Glow in the dark instruments?

[Messiah 2]

I've looked how the hummers have glow in the dark instruments, and all I could find was that theres a named selection called podsvit pristroju that selects the glowing parts of the instruments, and then a specular map (I copied the hummer's clocks_smdi and replaced the relevant texture paths of course). I searched the config and model.cfg for any entry of podsvit pristroju, but found nothing.

Of course on testing, the glowing parts don't turn on (In the hummer it comes on with the engine). I'm not sure if I've missed something (I'm guessing a config or model.cfg reference)

anyone had any luck getting them to work, and how?

[t_d 47]

That is probably done with rvmat file.

[Messiah 2]

*sigh*

I missed a part out of my explanation - When I said specular I meant rvmat (for some reason I tend to swap and change the names). My bad.

The rvmat is present, applied and is a direct copy of the bis one, but with new texture paths of course. After some checking, the bis example rvmat for the glowing instruments is fault somehow as it doesn't glow in o2, whilst the A10 does. I've copied the BIS A10 rvmat across... and still no glow?

[edit]

ok, it works now. Changing the A10 rvmat file name made it stop working, but if I keep it the same, then it works fine. I'm not going to argue with that sort of logic.

[edit2]

now it stops working. Works perfectly well in the normal view lods, but doesnt work in the gunner/pilot/cargo view lods, unless I select them  

[edit3]

Ok... this is highly odd. If I apply the rvmat (and only this rvmat) to the various parts in the 1st view lod... it works great (well it glows, but at the moment it always glows, not tied to engine or anything).

if i then apply that same rvmat to the same parts in the gunner/pilot/cargo view, those parts instantly disappear in buldozer, and only reappear if I select them, delete or change the rvmatt. They're also disappeared ingame too. I'm just using the a10 rvmatt... exactly the same way.

very very very odd

[Synide 0]

bin.pbo.config.CfgVehicles.All.selectionDashboard="podsvit pristroju";

the above 'selection name' is defined right back in the base class definition 'class All' defined in CfgVehicles config.bin inside the bin.pbo.

Remember, the first modable configuration outside of the basic defines embeded inside the game.exe is the bin.pbo.config.

From there the game.exe loads 'addons' - by default it loads the 'ca' mod (from BIS)... etc.etc.

Personally, I redefined CfgVehicles.selectionDashboard to...

CfgVehicles {

 class AllVehicles;

 class synVehicles: AllVehicles {

    selectionDashboard="dashboard";

 };

... in the config of my synide.cpp (the base config of my mod/namespace)... all my models use 'dashboard' as the selection name and because all my models inherit from synVehicles class this selection renaming doesn't impact on BIS naming and subsequent interaction with there models selection name.

The engine uses the current game time to decide on whether it should display 'selectionDashboard'...

Take note that in the A10 it uses a slightly different method of allocating the BIS 'podsvit pristroju' selection it's emissiveness as opposes to the HMMWV.

I prefer the A10 method myself.

And the A10 method goes something like this...

     1.   Ohhhh, whats the time... it's getting dark...

     2.   grab the selectionDashboard property from this vehicles CfgVehicle class definition.

     3.   (In your case - and most other's cases) look for 'podsvit pristroju' selection in the 'view' LOD being displayed.

     4.   Display the texture & material.

     5.   In this case the 'selection' faces point to the same texture but a 'night time' material. In this 'night time' material the emissive property array is something like...

           

            emmisive[]={0.060000,0.030000,0.015000,1.000000};

for the A10 for instance...

Do you require more info? Or you right from there?

[Messiah 2]

the selection part is excellent. I was only looking in cfgvehicles, so never thought to look deeper than there. I inherit from the hummer, but because I saw no config entry, I didn't add a section to the model.cfg either (well, if its not defined in the config, then why define the section in the model.cfg was my reasoning), thus why inheritance wasn't working either.

but that still leaves me with this odd situation where applying the exact same A10 rvmat to the instruments in the view pilot, makes those instruments dissapear in buldozer, and also ingame... whereas in the main view LOD they glow perfectly well. They'll only appear if I select them, delete the rvmat or change thr rvmat...

its very very strange.

[Synide 0]

Quote[/b] ]its very very strange.

hmmm... it is... i dunno Messiah... I'd have to research it/play with it a bit... no time at present... I'm sure it's just a small tweak somewhere will get it sorted...

If you're still having probs by the weekend I'll have a squizzy...

I'm sure you'll get it sussed though... post back your findings...

[Messiah 2]

Indeed...I find it very strange, as it seems to have no logic behind it..

If i cut and paste the same faces into another model, they'll appear and glow just fine... I was begining to think I'd hit the limit of what buldozer could display, but it doesnt work ingame either, so thats ruled out. I then thought that I'd hit the vertex limit, so i deleted parts of my model to check if that was the case, but that didn't solve the invisible faces either. I've moved them forward, backwards, reversed them, sharpened them, altered the shadow low, everything I can think of.

