The Harvest Moon Consortium

Hi all

Here you can see topic: http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic ... 1&forum=48

Current problem described under title "First problem"

Unfortunately still problem wasn't fixed

And still I even can't imagine what cause that bug

I know that bug appeared after modification of hills by Zeon (you can see it here http://nlines.net/files/Zeon/CRFHtml/Ze ... bleCRF.htm)
I must admit that it is great modification. His hills work much better with road crosser and much smoother. However, they have some walkmesh bugs (fortunately not critical). So, they have much more complicate geometry. So may be problem lays in geometry? Can someone check it? I can't do it by myself because the only thing I can do is to edit a bit model with notepad or edit set-files =) I'm not a 3d-modeller.

I've attached here http://data.virusman.ru/ax20/devs/Armor ... _hills.rar all models and woks of Zeon's buged hills terrein (or you can download CompleteRC from here http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Ha ... il&id=7494). I hope someone will help me solve that problem

Btw I've tried to replace Zeon's hills with DOA's original hills and of course bug has gone. But DOA's hills looks much worse and barely works with road crosser. If problem lays in to complicate geometry, may be there is a way to make some compromise between look and difficult.

I ask about help here because I now that it is a lot of professionals here. I think if even here problem won't be solved, probably it won't be solved never

turn OFF shadows for hills...

The engine can NOT handle large object, complicated shadows. It's one of the reasons you see 'Stepped' hills so much, because the engine can't handle the curved variety at all.

The shadow bit can be fixed, but it breaks other things that are much more important.

To fix it, you have to slice the grass textured object into multiple slices horizontally, and manually set the pivot point for each of those slices. It can be done, but it is a major pain. The problems it causes are increased lag, and you lose the ability to 'rotate texture'. Which means the grass would no longer look smooth. It would end up looking like a patchwork of grass patches etc..

Note: You were already given the answers in that thread on the Bioware forums. You can NOT fix that shadow issue with the rounded hills except to turn shadows off for them entirely.

Believe me, CTP tried to fix those types of shadow issues for Babylon's smoothed/rounded hills. In the end, it was decided that shadows are vastly overrated anyway, so we turned them off for the entire set.

Placeables, like a few trees here and there, will still give the illusion of normal shadows, and 99% of your players won't notice the loss of the primary ground shadows.

Bannors right i had the same problem when i tried to fix the shadows for my modifications of gentle hills and winter hills. Shadows are a pain in the butt and they dont always respond like you think they will.

Thanx for reply

I wanted to turn ff shadows completely, but:

I switched off shadows for all hill tiles. It solved problem, but not completely. Still sometimes shadow artifacts occurs
I noticed that some treas from those hill tiles still cast shadows. I checked them - everywhere shadow 0
I removed all hill tiles with trees, but still shadow artiffacts occurs =(

So, turning off shadows would be ok as for me. But I can't understand why switching off didn't fixed bug

Run the tiles through CM3 and set CM3 to switch the shadows off. When you view the models in the game only paint those tiles on which you are working. I once spent half a day hunting down an errant shadow only to discover it was being cast from an adjacent tile.

Thanx
Running through CM3 did the job
Now shadows almost don't trace... but almost. I don't know why, but still they traces a bit

If there are still traces open each tile which may be causing the shadows and search for the word shadow in the offending tile if it is set to 1 change it to 0 this will kill any remaining shadows, I'm not sure why there would be any left after running CM3 but stranger things have happened. The word shadow will probably appear several times in each tile so don't stop at the first one check them all.

checked everywhere - shadow 0
I checked also "shadows 1", "shadow 1" but everywhere I see 0

In game hills don't have shadows, so looks like they are completely off, but still there is traces. It's hard to tell where they are from, but looks like hills breaks other shadows, because without hills all okey.

Then the offending tile must be and adjacent tile then the only alternative is either turn off shadows completely for the set or just learn to live with the small amount that you have. Some of the adjacent tiles have the larger blades of grass or small plants that are shadow and I find this to a big offender to shadows as I still haven't figured out why those particular things are shadowed to begin with, other than that I don't see any other way around it. Good luck Armor Darks.

Thanx
May be. I can't see it because I'm not a 3d-modeler.

I thought that it is small amount, but unfortunetly no. Of course it is smaller amount of traces than was, but at big locations with lots of placeable still appears lot of shadow traces.