Hello H2V Forums/Where'd my geometry go?

First of all, I'd like to introduce myself. My name's Sam, and I'm quite new to 3d modeling and halo mapping, though I played way too much Halo CE, and loved to mod Halo 1 PC. I've been interested in the idea of making my own map for a while, but until now, haven't had the time to learn. This seems to be the biggest community of halo 2 mappers, so I thought I'd join and say hello. Hello!

Now, then, onto my first snag that I just, for the life of me, can't figure out. The idea is that I need a way to light the inside of my very unexposed base. Since the theme of the map is to be of human design, I thought I'd start simple: a flouresent light fixture. Problem is, when I export it from 3ds max, my tubes disappear.

My view of the fixture in 3ds max, and 2 views from sapien.
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/2...eometrygk0.png
*Turns down the emissive power on the light shader (I lit up an entire wall just to see if the light-emitting shader wasn't the culprit, and to see what was going on) to 0.25.*
0.6 is a bit much, yes?

So, yeah. What happened to my tubes? Any ideas?

Try making sure that you link it to b_levelroot

They aren't seperate objects. They're attached to the frame, which is attached to the base, which is properly linked to b_levelroot

Are your shaders referencing a bitmap? It looks like they are being welded into nothing from the wireframe ingame and the max viewport. I can't really say why this is happening.

The shaders are your standard f_im flat_light_scratchy and the like, plus one custom one, which is just a base map-less white light source (illum_3_channel_opaque). And it works when applied to a wall. It's the only reason this scene isn't totally black.

I tried rebuilding the surface that the cylinders connect to, thinking I might have built it wrong somehow and that re-doing it would help somehow. Didn't work, but it might provide a little more information:
http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/5...eometrydh9.png


If I had to guess, I'd say that there's a minimum face size, below which tool begins to merge faces. Thoughts?

Welcome to the forum. :)

I don't see why Tool would smash verts... that's entirely sad.

Do you have the -highquality parameter in your Sapien shortcut?

Lee

Hey, welcome to the forums.

That is very strange indeed. You now have the tubes as a part of the level mesh, and it still doesn't work? What material is being applied to those surfaces? Any chance I could take a look at your 3ds max file?

Try this if you want!
Give your meterial the name f_il light_50_dkyellow
and use the texture in data\bitmaps\forerunner\industrial\lights
then give those tubes a uvwmap and streach the texture so that the whight light part covers the tubes and then in sapien the tubes will be lights!
G/L

looks to me as it it's opening an older file, since it's actually displaying different geometry. my guess it didn't update something.

try removing your current exported/compiled files, and doing it again, amybe it didn't overwrite them properly.

it's either that, or it's somehow auto-welding the verts in those tubes, check your scale, see if it's not mega mega small.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by et_cg

Welcome to the forum. :)

I don't see why Tool would smash verts... that's entirely sad.

Do you have the -highquality parameter in your Sapien shortcut?

Lee

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No, i wasn't aware that that was a parameter. Is it necessary?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TheGhost

Hey, welcome to the forums.

That is very strange indeed. You now have the tubes as a part of the level mesh, and it still doesn't work? What material is being applied to those surfaces? Any chance I could take a look at your 3ds max file?

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http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QNN5NBSM Not sure you'll need to, but here it is.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tweek

looks to me as it it's opening an older file, since it's actually displaying different geometry. my guess it didn't update something.

try removing your current exported/compiled files, and doing it again, amybe it didn't overwrite them properly.

it's either that, or it's somehow auto-welding the verts in those tubes, check your scale, see if it's not mega mega small.

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I think you're onto something. I tried scaling it up to 5000% and isolating it, and it worked fine:
http://img484.imageshack.us/img484/5...eometryon7.png

Why, yes, that is a warthog i randomly shoved in there.
It does show that I'm pretty sure I tried to have way too much detail for such a small object. Since all the end user should see if they were to study the bulb is "OMG BRIGHT!" It won't matter if I only use 1/2-1/4 as many faces for the cylinder. I'll work on a workaround, but I'm pretty sure I know what I need to do from here. Thanks everyone for the help!
-Sam

Oh, to fix this problem, its easy. Just add the precise flag ")" to the shader name before exporting. The BSP Pass fiddles around with the points and triangles for optimizations as well as automatic error fixing. Using the precise flag on the shader ensure the geometry with that shader isn't messed with by the BSP pass.

http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/4...eometryve1.png

Thanks a bunch, jahrain, it works great! Big +rep