The only thing I haven't tried is making a dedicated texture for the instruments (at the moment they're just seperate faces laid above the instrument panel, with the glow on, ad using the sae texture as the whole vehicle). I think I'll do that in a seperate p3d, make sure it works (i.e. glows) and then cut and paste into my model. If it ceases to work again, then it has to be something to do with my model/p3d.

I'd understand if it didnt work at all on all LOD's, but to work in every view LOD, but none of the gunner/pilot/cargo LOD's is insanely weird.

[Synide 0]

... but none of the gunner/pilot/cargo LOD's...

yeah, true... and those are the lod's this feature is aimed at... 'view pilot' etc.

[Messiah 2]

hehe, exactly, thats why its even more annoying. I could cope with it not being visible in the 1st LOD, but in the LOD's its designed for... typical.

[[aps]gnat 28]

I copied the faces that I wanted to glow (when engine running) and placed the copy in front of the "daytime" faces.

These selections were named "podsvit pristroju"

I then added to all face properties the Material;

ca\air\data\materialy\podsvit_pristroju.rvmat

worked.

[Messiah 2]

thanks Gnat... mine works too, just not in the pilot/gunner/cargo view lods.

[Synide 0]

I just tested this too...

copied over the A10.p3d to synA10.p3d in synAir... config'd, model.cfg'd and opened View Pilot... Buldozer'd... altered Time to Night and... works fine.

Binarized, ran in game... works fine. So, re-check Messiah... it'll be a configing/model.cfg/selection naming thing somewhere...

[Messiah 2]

thats the odd thing... A10 works fine here too, so it has to be my P3D causing the problem in Pilot view... whatever that is, I don't know.

I may start a fresh P3D and cut and paste the lods from the old one and see if that helps. Its fixed all manner of weird problems for me before.

My money is on a named selection issue... perhaps I have too many in the pilot view.

[Messiah 2]

I have no idea whats going on... but

it works... I came back from work, turned on O2 with a mind to fix the problem... and now all the pilot/gunner/cargo view works...

I swear... utterly swear it wasn't working last night... I'm going insane. Thanks for the help guys, even it it turns out to be either my mental state, or O2 playing tricks on me.

[edit]

spoke to soon. Works on model 1... If I cut and paste into the other versions of the vehicle (different weapons on top), the same old problem (more or less, now its just a missing needle)

I've cleaned up the named selections, deleted old ones and unused ones... this is odd

[Messiah 2]

ok... this has got me really confused. It seems to be something to do with which order things are rendered by the engine. Now, as soon as I add this rvmatt, it seems to layer things wrong and objects that are modeled in front of something else, suddenly now get masked by objects behind them.

I've made a video to show whats going on, and to prove I'm not going mad. Sometimes the layers work fine, and it renders correctly, but then the next time you load O2 it renders the objects in the wrong order. These needles are 2d, but making them 3d didn't seem to help me...

http://www.pukf.net/Messiah/video/layeringproblem.wmv

What the video is showing is an RPM and a Speedometer with 2 needles set 10cm in front of them (for the sake of ruling out any clipping issues). The Speedo needle renders correctly, and in front of the dial. The RPM renders incorrectly and once I rotate the view the needle then appears to move 'behind' the dial, when its actually remains in front of it for the entire time.

This doesn't happen with the non glowing rvmat dials and needles. They render in the correct order. And this is only, ever, in the pilot/gunner/cargo lods.

[edit once more]

ok, as a last ditch I decided to try one more solution. I duplicated the glowing rvmatt and applied it to the dials alone, and the needles kept the original rvmatt... Initially it looked to have solved it, but once i tried it on one of the other gunner/pilot/cargo view lods, it didn't work.  

also, I should probably mention that in that video, I cut and pasted those faces into a new p3d, to ensure it was something to do with the p3d they came from. Come to think of it, they were pasted into a 1.000 LOD of the new p3d...  aaargh

[Messiah 2]

after a few days of utter dismay, I worked out the problem. It was a case of having a far too detailed Pilot/Gunner/Cargo view (mainly due to laziness on my part)

After removing a lot of excess crap (almost 50%), everything works as it should... Thank god. I was going insane trying to get it to work.

[Synide 0]

ahh... good to here... so a case of kiss in the end eh?!

[Messiah 2]

as always with ArmA.  

It quite obvious now I think about it, the 1st LOD always worked because it was much simpler (and uses proxy weapons which artificially keeps the face count down), whereas the pilot view is more detailed, and because of the way ArmA renders proxies, the weapons had to be modeled in.

For some reason if I cut and pasted the non working faces from the vehicle pilot lod into a new P3D, they seemed to take the inability to render properly with them, which is what threw me. Rebuilding the dials and needles in a seperate p3d and running some tests led me to the answer in the end

At least this episode made me remodel the horrible 2 dials and needles (it was another unsuccesful attempt to see what the proble was), so I can't really complain.

For people's reference (and for my own embarrasment), the PILOT lods were pushing close to 15,000 points and 13,000 faces) when the errors began. They're now down at 8,000 and 7,000.