Hello All,

I just switched to A6.4 and I thought I'd test A6 levels instead of the old A5 I've always been working with. To my surprize, when I tried to put materials on my models, there was no diffuse or specular effects from the sun.

My level is a simple box level with ambient (50,50,50), sun (50,50,50), and the walls and the ceiling have a "sky_" texture applied to them.

I do get nice shadows on the geometry from the sun, but no specular or diffuse lighting on the model sitting in the center of the room, which seems unaffected by sunlight.

I tried a material editor to fiddle with the "mat_object.diffuse" and "mat_object.specular" settings but with no results.

To get specular and diffuse effects, I have to put nearby a dynamic light source.

When I use instead an A5 script for the level, I get specular and diffuse from the sun AND dynamic lights (as it should be according to the manual).

I understand that A6 leans more on DirectX than A5 (I did install the DirectX 9c from the Conitec webpage). I'm wondering whether my radeon 9200 does not have sufficiently high vertex and pixel shaders algorithms to accomodate reflection lighting (although it seems to me that simple specular should be accessible even to medium level cards, especially from a static lightsource like the sun).

Could somebody help me or direct me to a thread with a solution to my problem?

Thanks!

Tonic

Hello everybody,

32 people have read my post, but no answers so far.

I did receive a private message by somebody who uses a Radeon 9600 and gets the exact same problem as me: no specular or diffuse effects from sunlight in A6. This should at least prove my sanity...

Let's try it the other way around: How many of you guys get decent specular/diffuse effects from sunlight in A6 levels? And what video card are you using?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Tonic

You're using materials on models and there is no diffuse or specular from the sun? This sounds like there is something wrong in the materials settings, or are you using a special material shader? If so, please post it.

I am just using the following standard material:

material mat_test
{
emissive_red = 24;
emissive_green = 24;
emissive_blue = 6;

ambient_red = 0;
ambient_green = 0;
ambient_blue = 0;

diffuse_red = 54;
diffuse_green = 0;
diffuse_blue = 0;

specular_red = 108;
specular_green = 108;
specular_blue = 108;

alpha = 100;
albedo = 100;
power = 10;
}

and applying to my models with this action:

action a_test
{
my.material = mat_test;
}

I also tried to use the woman.mdl model provided with Conitec in case my models were somehow corrupted but there was no difference: I get no diffuse or specular on the models unless I add dynamic lights in the level.

Have you ever encountered this problem? What video card do you have?

Thank you very much for looking into this problem.

Tonic

This has nothing to do with the video card.
Maybe you have set sun_light to 0?

I have set sunlight at (55,55,55) and ambient at (10,10,10) using WED's Map Properties menu. All walls and the ceiling are fitted with the skywhite texture.

To make sure that the sun is actually rendered in the level, I have put a geometry block as well: the block is casting a nice directional shadow away from the sun on the level's ground plane. So there is sunlight in the level.

I mean the variable sun_light.

Ahhhhhhhhh, I see. I didn't know about that variable (I guess the default value is 0). And I see the utility of having it too.

Now it is working fine.

Many thanks ChrisB!