Help with shadows!

[cogeo]

Can someone please help me with this?

I'm modelling an agricultural tub and I want to make it look like filled with water and also to make what's under the water show through. So I used a plane for modelling the water surface, picked a proper water texture and set opacity to 40%. It looks great in the viewport, but ingame the under-water objects look way too dark. The reason is that the (semitransparent) plane casts a full-intensity shadow. Even if opacity is set to 1% (either in the material editor or through an opacity mask) the shadow is there and makes the interior almost black.

This spoils my BAT. Trying to make the interior lighter (way lighter) is giving poor results. Also it's not possible to make the water a separate model and use some (semi)transparency technique as this would also require custom LODs, not indeed a good solution for a prop that is such complex and about to be instantiated many-many times (performance considerations).

So the only viable solution would be to make that plane not cast a shadow (or cast a shadow proportional to its opacity, if this is not possible).
Can anybody please help with this? I have not found any "Do not cast shadows" option. Maybe by using a different object type? Is this possible in 3DSMax (I only have Gmax  ).

[DebussyMan]

Could you show a pic of your problem?

[cogeo]

Ok, here is a pic:



In the viewport, the water surface (plane) is clearly visible. But ingame, the interior looks very dark, because of the shadow cast by the plane. if I remove the plane and re-export, the interior will be displayed in its normal colour (bright red/ceramic). Any idea?

Btw the gmax documentation mentions two check-boxes (Cast Shadows and Receive Shadows) supposed to be in the Object Properties Dialog, but they are not there.
I have considered even radical solutions, like attempting to modify the light rig (make those lights not cast shadows - this will turn shadows off completely), but what would be the correct way?

[Glenni]

Well, one thing you could try is editing the bridgtness of the underwater texture.

[cogeo]

Glenni, as said above making the underwater texture lighter is not giving good results. Thanks anyway.
I have also tried editing the lighting rig but the results were bad as well.

Can someone please answer the questions:
- Where can I download the BAT for 3DSMax from? (I have already downloaded an evaluation version of 3DSMax)
- Is there any way to import gmax in 3DSmax? As gmax is a reduced version of 3DSMax this should be possible, I haven't seen any file import/export format supported by both packages though.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[blahdy]

Glenni, as said above making the underwater texture lighter is not giving good results. Thanks anyway.
I have also tried editing the lighting rig but the results were bad as well.

you could try playing with self-illumination settings of the tub floor texture;  that may off-set the shadow for you.

- Is there any way to import gmax in 3DSmax? As gmax is a reduced version of 3DSMax this should be possible, I haven't seen any file import/export format supported by both packages though.

Simple answer is unfortunately, no.  I've been going thru the same transition back in early 2007 and it was painful experience to resign to the fact that i had to redo all the models.

There are a few ways to do this.. One way is to download Tempest gamepack (for old Quake game modding) for gmax and have it export the models in tempest format.  Some modelling tools out there can open these files and allow you to convert them to .3ds mesh, which can then be imported in 3ds Max.

I was able to get model imported into 3ds Max this way, but was very dissapointed with the results.  It screws up the faces/vertexes quite a lot and it's just not good enough for details sake.  I ended up just modelling everything from start in 3ds Max environment.  Good news is the new models I made inside 3ds Max environment is lot better looking than my previous attempts done in gmax..

[callagrafx]

Simple answer is unfortunately, no.  I've been going thru the same transition back in early 2007 and it was painful experience to resign to the fact that i had to redo all the models.

Actually the answer is yes...with BAT4Max comes an MD3 exporter for Gmax that allows files to be exported.  Then you need an application called Deep Exploration [ Linkie ] that will convert .MD3 files into .3ds files.  It works and works well, but UVs are lost and everything becomes editable meshes, so there is a trade off.

I think it's possible in gmax to turn shadows off for a selected mesh... you could try right-clicking and seeing if there's an object properties option. If so there maybe a "cast shadows" checkbox.

[cogeo]

@blahdy: I have tried the self-illumination technique as well but wasn't satisfied with the results. For importing the model into 3dsmax I have used Right Hemisphere's Deep Exploration (I had to export the BATs as MD3 files first). Thanks anyway.

@callgrafx: Thanks! I have already converted and imported the BATs into 3dsmax taking exactly the steps you suggested. UV are indeed getting lost and materials messed up, but this wasn't a great problem as my models only have 4-5 materials and not really many objects. I have downloaded evaluation versions of both 3DSmax and Deep Exploration, but I'm not going to get a license (I'm gonna finish before they expire). As I do not have any commercial interest in this I'm not willing to spend a penny either. As for the "Casts Shadows" option, this is mentioned in gmax documentation, but such a checkbox does not exist in gmax itself (both in gmax alone and gmax/BAT). If it did exist, I would not have to import the models into 3dsmax!

The bats are now finished, but I haven't yet brought them in game (modding, lots etc), so no pics for the moment.

[jeronij]

In MAX, materials, for a given material ( lets say water) , you can set some advanced transparency values ( Extended Parameters tab --> Advanced Transparency , btw, this option does not exist in GMAX  ), which would surely help with the problem. You can also make the base material ( the brown/red one) semi transparent, so it will look not so "solid". Just some quick suggestions which I hope help somehow