Polygallon's Forum Posts

  • I have been running into the same problem that I've seen other users on this forum also have before me, and that is the lack of support for multiple light sources within Construct 2. I am talking about the ShadowCaster object, which in it's own right works - but only if you're willing to have a singular light source in your game, or several spaced apart from each other. It's a real downer, and it's something I've tried to find a work around for the last few days.

    My first attempts included layer-effect-shading magic, but to no avail. Around here I realized that the object not only should be fully transparent where the shadows usually are from the default ShadowCaster - but it also have to be transparent all together, most desirably with the alpha mask being a radial gradient, on top of being cleared where shadows usually appear. The Polygon and Canvas plugins have gotten me on the right track, but far away from anything that actually ... well, works.

    And that's why I am proposing this:

    Could one 'reverse engineer' the ShadowCaster object/plugin to render it's polygon on the "inside" where the "light" is, rather than the "outside" where the shadows are?

    The plugin itself is already well capable of all the raycasting you'd need to achieve this, the other main thing would be the alpha ... But that could surely - worst case scenario - be handled using a webgl effect that calculates every pixel's alpha depending on the distance it has to the origin. And then you'd slap a tint effect onto that for different colored lights. I also believe it would even run smoother than default (if I understand it's internal mechanics correctly) in that, instead of rendering several arbitrary polygons in one tick, it would only render one.

    I've made an image trying to better describe what I'm trying to achieve here. I am certain that this will not only suffice for my own interests, but also for many others.

    As you might be able to tell, it should all be pretty straight forward what I would like to accomplish here. But - since I lack any actual knowledge with javascript, nor the will to start taking apart the ShadowCaster's runtime.js without actually knowing anything about it in the first place - I'm asking any kind soul to consider my request, point me to a working alternative or workaround I have missed, or kindly tell me why this isn't actually possible.

    Thank you for your time

    ?

    Edit: Oh, and if there's any question whether you'd like to be paid for your work, we could discuss that aswell.

    Edit 2: Am I doing this correctly? I guess not, huh?

  • Polygallon

    you need to name the animation "DiffuseMap", its explained in the example for textured models

    ... Oh, wow. ... Makes sense. Thanks a lot for your help once again! I knew there was something I had missed.

    .. And sorry for the sarcasm, amongst other things. ... Keep up the good work as always!

  • I am having problems getting textures to work.

    I got really frustrated before, and the post before was posted here shortly after i threw myself onto the floor and .. well.. I apologize for my awkward bluntness.

    I had fought this for little over an hour, and that was after I tried to install the JSON exporter into Maya ... Which also took like an hour of understanding it wouldn't work.

    I'm stubborn, probably too stubborn. And I get angry with things that simply does not work, no matter how hard you try to follow the instructions, So I'm sorry.

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  • Polygallon

    ... I'm not too into making a version with changes for just one person

    Nono, that's understandable. Guess it was kinda silly for me to ask that

    Since the performance improvement doing it like I suggested would be near nil anyway, I'll have to look into my code again on how to speed things up. Thanks for the quick reply and your helpful suggestions - and keep up the good work!

  • Hi again, wondering if there's a possibility to get a special, slight "feature stripped" version of the Q3D model and Q3D master plugins? The way I'm using them, I have no need for phong materials (specular, ambient, normal, bump, etc) nor do I need lighting effects (shadows, etc) overall.

    I'm aiming to make something with more of a 'pixel' aesthetic. And I'd rather not want to set up emissive to (255,255,255) and filtering to nearest (and the like) for every new Q3D Model I create. I have attempted myself to achieve this by looking through the runtime.js of the Q3D Model, and I am able to replace

    this.sharedMaterial = new THREE.MeshPhongMaterial();[/code:3azwq37x] 
with:
[code:3azwq37x]this.sharedMaterial = new THREE.MeshBasicMaterial();[/code:3azwq37x]
and get ... somewhat desirable effects. It feels like I'm butchering your code, which makes my inner programmer cry in guilt. Furthermore, I'm not sure of how I would patch any resulting instabilities and problems. So, rather than trying to hack my way through things, I'm asking you instead - It wouldn't be that hard? Right? And to clarify, I want this for optimization reasons. The lightning features currently in are all very impressive and all that, but for a project that doesn't require nor need those features, using phong materials seems a little overkill. 

Surely, no code handling light nor advanced materials would mean a plus in performance when they're not used, right? Additionally - in this version - making filtering to nearest the default of the Q3D model would be very appreciated. 

Thanks in beforehand!

  • Quickly wanted to really underline what an amazing plugin this is. The first version being a tad underwhelming but still impressive, and now this second version which really took me by storm. There's still work to be done, surely, but this is still darn impressive for what it is atm. Just wanted to clarify that in the midst of all the current problems people seem to talk about. I'm waiting for animation support, but that doesn't stop me from praising both the concept and technical side of things here, and the execution.

    Now with that said...

    Use case would be a 3d modeling editor, where you can create a model from scratch, save it, etc. This is something I have been interested in making- using C2 to do it would set it higher on my priority list..

    I've been developing something using Q3D for a couple of days now, and I've used it before 2.0 came out. Now, what I used to get things going among the modelling part of development/testing was with Wings 3D: . It's both simple and easy to use, and feels really comfortable when it comes to mocking up or making low-poly models. Not saying that it couldn't handle hi-poly, I just don't think that's why it exists per se. Took me a while to find this program and am willing to share it to others here, because it's way less confusing than Blender and way less expensive than Maya (It's free!). And yeah, it exports .obj and works very well inside C2 with Q3D.

    So yeah, Wings 3D. Had some problems getting into UV mapping, but after a while, it becomes quite natural. For me at least.