How do you make shadows?

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turnstyle
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Joined: Mon Apr 03, 2006 12:49 am

How do you make shadows?

Post by turnstyle »

Can someone please help me out.

I tried using shadow bitmaps. (nothing shows up)
I tried stencil shadows. (nothing shows up)

Thought maybe I needed to switch stencil shadows on through the main video options menu. But whenever I click on the little red "x" I crash out to windows. (does the "x" mean its on or off?)

Does the d3d drivers have anything to do with it?

As for shadow bitmaps... What's the process?

note: I did make stencilshadows to true in both PlayerSetup and Character.ini

Thanks in advance
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turnstyle
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Post by turnstyle »

please help. Even a good link to read.
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Tabulanis
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Post by Tabulanis »

Wow you aint alone on this one cuz. Here is what you do...

First in your character setup ini make sure it says stencil or Projected shadows true. Depending on witch one you want stencil looks miles better but at a framr rate hit and also you need to be very cuatios with your lighting. Projected is just a block version of the player on the foor.

Then you need to set in your editor the player setup entity stencil shadows to ture /projected shadows true (Again depends on what you want.

Then if your using stencile shadows you need to have an environmental setup entity in you level and you need to specify the shadow perameters in it.

Shadow alpha 50 or so is best I find.

Max lights 0-8
I use all 8 and work with my lights to achive best results. Plus if you use two or three lights instead of 1 you can have soft shadows. (Big time frame rate hit though.

After all that make sure you have stencle shadows turned on in your menue with the check box. (Not needed for projected I think but not sure I dont use them)

Last thing Stencle shadows work off any light scourse but will only appear in the radius of that light, so if your light is set at 50 and you are 200 away from it you wont have a shadow so to work around this in subtle lighting areas make two lights one for the exact light amaount you want and another larger less brite light for shadowing. If you do it right also you cn have yout Stencle shadow sort of fade out as you walk away from the light wich looks way better.

I hope this helps I will write a nicer tut someday when I have time.
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Tabulanis
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Post by Tabulanis »

My char ini

Character.ini
;
; Definitions of the selectable characters in the game
;


[Slim]
image = virgil.bmp
actorname = virgil.act
actorrotation = -90 180 0
actorscale = 1.2
animationspeed = 1
attributefile = player.ini
startlevel = demo.bsp
stencilshadows = true
projectedshadows = false

Each char is unique so make sure you have the settings right on both or all your characters
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Tabulanis
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Post by Tabulanis »

These are screens of my player and envronmental setup entities.

Image
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turnstyle
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Post by turnstyle »

THANKYOU! this has helped so much. I never added the EnvironmentSetup entity, that was the missing link! thanks again YOU ROCK!

-turnstyle
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