So, what's the correct way to use a shader on sprites? I kinda played around with it the other day, and it turned out bad. I've recently upgraded to some better shader code though, and models look great with it. For the sprites, I'm using some real world photos that I've taken of real plants. I've totally removed the background, all artifacts, and made it into a .tga image. As a regular sprite, with no shader, it looked fine. I just want to use shaders to get the most realism out of it.

I'm using a shader that supports normal mapping and spec mapping. For models, I can just order them in MED like:

Skin1 (diffuse)
Skin2 (normal mapping)
Skin3 (specular mapping)

...then save, and engine preview shows it in perfect form. It also works fine in a real level/world. I can do the same exact thing in code with the entskin parameters for a user-defined material.

So, where to go from here? Is it best to do this in WED, or in code? Maybe there is a way to create a model in MED, and just have it behave like a sprite? That would work, I'm sure. Maybe just make the sprite a blank image, then use the entskin parameters in my material code to assign the diffuse, normal, and specular mapping?

I dont THINK you can use shaders on sprites, but I could be wrong.

But if you build a flat square in MED, you could use that with all shaders.
You'll need a separate action in code to auto-rotate the entity the way sprites do all by themselves.

Makes sense. I was kinda leaning towards that idea. I DID make a flat plane, and textured it with the materials. Did an engine preview, and it looked great. So I just I'll simply make it an ent that just faces the position of the player/camera, I guess.

So what would be a simple way to code it? I've got a knack for writing code that works, but which is hideously overcomplicated, lol.

Off the top of my head....

You can use shaders with sprites. I've made extensive use of sprites with shaders for my entry in the shader contest, and I do it all the exact same way I do a shader for a normal model.

Haven't normal-mapped sprites, though.

You wouldn't want to deal with tangent space because that causes more overhead than necessary -- the normals would be in object space instead.

I hope that's helpful enough.

Jibb