Shadow Missing From Trees

#1 Hi Francis,

By default, the Torque engine uses dynamic shadows for vehicles and player characters. Also it uses static, baked-in shadows for terrains and interiors/buildings. However, there are ways to get your trees, crates, and other objects to cast shadows -- some of them aren't too difficult to implement.

Aaron E.

#2 Thanks Aaron. So now I know that nothing is broken. I did search on the word "shadow" and another on "lighting". I'm having trouble finding a tutorial that tells me how to make something have a shadow. It's probably so simple that it's not worth documenting. If I already have what I need, where can I find documentation. As you can tell, I'm pretty new to this genre, so any help is definitely appreciated.

#3 The lighting kit is one option for you, but it is possible to get dynamic shadows into your game without it. Try searching the forums for "dts shadows" and read through the links. Some of them are old and a few of them go through a number of posts before getting to a complete solution, but it's within reach.

I hope that helps.

#4 Thanks again Aaron.

#5 No problem. In my earlier post, I probably should have said that the lighting kit is probably the best option. Especially since it includes a lot of really cool features.

#6 Ok. So I read through the links after performing a "dts shadows" search. Is it safe to say that only way to get shadows to work with tstatic objects is to (a) make changes to the source as outlined by Melv OR (b) buy the lighting kit, which pretty much make the changes to the source and gives you a host of additional features. ?

#7 Yes, either way will require source code changes. But lighting pack is probably the best way to go if you've got the cash. If you are doing non-game development, you will need to buy the TLK commercial license. I didn't realize that when I got the lighting kit.

By the way, there is one other option that does not require code changes -- but it will probably sound strange. Once, as an experiment, I modified a wheeled vehicle to have a palm tree mesh instead of a car's shell. After dropping it into the game, it provided tree-shaped dynamic shadows for me. Wierd, but cool.

#8 Licensing is not an issue, since I'm not really building anything. I guess you could say I'm building game like content, but only with the intent of learning how-stuff-works. And where that will lead, who knows. Thanks for all the information that you've provided. I think this will be my last question on this topic. Also, one more thing.... Did you mean TGE commercial license in your post above? Because I did not see a commerical license for TLK.

Thanks!

-Frank

#9 Try this