PRELUDE1-Im cooking something new starting from nwn2 city interior tileset, and since its flavour starts to b tasty, i decided to add a few spices in the pot. i remembered the awesomeness of gaonengs skyboxed windows hak to extend castle interior, so i gave it a try and decided to add something very similar to this new tileset; i decided to use a single tile containing the skyboxes (in every needed rotation: 0, 90, 180 and 270 deegrees), all walled (i mean its a wall tile, so black seen from above, duplicated for every window crosser variation in the set file): that way allows me to add as many skybox variants as i want changing that single wall tile containing the skyboxes instead of creatingvariations for all the window tiles. (also, i HAD to do that since nwmax hasnt a disable vert snap to nearest int value when exporting, and that would cause my geometries imported from nwn2 to create glitches on roofs and walls, anyway, i am happy enough with mdl suite).
2-once i got this working, i decided to completely remove the faces of the mesh that is the window itself (the glasses and their outer frame) and create a placeable window to place, so i can get different versions of the same placeable, and i can have it animated (open close animations). following gaoneng sytle, i used 2 meshes and textures to create a-the semi-opaque glass (no alpha on the tga, just controlled with opacity settings in max and b-the inner frame of the window (alpha layer. with no grey values, just black OR white). after a few issues with animations for reasons too long to explain, especially bacause remain mysterious to me, i got the placeable work!
3-now, i remembered the cool light shafts that codi 1st then worm and others used to get some "solid" light to come out of thier windows so i said... thats what i need! let me rip off that tile from wOrm haunted interior and see if i can do the same! quickly done, my shaft is working, BUT, then i decided to link it to animloop 1 you know for having the option to enable just when you want! this means you need to link the mesh under the tile's a node, and set the basic animation to have it on/off. since i wanted to add daynight animations that controls the flow of self illumination and darkening it a bit at night, i went for a move along z axis animation so when disablet it just hides undeer the floor (instead of animating the texture opacity).
4- and now the issue that gives the name of the topic:
i safely got the shaft working, all was rendering good, in every perspective, i could (and i stll can, but let me explain) see the skybox, the opened or closed placeable window and the shaft, all the transparencies and opacities and alpha stuff and animations working great! UNTILl i decided to add a tile with 2 windows: this means i had to duplicate the light shaft, easy! i did it, and tried. now, under certain perspectives with the window opened, or almost under every perspective (be it in game or in the toolset) with windows closed, the shaft causes the window portion that intersecates with the mesh, to NOT render. this is the issue, and i have no solution. i tried to move the shafts pivots, i tried to merge the shafts in a single mesh, withut effort.
FINAL CONSIDERATION i think, though i will need to test extensively this thing, that the issue is caused by perspective overlap (collision) of normals of objects under the a node; this causes everything that should be rendered "through", to disappear. adding other animloops with static windows caused the same kind of issue.
CONCLUSION if you want to share your experience, if you want to test my tiles (be it with a hak and mod i provide you or opening those tiles and other models in max) to see if there is something wrong, or its just a limit of aurora engien... plz do it and reply just under here!
