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Smoke particles disappear with high quality compile
Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 12:35 am
by 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:
good compile without particles:
Code: Select all
-meta -samplesize 1 -vis -light -patchshadows -samples 3
Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 1:03 am
by 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.
Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 1:10 am
by 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
}
}
Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 1:12 am
by Kaz
The image is a 512x512 .tga with an alpha channel, BTW.
Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:55 am
by Oeloe
Why the new account btw?

Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 3:38 am
by Kaz
felt like a change :]
Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:15 pm
by 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.
Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 3:32 pm
by 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.
Code: Select all
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.
Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 7:56 pm
by 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
}
}
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:50 pm
by Kaz
Cool, I'll try re-writing them and re-compile tonight. Thanks for the help :]