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Drawing shadows on ground textures

V

vishzu

Messages
57
Country
romania
Hi all,
I recently made some buildings for BBU/LRBS airport in Bucharest Romania and I'm thinking to add some shadows on the ground for the corresponding buildings. I also want to eliminate the shadows generated from FS and draw my own buildings shadows. I want to do it this way because I will save some FPS. My first idea was shadow baking but I recently found out that shadows are not generated in the Gmax viewports :(.
So my question is: Is there a way to manual draw accurate shadows on ground textures?

Regards
 
vishzu said:
Hi all,
I recently made some buildings for BBU/LRBS airport in Bucharest Romania and I'm thinking to add some shadows on the ground for the corresponding buildings. I also want to eliminate the shadows generated from FS and draw my own buildings shadows. I want to do it this way because I will save some FPS. My first idea was shadow baking but I recently found out that shadows are not generated in the Gmax viewports :(.
So my question is: Is there a way to manual draw accurate shadows on ground textures?

Regards
Click to expand...

I have had the same problem exactly...:D

First tick the 'no shadow' on your material in gmax of course....;)

You can place a plane under each of your 3D objects with a 'shadow' texture applied with alpha, make sure you also elevate a bit to avoid flicker. By having a single texture sheet with all your scenery's shadows, a kind of shadow-map as i like to name it :), you can also minimize draw calls and hence improve performance. You can easily make that texture by taking a screenshot of your 3D model on top-view and then use this as a template for your alpha channel. Otherwise you can use 3Dsmax to bake the object's shadow on a plane and the take that texture instead (much better looking of course). This is a good approach for airport buildings because the terrain is all flat. When you try it on scenery objects, it becomes difficult due to the mesh elevation differences, the plane tends to be hidden or starts flickering etc.

If you want to do that on ground polygons directly, it requires a lot of effort to manually draw them by hand, and most likely the result will not be so rewarding. So the only possible alternative would be baking the shadows of the whole airport scene in 3DsMax. But the problem here is that your apron texture is likely to be mapped so again, no go....:p
 
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