab]

I'm happy that you got it to work.

Sometimes it's pretty bad with the .vsh/.psh (those are the problem really, the .EFT just handles them and links to them), they're one of the prime problems with NGE stuff, ran into similar stuff with the NGE ranged weapon effects swap.

I made all NGE .EFT files except a handful work once, but they had problems which would have need tweaking. I'll look into the c_specmap_bump tonight, see if I can find an alternative or change its .psh/.vsh.

 

[duffstone]

I'm still right on the edge of actually understanding all this. seems to me like if you just delete the program causing the problem, that everything should work, but the Shader won't load textures if the effect doesn't load it's psh/vsh programs. I tried removing the effect from the shader file and it didn't work. It had to be a valid effect.

I tried removing the psh / vsh programs from the eft file and it still didn't work. Everything has to load down stream if you want the shader to load the textures... So simply subbing in an effect that works every time solved it.

I guess I'm saying that I don't understand why that is... I'm close to understanding it... but it's still illuding me. I've been out of the 3dfx world for 10+ years now, so I've forgotten a ton about objects, verts, faces, surfaces, textures, and texture effects... I should reinstall lightwave and play around but there's only so much time in the day LOL... I don't need another project.

-Duff

 

[Timbab]

You can't simply remove files and hope it works, you always need to either fix the files that give problems (ie make them work), or, link to files that do work.

It's really simple, you just gotta understand how files are used in SWG.

A model calls a .SHT to handle the texture and how it gets shaded.

So, a .SHT links to a .DDS and an .EFT.

A .DDS is the plain texture that might have a special alpha map depending on what .EFT is used.

A .EFT is an effect file that essentially is the actual shader, it uses the pixel (.PSH) and vertex (.VSH) shader files and is in charge of running multiple passes amongst other things.

There are a few rare instances where an .SHT directly links to .VSH/.PSH, just for the record.

So, for a model to have a texture, you need a .SHT that contains the texture (.DDS) and the link to the .EFT which shades the texture.

Did you include the required NGE files? I'm assuming that was the problem.

So for instance, if the NGE c_specmap_bump.eft doesn't work, you'd use a_specmap_bump.eft from preCU for a quick fix, but if you do want to use the NGE c_specmap_bump.eft, you'll also need to supply the .VSH/.PSH files that either don't exist in preCU, or if you want to, the updated versions of existing ones.

Following link chains is key for this kinda stuff.

 

[duffstone]

well I got them all to load finally. Core is scripted, just need to make some STF changes to get the names to appear correctly and we're g2g.

Now to figure out how to make them craftable. LOL

[attachment=24]

 

[Timbab]

Gj!

What was the thing you did wrong in the end with the .eft/shader?

 

[duffstone]

I cheesed out and just used the a_simple.eft and renamed it to c_specmap_bump.eft. I'm not going to attempt to learn the psh / vsh language right now given that I still have a HUGE gap in my client understanding presently.

I'll get to it some day, but right now trying to get the structures into the game organically is now my focus. After that, then a serious break and some simple quest / themepark scripting over the holidays. Can't have my brain scrambled during the happiest time of the year right?

-Duff

 

[Timbab]

Nah, I don't even know it myself, but use a_specmap_bump.eft, even if it's not identical, it's better than the simple one.

Keep yourself sane.