Taking the last question first, the NCSA 3DS loader doesn't support
textures, so that's why you're not seeing any in the models.
The YouBuildItVR code was written in three days, right before the Java 3D
contest deadline (which was a few years ago), and it basically hasn't been
touched since then. I just looked at the code, and sure enough, no lights
at all in the scene at all (which surprised me too!) All of the objects in
the scene are textured which probably has something to do with it. The
other Java 3D programs I've written don't make use of textures, so this is
something I never noticed before.
The shadow question...Shadows aren't supported in Java 3D.
At 09:10 AM 8/2/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi all. I want to preface this and other questions/comments with the
>statement that I am a Java3d novice. I am just learning this and many of my
>questions will be out of ignorance. I have read the white papers, api spec,
>tutorials and looked at all the demo programs. However there seems to be
>many ways to do things and the example programs, especially ones written by
>third parties (like BViewer and BuildYourOwnVR) are written very
>differently.
>
>On to the issue.
>
>I have been working with the BuildYourOwnVR code-base, added
>KeyBehavior.java, completely changed the UsefulUniverse (now based on simple
>universe) and added support for the NSCA loaders and helper classes.
>
>Well I have the default "museum" scene loaded and decided to start bringing
>in 3ds models and experiment with them. I saved a poser human model out in
>3ds format and used the NSCA loader to bring it in. It came into the scene
>but as a black outline only. I can move around it and look at it from all
>angles, but there is no "definition" to the model. Trying to figure this
>out I ran the LoadObj demo and loaded the galleon.obj file. It displayed
>and rotated fine. So I used the sun OBJ loader and brought the galleon into
>my scene. Once again nothing but a black outline. I was very confused and
>started bringing in code from the ObjLoad program bit by bit and adding it
>to a sub group node that I was attaching as a child of my main scene.
>Nothing I did mattered until I brought in the lines of code which defined
>directional lights. All of the sudden the model showed up. I checked my
>main scene construction code and found I already had two light sources. One
>is a ambient light source and the other a point light. I added the two
>directional light sources to this same code and removed it from my sub-group
>definition and, yes indeed, I can still see the model. I then brought in my
>poser model and now I can see that also. Can anyone explain this behavior?
>
>The next wierd thing is that the model has appropriate shadows on its
>backside, darker on one side than the other, but no other objects in my
>universe are so shadowed. In fact, when I removed the point light and the
>ambient light completely from the scene, the museum walls, pillar and
>rotating earch spheres did not change their look at all. Completely harsh
>lighting illuminates every corner and both sides of the walls. Its as if
>they don't see the directional lights at all. but are instead illuminated by
>ambient light. But there are no other light sources anywhere in the
>program. I have this nagging suspician that if I removed all light sources
>all the musem stuff would still show up the same.
>
>The next wierd thing is that there is no shadow cast on ground from my poser
>model. Its backside is dark, but its standing on the "ground" ( a texture
>mapped, flat rectangle ), but there is no shadow cast from the lightsource
>to the ground from the object.
>
>There is a lot more experimentation I need to do, but I would love any hints
>as to where to look first. For example, all the museum objects are built
>from a sub-class called PositionedElement, whcih really does nothing but
>encapsulate a groupnode with the appropriate transformation node and
>shape/geometry/texture nodes. These group-nodes are placed into my scene as
>siblings to the models I am loading, so I would really expect them to be
>rendered with exacely the same lighting as my model. very wierd.
>
>The last thing is that the 3ds models I have loaded do not seem to have any
>textures on them. What I mean is that when I bring in a model, it is
>illuminated by the light source, but there is NO colors/textures at all,
>just a "neutral" color (really absorbing the color of the lights is all).
>Now I have not dumped the node hierarchy to really delve into what then
>loader is doing to the model, but I do have LOAD_ALL flags set, which should
>bring in everything associated with the model into the sub-graph. Assuming
>that the variaous sub-shapes are named, I am sure I can find the shapes
>within the sub-graph and apply the textures at run time, but that defeats
>part of the purpose of using a modeller in the first place. Any general
>suggestions would be useful.
>
>Thanks
>
>Dave Yazel
>
>===========================================================================
>To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body
>of the message "signoff JAVA3D-INTEREST". For general help, send email to
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "help".
===========================================================================
To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body
of the message "signoff JAVA3D-INTEREST". For general help, send email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "help".
