Game Development Community

About shadows and DTS files

by Kevin Yu · in Artist Corner · 11/27/2006 (6:16 pm) · 4 replies

Greetings,

I got some problems here. I was making some DTS models,when the size of the model is smaller than 6 square units (6x6x6,1 unit = 1 meter in MAX),the shadow will be shown in the ground,and if I enlarge the model,greater than 6 square units,the shadow is gone...

Is this the engine problem or the model problem? Can I control the shadow by modify the scripts? How?

BTW,I'm using Torque 1.5.

Any reply will be helpful. Thanks!

Kevin.Y

#1
12/05/2006 (6:30 am)
I am having a similar problem though, it happens when I scale small DTS objects to bigger ones via TorqueScript or Mission Editor.
#2
12/05/2006 (7:33 am)
The object probably needs to be moved away from the terrain or interior as it's scaled to avoid overlapping other objects. After moving into a good position while scaled up try scaling the object back down without moving it - is the shadow visible? If not the object may be too far away from the terrain or interior to cast a shadow. If the shadow is showing up correctly it could be a bug.
#3
12/05/2006 (5:42 pm)
@John: Hmmm...I tried moving it but no effect. But when I rescale the bounding box,not the model itself,the shadow is gone.Temporaryly solved my problem but I think it should be a bug of the engine.Just trying to fix it...
#4
12/08/2006 (8:56 am)
I verified that 1.5 is working as expected.

When the object is scaled it often needs to be moved away from the terrain or interior so it doesn't overlap with them. Once moved the shadow is invisible because the object's center (which the shadows are calculated from) is too far away from the terrain or interior surfaces. You'll find that if you scale the object back down in the same spot the shadow is still invisible.

You can increase the shadow distance, so they're visible when the object (or its center) is far from the receiving surface. See this thread for details.