Missing Dynamic Shadows

Looks like the andquot;missing triangleandquot; is an MSTS bug, it only happens on my 1 tile route. I’ve gone back and been more careful in my experiments, some of my earlier comments are bogus.

Two things seem to be critical for a model to have a dynamic shadow:

1 – No translucency (transparancy seems to be OK).
2 – All objects must reside in the Main group, no subgroups/children. There may be a unique group name that would allow child objects…

Thanks to Richard for his help in teasing this apart, I’m back to modeling like mad.

I’ve just noticed that objects exported either as scenery or structures with the trainsim wizard will not produce a dynamic shadow in the RE or sim. Stock objects do exhibit dynamic shadows and I do have all the display sliders set for maximum detail. Have I missed any info that may be in the tutorials?

Thanks in advance!

Deanville (yes, I’m still around)

Richard, thanks for the reply.

Yes, you can place a andquot;Shadow ( DYNAMIC)andquot; entry in the object’s part of the route’s ref file or mark it as having a dynamic shadow in the route editor.

I just noticed this issue with many of a large set of models I’ve developed for MSTS. I have no evidence at present that it is a 3DC or wizard issue.

I have discovered:
– simple models work correctly more often

– I have some models that will exhibit a dynamic shadow only if it is comprised of a single group of 3 or 4 objects. Other models work with subgroups.

– I have two models with nearly identical objects and using the same textures. One can show a dynamic shadow, the other won’t. I’ll be looking closer at the s files tomorrow.

I’ll keep you posted and keep my fingers crossed that someone has already figured this out.

I just checked engines and they seem to be OK. Is there perhaps a setting in the SD file for scenery/structures to enable shadows?

Richard

I didn’t get very far comparing s files between models that did and didn’t exhibit dynamic shadows.

I have done some experiments with the following results (left to right in the attached image).

1 – Main group only with single object (triangulated prior to export), shadow visible.
2 – Main group only with single object (not triangulated), shadow visible.
3- Main group with simple object in sub group, shadow not visible.
4 – Main group only, simple object merged with other object, shadow visible.
5 – Main group only, 20 simple objects merged with main object, shadow visible.

1 and 2 were to see if I could make the andnbsp;triangular missing piece of the shadow appear.

Otherwise, it looks like you cannot have any sub groups if you want a dynamic shadow, and you can have at least 20 or so sibling objects under main. The missing triangle is yet to be explained.