Light nodes and BSP

[Fabio451]

Hi guys.
I'd like to understand something about light nodes and BSP maps.
Searching the forum I found this thread:

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/forum/v ... php?t=9768

which tells that dynamic lights does not works for bsp and suggests a simple patch on Irrlicht code.
The thread is pretty old. Is that still valid or is there something new in the later versions to use light nodes and bsp?

I tried setting up this way (mapnode is the ISceneNode that contains the level):

Code: Select all

mapNode->setMaterialFlag(EMF_LIGHTNING, true);
mapNode->SetMaterialType(EMT_LIGHTMAP_LIGHTING); // Tried many options

and I see that only misc_model objects are affected by light nodes.
If I want, let's say, a switch that turns on and off the lights in a room, should I leave bsp and use some other format (.3ds for example)?
Can you point me in the right direction?
Thanks.

[hendu]

It works fine if you use your own shader. You generally don't want to use the fixed GL lights, they are limited in many ways.

[Fabio451]

Thanks hendu.
It's not totally clear to me what means "using my own shader" for light sources.
Is there some thread or page explaining that?

[CuteAlien]

It means you have to write code for the graphic-card which defines the material (typcially glsl or hlsl code which is kinda like c-programming except it has a few specific types for matrices and vectors and that code runs in different render-stages then for example for each vector used or for each pixel rendered). There is one shader-tutorial in Irrlicht, but it won't tell you how to write such a complicated shader. And it's also not trivial. Unlike hendu I think people should try to stay with fixed GL lights unless they have no other choice as it's way less painfull. In many cases using a light-manager is the easier solution (there is also an example for that). Thought at some point you might no longer have a choice simple because you can do more things with shaders than with the fixed functions offered by GL.

Unfortunately I don't know what the specific problem mention in the thread you linked is about.

[Fabio451]

Basically the problem is that lights I add in my program don't affect meshes loaded from the bsp file (only misc_models are affected).
I already studied the good shader-tutorial, but it's not clear to me how to use shaders for creating lights.
Anyway thank you both for the informations.
I will keep on searching and I'll let the community know about some progress.

[CuteAlien]

Is it a bsp-file which you can post? It could a material thing, but I can't tell without testing.

[Fabio451]

Thanks, CuteAlien. I'll try to post the bsp when I can.
Do you mean material type in the program? I tried many values in SetMaterialType() method with no result.
Or some kind of settings in NetRadiant?

[CuteAlien]

I meant in the program.