Re: "Most Wanted" list

[Joseph J. S. <jo...@st...>]

At 3:25 AM -0400 6/4/04, Frank C wrote:

>So what should be done here? This bug can basically be resolved by 
>removing the "TEMPORARY FIX", but it won't match QD3D's behaviour - 
>or - it can be left as is, and actually disable lights when 
>rendering objects with a null shader while still modulating colours 
>to match QD3D. The tribuffer path would need a similar fix to fully 
>comply in this case.
>
>Personally I'd like to see colours modulated _all_ the time - QD3D 
>be damned! ;)

That's scary -- virtually every app using models made with Meshwork 
would suddenly start looking very very wrong.  In case you haven't 
used it, here's why: Meshwork creates up to eight materials 
(TriMeshes) for an object, but in the editor window, these aren't 
drawn with textures; they're drawn as solid colors.  The materials 
start out with eight easily distinguishable colors by default (blue, 
red, green, white, orange, etc.).  Typical usage is: for an 
untextured material, you set the color the way you want it to appear, 
but for a textured material, you leave it as-is (or set it to 
something easily distinguishable from the other materials in the 
editor), for convenience in the editor, with the understanding that 
it doesn't matter anyway since the color won't appear at runtime 
(unless you run out of texture RAM or some such).

Now, if I understand the proposed change correctly, all such models 
would appear with their textures mixed in with whatever color the 
artist used in the editor.  That's a problem -- there are a lot of 
apps out there using models made with Meshwork.  Our users are going 
to scream.

If we follow QD3D's behavior, and do this only for null-shaded 
models, then it will cause less screaming.  Typically if you have a 
textured 3D model, you probably want it to be affected by lighting, 
otherwise you'd just use a sprite.  There are exceptions though -- 
anything that's intended to be internally lit, like a model of 
flames, or a glowing shield, or a ghost, or whatnot.

What I don't understand is, why didn't this problem come up in the 
QD3D days, when Meshwork was first introduced.  It wasn't as widely 
used then as it is now, but I certainly never saw a problem.  It's 
possible that I simply never used a model with a null shader until 
after I had already switched to Quesa.

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