Billboards

[DJ99X]

OK, I am trying to put in my own billboards, but it isnt working. I'm trying to run it out of the track's folder. Ive tried -

[1000 0 1000] 69.000 1.000 @Oakcrest Hills MX/tree_1.png
and
[1000 0 1000] 69.000 1.000 Oakcrest Hills MX/@tree_1.png

The little circle things are appearing on the map, but when you click on them, instead of saying the file, it says [none]

Help, anyone!

[jlv]

It's the spaces in the the pathname. Rename the track folder to "oakcrest_hills_mx". Then in the track folder add a text file named "desc" with "Oakcrest Hills MX" in it.

[DJ99X]

Hey JLV, how did you trace the tree shadows on my Thunder MX track?

[jlv]

You need povray and these files (64Mb). In the editor, hit 'p' and it will output track.pov. Unzip the files and copy your track.pov and terrain.png into the same folder. Use povray to create a pgm file called shadows.pgm and put it in your track folder. It should have the same dimensions as terrain.png. I usually ray trace it at double resolution and scale it down to get a bit of antialiasing. Once you have shadows.pgm in place, start up the track editor, reshade the track and the shadows should show up.

[DJ99X]

Damn, why is this so complicated. I wanted to do this for a custom tree. Why are those INC files so ridiculusly big!

[jlv]

They have a polygon for each leaf on the tree. It's overkill for doing shadows but it would be a waste of time to make low poly versions.

If you want to add a different tree, it's probably easiest to just use one of the existing trees for the shadow unless you have a model for it. So if you have a new tree called "maple" and you want it to use the sassafras_7 shadow, put this in shadows.pov -

#macro maple()
sassafras_7()
#end

[DJ99X]

Bah, I just did it all in photoshop. Looks good

[giopanda]

sorry to bump another old and dead thread but i got some problems with the pov file.
everytime i press p in the editor the game crashes.
i don't have a clue, so if this can help in some way i'm using custom objects (ddmx, treesets and the others) and my terrain file is 2049x2049 (terrain.hf modified accordingly and working).
does the pov file includes just the stock billboards?

[DJ99X]

There is probably something wrong in your statues file. I know I have had this trouble before. When I did it, NULL was in the object position, which crashed the game. Just look for mistakes in your statues file. Make sure everything is in the same format, ie

[x y z] angle @object.jm @texture.png @shape.shp

And make sure if you have 'null', it is only in the shape place, not in object or texture

[giopanda]

thanx for the quick reply dj, i found a null in the object section and deleted it.
now i have the pov file!
tried to open it in povray and got lost immediatly..
i think a quick tutorial is needed for this like for everything else in this game..it all looks so difficult..

[DJ99X]

Yeah, I want to make a tutorial. In theory, it should be simple, but when you are missing skins and inc files, the whole thing fails. Fixing that would be hard and tedious for most people.

If you arent missing anything (which is highly unlikely, especially if you used jlv's or ddmx's objects, as they are safed), you just have shadows.pov, track.pov, terrain.png, all the .inc files, and all the skins (in the right directory path) into the same folder. Open up shadows.pov, and run it. You will need to set a resolution, which is done int he program itself (look it up somewhere on the net). As JLV said, render 2050x2050, and scale it down to 1025x1025 to get some antialiasing.

[giopanda]

damn it gives me a parse error at the line with the startinggate.ppm..
i guess is a folder tree problem because i don't know where to put them.
i don't want to bother you anymore so i'll wait for the tutorial.
thanx anyway dj for your help

[DJ99X]

That parse error is caused due to it not finding startinggate.ppm, which is in zzzz.saf. You could make a dummy startinggate.ppm and put it in the folder, but you'll then need to do it for all the other objects you used.

[giopanda]

..so what's the point of creating dummy files if then the objects are not shadowed?
maybe it should be easier to know the folder tree.
i mean i have now put the terrain.png and track.pov files in the "shadows" folder that is in my track folder that is in my personal folder.
is that correct?
i guess not since i got the error..

[jlv]

You will still get a shadow with a dummy texture. It will just be missing the transparency channel. For PPM files it won't make any difference since they don't have transparency.