Presagis

I have two quick lighting questions that relate to bringing a scene from Creator to Vega Prime.  I’m trying to add a light to the scene that creates a small amount of ambient filll so the shadows aren’t solid black, and I’m trying to light the trees that are generated with the Tree Wizard.

For some reason, I’m not seeing my light when in the Vega Prime preview in Creator.  Is that dependant on the settings in Creator or do I have to enable the light separately in Vega Prime?  Am I able to see it in the Vega Prime view in Creator or is that just not available with the limited Vega options through the preview?

Second, my supervisor said that the trees in my scene aren’t receiving lighting in Vega Prime.  It looks like they are using an “unlit” mode and are self-illuminating instead of receiving the light used for the sun in Vega.  This may be an issue with Vega but I have a suspicion that it has something to do with the RGBA textures I’m using.  The other real-time engines I’ve worked with don’t allow transparent objects to be lit, so they use a compromised “opacity mask” technique in most cases.  Do I have to set up something similar or is my supervisor expecting me to do something in Creator that has to be done in Vega?  I started with PNGs but switched them to RGBA file type in Creator.  Thank you very much for any help!

Are your trees lit in Creator?  Please make sure that the verts have normals and the polygons are set to the lit draw mode. (you can use your attribute page to view these settings. Also you can use the draw normals option in the view panel to display your normals as red lines).  If they do not have the correct settings, then you simply need to run the Calculate shading tool found in the attributes menu to apply a lit draw mode and normals.

Thanks a bunch.  It seems to be working now.  I’m still not seeing the lighting that I set up when running the Vega preview though.  I have “Light Activated for Modeling” turned off because I understand that makes the light only function when editing in Creator.  Is that correct?  Why might the light source be casting light in Creator but not Vega?

The light activated for modeling “should” only affect Creator. You said it makes the light only function when editing in Creator.  I believe this statement is is correct if you remove the term “only.”  I could be wrong, other applications should not pay attention to this flag.

With that said, It looks as though there might be a bug in the Vega Prime view that prevents light sources from working properly. Does everything work in your runtime now?  (not the vega prime preview but the actual runtime?)