I've bought the Trainworks-Package when it has been released some time ago and converted with it some smaller objects from TSM.
Now I'd like to build some buildings with shadows. I've read the dev-documentation but have problems with some things. For example where do I have to align a texture with the stencilshadow.fx in canvas? How has the object hierarchy to be?

Thanks for any help

Hi Yelgrun,

I can't be of any help now as I have some problems with shadow rendering of objects.

Did you read the Developer doc 4.11 Lighting and Shadows.pdf of RS? Specially the section 2.3 Stencil Shadow?

After trying and trying, I've not found the way to make shadow appear in the game or editor.

That's why I am asking if someone has succeeded with this.

From what I understood, the StencilShadow.fx goes with the inner shadow shape texture.

For the inner shadow shape, it goes in the shape of the object to be shadowed.

That's all I can tell you for now.

Cheers.

This wasn't possible due to a limitation in the Rail Simulator export. The new version of 3D Canvas that includes this fix is now available: 3D Canvas 7.1.1.3 Beta

Until now i have done 5 different stencilshadow shapes for 5 small objects without problems.

I was updating one of my bridges and...


My error? Exporter error? RS error?
If somebody has an idea...(i have done the shadow shape 2 times... now i'll try another way..)

Never mind
I have found the solution, it's isn't an error of the exporter

Shadows, shaders and specular are very usefull

After trying and trying...no result.
How can i make a normal shadow without gaps etc..
Even a box with 8 pionts and 6 faces won't render normally, I always get one triangled gap.
In Blender they talked about vertexes of the points. What to do in 3d canvas? Is it possible, can anyone make a Summary?

shadow.JPG (25 Kb, 24 downloads) box shadow

quote:

Originally posted by Sad27:
After trying and trying...no result.
How can i make a normal shadow without gaps etc..
Even a box with 8 points and 6 faces won't render normally, I always get one triangled gap.

Richard,

I have also tested shadow on a single cube and same result.

Could you look at the tutorial on this page if not seen before:
http://home.exetel.com.au/randomsoftware/railsim/tutorials/shadows_001.html

Take a look at Introducing the 'Edge Split' Modifier between the second and third pictures.

Do we have this in 3D Canvas?
This process make that instead of having 8 vertexs exported, there are 24 vertexs exported.

I have tried crease 0 and crease 100. No luck.
I even have tried the divide operation. No luck.

Bremen seems to have found something but no words about that.

Thanks.

quote:

Bremen seems to have found something but no words about that.

Because after that bridge i have done only 3 other shadows and only 1 is working well... the other 2 have the same problem that many have.

I have a shadow that is cut in half... i can see the upper part of it or the lower part of it... not everything at the same time

The only thing i'm doing is the consolidate object to remove all the useless faces done by extrusions

This is just a repeat of a post I made on uktrainsim, mainly in answer to a quote that it was not possible to make a simple cube shadow in Canvas :-



I've tried making a shadow just using a cube:-

Created a cube primitve and resized it so that it was approx the same size as my Rail Van body.

Added the group\cube to my Railvan hierarchy. Named the group - shadow and the primitive - shadow_body. (hierarchy below)



Entered the shader name - StencilShadow.fx to the railsim property box painted the shadow (using the main van texture) and then exported the van.

The shadow looks ok with no artifacts present.

No creasing operations were needed.

Cheers,
Kevin

quote:

Originally posted by kevm:
This is just a repeat of a post I made on uktrainsim, mainly in answer to a quote that it was not possible to make a simple cube shadow in Canvas

The shadow looks ok with no artifacts present.

Sure we can make a simple cube shadow in 3D Canvas.
But did you verify by moving around the shape if strange artifacts happens?
If nothing happens, then you are lucky for this time.
Next time...this might not be the case.

Look at this picture and tells me that it is normal to have a shadow and a cube like those ones?


It is not normal to have to take days to try to make a simple cube with shadow.

Yes, I did move around the model to check for artifacts!

Maybe I will not be so lucky next time, but I have made 4 locomotives, 2 coaches and a wagon with shadows and they all look ok.

Download one of my Railsim locos (class 3F or Ivatt class 2 2-6-2) from www.uktrainsim.com and have a look at them. They both have shadows made using canvas.

I've never said it was easy and I spent many, many hours on the first model trying to get it to work. All I can say is it is possible.

You must keep the geometry as simple as possible, if you use round shapes you must give them a max 100 crease.
You cannot have a shape with deleted faces. Complicated shapes can cause problems and may be better made using 2 or more simple shapes. You may have to experiment with crease values.

Even some of the default wagons show artifacts at certain angles!

Cheers,
Kevin

I'm currently doing the shadow for one of my 2 axles freight wagon
2 shadow are done with 2 cubes and i have no problem

2 screenshots of my half shadow problem

The shadow over the wall is complete but on the ground...

The arches are complete but...


I think that in this case is a shader error. If i rotate the bridge so it became parallel to the ground i can see the whole shadow.

The shadows are being exported using the same methods as the rest of the model. There's no reason to believe there is anything wrong with the export itself.

The fact that a cube can be a problem is very strange. I wonder there is some significance to the edge order. There shouldn't be. I do shadows in 3D Canvas and don't have much in the way of artifacts.

I'd be curious to see if a cube pre-rotated in 3D canvas has the same problem. And what effect is there if the "Normalize Groups" plug-in is run?

I discovered that the way of texturing gives different results, if you use the bucket tool there is gaps appear in the shadows and if you use the pencil tool to texture one face or at least one side at a time the shadows working fine.

Eureka! Just retried my test shadow object (for the billionth time it feels!) and it worked when I painted each individual face with the paint brush! Always felt this was going to come down to something so obvoius we didn't realise if we were or weren't doing it. Thanks for posting retmetro!

One very cheered up 3DC user,

Stuart

Interesting and well worth remembering for the future.
The strange thing, though, is that all my shadow textures (as far as I can remember) were painted using the bucket tool!!!!

Cheers,
Kevin

Good find Retmetro...

another one to make a note of

Sly

Hi!

I just discovered something.

If I apply a tip 0.0 operation on the top face of a cube, the top surface has now 5 points or 4 faces and the shadow is now OK for a cube.

If I have to give an orientation of 45° to the same cube, I must apply the tip operation on the 4 faces of the top of the cube to render correctly the shadow in RS.

It seems that the surfaces exposed to the sun (top and/or sides) must have more than 4 points to render correctly the shadow in RS.

For the rest, it's up to Richard as he is the Creator of 3DCanvas.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Genesis_Man,