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Cross plane objects

Sidney Schwartz

Sidney Schwartz

Resource contributor
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us-oregon
I see that many tree objects are made of two planes intersecting at right angles to give the impression of being three dimensional. I'm trying to make some hedge objects using the same technique and have a couple of questions.

1. I first tried using plane objects with the texture applied to both sides. In Gmax the texture on the back side is visible if you rotate the plane, but in FS it does not show. Is there a way to get this to work?

2. I next tried using boxes with zero width instead of planes. This works better except for a lighting problem. In the pics you see a tree object made by someone else and my hedge object. In the first pic they are being viewed head on, in the second pic they are rotated 45 degrees. The hedge looks weird because the shading changes differently on the two "planes". The tree is unaffected and looks fine. What causes this? Is it because I'm using boxes instead of planes, or is there something else I need to fix?

Thanks for your help! :D
 
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The texture name must have a prefix of ds_ to get it to appear as double-sided in the sim.
I much prefer to have trees rotate to face the user. I learnt that technique on this site:)
 
Thanks for the tip. Rotating works great for objects that are more or less equal in length and width, because it creates the illusion that the object is three-dimensional rather than just rotating. Some of the hedges I'm planning would be long and narrow and would probably look pretty silly if they rotated. That's why I'm trying for the cross plane method. I think it will work if I can lick that shading problem.

Sid
 
Hi Sid,
Here you can find a discussion on shading problem of cross-plane objects.

I'd suggest you to use plane instead of box because even if you set box thikness to 0 it still has 12 polygons from which only 4 are used. You can use simple 1 section plane together with DS_ prefix for texture name or use Cap Holes modifier on the plane to create a back side. Both methods will result same 4 polygons per plane in FS. As you'll have to tweak object normals to get even shading anyway, there shouldn't be a problem with double sided texture (DS_).
 
Hi Sid,

Another option when using the box with width 0, is to weld the vertices together after placing it. This should remove all polygons that are not really there and also remove the points that are at the same location.
 
Using plane objects with the holes capped seems to work fine. I apply the texture and it shows up on both sides in Gmax and FS.

I read up on the normals function but don't understand how to use it to fix the shading problem on the cross plane object. Does it have something to do with aligning the normals on the two planes? I'm afraid someone will have to explain to me step-by-step what to do. :scratchch

Sid
 
Hi Sid,

I would advice to use MDL Tweaker II to fix these normals, as this is not something you can do from GMax. So either use MDL Tweaker II or tweak the ASM source files manually.
 
I don't even know what an asm source file is, so I'll try MDL Tweaker. :D Is it the Remove Shadow function, or something else?

Sid
 
Hi Sid,

No, the "Remove shadow" function removes the shadow that is generated on the ground by your tree. What you are looking for is at the "Vertex List" form. On that you need to select all vertices of your tree and then press the "Normalize vectors" button, this will all give them the same normal vector and result in similar shading for all sides.

PS. It could be that the button has a slightly different name in your version, I renamed it recently.
 
Thanks, Arno....that did the trick. I see now that this is explained in your instructions for MDL Tweaker. I really do try to find the answers to these questions myself before posting them, but sometimes I don't even know what the question should be. :D

Last question (I hope) on this topic. This object uses the same texture on both sides. So why is one side dark and the other side lite when viewed from the same perspective?

Sid
 
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Hi Sid,

That effect should have been solved by using MDL Tweaker, as that is the shading problem we talked about. Are you sure that you are using the MDL file that you just tweaked?
 
Hi Arno,

I'm sure it's the tweaked file. I may have messed something up by experimenting with settings in Gmax. I think I'll start over again from scratch.

Sid
 
Seems to be working OK now, Arno. Thanks to scenerydesign.org, my objects look better and my breath smells minty fresh. :laughing:

Sid
 
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