Smoke particles disappear with high quality compile

[Kaz]

I made some smoke particles with Particle Studio and placed them in my map. Whenever I compile with low quality light settings, the particles show up and everything's dandy. Whenever I compile with high quality light settings, the particles disappear. I'm wondering if you lads have any idea as to what might be causing this? Just engine limitations? I tried bumping down the samples to 2 with no effect. Thanks in advance :]

crappy compile with particles:

Code: Select all

-meta -vis -light -fast

good compile without particles:

Code: Select all

-meta -samplesize 1 -vis -light -patchshadows -samples 3

[obsidian]

Are you compiling with the latest Q3Map2?

Particle Studio usually creates some dodgy shaders. You still have to go through them manually to fix any shader issues.

Post a single shader particle.

[Kaz]

I'm compiling with 2.5.16. Here's one of the shaders:

Code: Select all

textures/sfx/smoke_1
{
qer_editorimage textures/sfx/smoke1_qer
surfaceparm noimpact
surfaceparm nolightmap
cull none
surfaceparm trans
surfaceparm nonsolid
surfaceparm nodlight
deformvertexes autosprite
deformvertexes move 52.355507 -1.046502 172.537155 sawtooth 0 1 0.061228 0.115981
{
clampmap textures/sfx/smoke1.tga
tcMod rotate 0.000000
AlphaGen wave sawtooth 1.127590 -1.127590 0.061228 0.115981
rgbGen wave sawtooth 1.203520 -0.010476 0.061228 0.115981
tcMod stretch sawtooth 1.000000 0.000000 0.061228 0.115981
blendfunc blend
}
}

[Kaz]

The image is a 512x512 .tga with an alpha channel, BTW.

[Oeloe]

Why the new account btw?

[Kaz]

felt like a change :]

[d3mol!t!on]

It's been a while (possibly six months even ), but with particle studio I seem to remember it added something to the shader that you had to remove after a full compile, or the particle effect would not show... some fix or something. Not sure whether that is still there, or you've done that already.

[obsidian]

I think that was surfaceparm alphashadow. Don't recall why particle studio shaders required it. I never had a need for it with my own written particle shaders.

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textures/obq3lmp_particles/cloudpuff01
{
	cull none
	noPicMip
	deformVertexes autosprite
	deformVertexes move -2048 0 0 sawtooth 0 1 0 0.25
	surfaceparm nodlight
	surfaceparm nolightmap
	surfaceparm nonsolid
	surfaceparm trans
	qer_editorImage textures/obsidian_particles/cloudpuff01_e.tga
	qer_trans 0.5
	{
		clampMap textures/obsidian_particles/cloudpuff01lite_d.tga
		blendFunc blend
		alphaGen wave sin 1 1 0.75 0.25
		tcMod rotate 55
	}
}

Get rid of surfaceparm noimpact, btw. Not related to the issue at hand, but it shouldn't be there anyway.

Try moving the particles into a square box map and see if you have the same problem with a quality compile. I'm thinking it might have something to do with vis or some other element in your map.

[Hipshot]

Particle studio outputs "bad" shadercode, I rewrote all my shaders when I did the TVY map two years ago. This is one of those, that I did and it works great.

Code: Select all

textures/hipshot_tvy/chim_smoke37
{
	qer_editorimage textures/hipshot_tvy/chim_smoke_02.jpg
	surfaceparm noimpact
	surfaceparm nolightmap
	cull none
	surfaceparm trans
	surfaceparm nonsolid
	surfaceparm nodlight
	deformvertexes autosprite
	deformvertexes move 1.213828 1.420591 300 sawtooth 0 2 .925 .2
	{
		clampmap textures/hipshot_tvy/chim_smoke_01.tga
		tcMod rotate 10
		AlphaGen wave sawtooth 1.000000 -1.000000 0.925 .2
		rgbGen wave sawtooth 1.000000 -1.000000 0.925 .2
		tcMod stretch sawtooth .25 1 0.925 .2
		blendfunc GL_ZERO GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_COLOR
	}
}

[Kaz]

Cool, I'll try re-writing them and re-compile tonight. Thanks for the help :]