Parallax mapping and Shadow

[magisterrivus]

Hello to all,

i'm in love with a new problem .

I found a post about that, but without an answer, so i'm asking this "again".

I created a tangentMesh for Parallaxmapping and everything is fine. But as soon as i add an ShadowVolumeSceneNode the whole Scene is messed up.

Take a look:



I thought that i better add an AnimatedMeshSceneNode to the tangentMesh not the actual Mesh

Code: Select all

IAnimatedMeshSceneNode* anode = pCore->getSceneMgr()->addAnimatedMeshSceneNode(IAnimatedMesh*(tangentMesh));

but this code crashes my Application, although my it compiles fine. I'm clueless what to do.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[Mikenoworth]

Hey hey buckaroo. You're encountering two awesome Irrlicht shadow issues.

First one: "gods shadow" - Shadow over everything. When a shadow gets too far away from the camera, it covers everything in the scene. Don't know why, bad coding, who cares - there is a fix. Set the shadow color to r 0, g 0, b 0. You can add your own distance checks to make sure which nodes _should_ have shadows. (I'm curious as to if shadows are still being drawn for a node even if the node's visiblity is set to false)

Second: Ahh, z-fail method. Set it to false when adding shadows to your nodes. (check the addShadowNode(..) method, it's something like that). With z fail method set to true, only one node per mesh (for some diddly reason) can use a shadow, any other nodes using the same mesh will crash your app.

But hey, what are problems if there are work-arounds for them? I consider these issues fixed.

Hope this helps and makes some sense, I've been drinking for my late-dog-friend Cujo. He liked beer, as long as it was in his dogbowl.


EDIT: Just took a much better look at your second screenie and noticed the artifacts, still try disabling z-fail method for shadows, it may help.

[magisterrivus]

No it didn't help .
From my superknowledged view, it looks like a problem with the tangent mesh, but i don't know how to fix it.

Here's a link to a video i have taken to show the artifacts

http://www.megaupload.com/de/?d=O6KQDTF9


Bye

[magisterrivus]

Arggh. This is driving my crazy.

OK, is it actually possible at all to have Parallaxmapping and dynamic Shadows at one time?

I tried disabling z-fail method, changed Materialflags, changed Parameters of the light (size) and a lot more. No change.

[Mikenoworth]

Your problem is completely unknown to me, the artifacts and so on, I would suggest reporting it as a bug (use a link to this topic) so that the devs will check it.

You should also try different renders, ie. OpenGl if you use Direct3D, in case one acts differently.

[magisterrivus]

Hi Mikenoworth,

thanks for your answer.
I already tried changing the renderer, but no luck.

Let's see if the devs can tell me whats wrong

Bye