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Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
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Gian-Reto Offline
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Post: #1
Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
Maybe I don't understand the whole system, but as I could get it work some days ago, I don't understand why this doesn't works now.

I have a Grass Mesh, that is a simple plane with a Texture on it. I'd like to use it as Grass in the world editor. I can place the grass objects on the Terrain in the Editor, and see the Grass Textures appearing there (altough the Brush always seems to only place a single object for some reason.... do I need to add the object to the list multiple times?)...

As soon as I hit "update visible and play", and the game is loaded, I see the terrain and the character, but the grass is not visible or dissapeared. I tested all the access Methods, Grass, Embedded, Static or Normal, nothing seems to work.

What am I doing wrong?

Also, how do I change the orientation of the grass meshes to get some more variation, or to adapt the mesh to the Terrain slope?
03-25-2011 01:11 PM
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Esenthel Offline
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Post: #2
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
world editor menu view/grass range
D.grassRange

object/align to heightnmal normal
object/heightnmal normal aligning
03-25-2011 01:13 PM
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Gian-Reto Offline
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Post: #3
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
I set the view grss range to 400. In the editor I can see it perfectly, but not in the game view ("update visible and play").... I'll try to build the game in Visual Studio and see if I have more luck there...

Ah, I see, haven't seen all the useful object functions.... are they usable from custom editors?

EDIT:

IF I try to load the World in the built game started from Visual Studio I get a "can't load World ..." Error... what did I do wrong?

Is something wrong with my grass object? Or with the way I try to put it into the world?
(This post was last modified: 03-25-2011 03:50 PM by Gian-Reto.)
03-25-2011 03:38 PM
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Dynad Offline
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Post: #4
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
You need to save your grass as an Esenthel Obj file (this can be done with the object manager in the WE)... otherwise it doesn't know the information it needs to fill the grass container...

There is always evil somewhere, you just have to look for it properly.
03-25-2011 05:30 PM
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Gian-Reto Offline
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Post: #5
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
I did this.... I created a grass object in the model editor, saved it, opened it in the World Editor (under the object view), and placed it unto the terrain. The Gras object was visible in the edit view. As soon as I started the game in the editor, it was not there anymore.
03-26-2011 10:13 AM
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Tottel Offline
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Post: #6
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
The .obj in the world editor may NOT be confused with your 3d mesh. It is entirely different.

In the world editor, your .obj is everything related to your model combined into 1 object that Esenthel will load. This is your mesh, your phys-body, scale, material(s), skeleton, rendering type and more.

Please check the docs for more info on this. You need to save your .obj in order for Esenthel to be able to render your things.
03-26-2011 10:42 AM
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Gian-Reto Offline
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Post: #7
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
Okay, I had a look again at the videos explaining how to import a model into the Esenthel Editor.... So I tried again, and once again it didn't work.

What I did:
- I draged&dropped the .dae (Collada) File from the filesystem into the world editor.
- I changed the scaling(to 0.4), the access method (to "GRASS") and the object type (to "OBJECT_STATIC") in the "Temp Object" pop up window.
- I selected "save" from the "File" Menu in the same pop up and saved the object as an .obj file in the Data Folder
- I inserted some more of this objects on the terrain with the "Insert" Key

Now, I see the objects as long as I'm in the Edit view of the world editor, as soon as I hit play, I can't see any of the placed objects.


Please tell me if I did it wrong.
(This post was last modified: 03-27-2011 12:22 PM by Gian-Reto.)
03-27-2011 12:22 PM
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Tottel Offline
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Post: #8
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
Drag/drop the .dae in the Mesh editor first. Make sure the materials are applied correctly and save them.

Then go to object mode in the World editor and apply the mesh. save this object as and check if it works.
03-27-2011 02:36 PM
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Gian-Reto Offline
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Post: #9
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
I tried again, I even started by creating the Mesh anew in Blender (which isn't so hard for a simple plane with an UV Mapped Image on it to begin with wink )

I dragged it into the Model Editor, I had to apply the texture in there again, I saved both the Material and the Mesh, I opened the object view in the world editor, I selected the correct mesh and material (for some strange reason though I had to set the shader to "mus_custom", as I got an error with the "mus_default" one), I inserted some Grass blades, hit play.... nothing there.

This time with images (be awasre, I took the image of the Material and World Editor before having changed the Shader to "mus_custom". Not that it would have made any difference)

Anyone having an idea what is going wrong here?


Attached File(s) Image(s)
           
03-28-2011 08:47 AM
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llynx Offline
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Post: #10
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
1. Autoupdate (I had a build that was from just a few days ago and it crashed just when adding grass)
2. Try "Clean and play All" instead of just visible.
3. Make sure grass view range is not zero
4. Try out the same thing but with the grass given "Data/Grass/mesh.mesh" with the same grass settings. If this shows and your mesh shows then there's something wrong with your mesh
(This post was last modified: 03-28-2011 09:05 AM by llynx.)
03-28-2011 09:03 AM
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Gian-Reto Offline
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Post: #11
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
So I tried most things:

1. Autoupdate: First I ran it without the engine.pak location, which didn't gave me any results. So I did it again with the engine.pak path in it.... again, no results.
2. Did it (I had to wait 10 times as long until the thing was built....).... no joy. Still the same problem.
3. Grass range was 50m while testing these things, which should be enough, as the character is just standing next to some Grass

4. What Mesh is that you're mentioning? I don't find this in my Data location. Should that come with the esenthel Engine SDK?

Any other ideas what I could try? shall I discard the whole SDK and download it anew? Shall I discard my world and create a new one?
03-29-2011 09:39 AM
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Tottel Offline
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Post: #12
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
Can you send us your mesh + texture?
03-29-2011 10:00 AM
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llynx Offline
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Post: #13
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
The entire "http://esenthel.com/download/EsenthelEngineSDK/Data/Grass" directory
03-29-2011 03:30 PM
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Gian-Reto Offline
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Post: #14
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
Weird.... that path doesn't exists in the SDK zip I downloaded. I'm redownloading the SDK Again and see if I got it this time.... should prove helpful to find the mistakes with my mesh, if there are any.

I'll create a zip file with my mesh and Texture and put it here as soon as I can. You want to have the original (PNG) Texture, and the .mesh file, right?

EDIT:

So I created a new world, imported a small portion of my 8192x8192 Heightmap (a 1024x1024 Tile), Used the SAME Gras Object that didn't worked on the full 8192x8192 Heightmap, I hit update visible and play.... and I see the Gras!

WTF? Why is the same Gras Mesh/Object visible on a 1024x1024 Heightmap, but not on a 8192x8192? What could possibly cause such a behaviour?

EDIT2:

Even with that newly built world, that looks fine in the world editor play view, I get an error when using it in my Visaul Studio Project and trying to run it. Must have something to do with the Gras object, it runs fine without it.

Error is "Can't load world ..."

EDIT3:

The Grass directory is still missing from the downloaded SDK. Is there any other possability to get the Data directory? FTP?

Is it in a different SDK Version?
(This post was last modified: 03-29-2011 07:27 PM by Gian-Reto.)
03-29-2011 06:55 PM
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Tottel Offline
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Post: #15
RE: Grass dissapearing / how to set grass objects orientation?
Try a 8192² heightmap again.. Maybe it was just bad luck.
I'm not sure at all, but try the resources pack on the Esenthel main site. That might include the default grass.
(This post was last modified: 03-29-2011 08:06 PM by Tottel.)
03-29-2011 07:20 PM
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