A coupel of question in the matter of doors

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <not feeling quite...>

Bannor Bloodfist wrote...
<snipped>
Been a while, but I think even a hidden door will still give a blue rectangle when you pass your mouse over it?  Will show up when you hit tab in game etc?  As I said, it has been a LONG time since I even considered making door changes other than tileset specific ones, and even then there is a limit to how many you can assign per tileset I believe, but I am likely wrong on that, someone else would have to clarify it for us...

From the TileSetConstruction pdf (by, I think, Rob Bartel):

Next, the object called “sam”. After making such an effort to have every object in the max file have a different name, here is the only object that got through. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it was called “sam”. Please don’t ask me why. What does it do? It’s quite simply the object that you click on when the door is an area transition. In the game, you can cursor over a door, and it will show a blue polygon (from both directions). This is “sam”. In order for sam to work, it will also need an animation to reference it…

Later on it goes to say that the color and even the "animation" of the SAM is not set in stone...

The first 7 should be obvious. “trans” concerns the sam object. The way we do it is have a blue self-illumination on the aurapoly for that object. For most animations the poly is at 0.0 alpha (transparent), but for the two frames of the “trans“ anim, the alpha changes to 0.25.

I immediately envisioned whirling red vortexes on certain portals...

<...so blue>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 16 octobre 2012 - 11:24 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               Ahh,  ok, I remember placing "sam" objects, or rather seeing them in tiles which have doors, and being told that they were required.  NWmax I think will auto-create that object for you, or maybe it is in Veltools... in either case, I never knew that we could modify it, only that it had to be such-n-such size and located at doorway bottom center.

So, if we investigate a normal tile with a common activatable door setting, we could possibly change the color?  Maybe even just eliminate the "sam" object altogether to eliminate the glow effect?  I wonder if it is required to exist so that the door WILL work?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Michael DarkAngel]

               I'll go out on a limb and say it's hard-coded.  Evidenced by the following:


Click for full-size image

You can see the self-illumination mirrors the shape of the gate, however the "sam" mesh of the model looks nothing like that.  Not only that, but I did attempt to change the self-illumination color to something more orange-ish.

Let's keep trying to prove me wrong though.  '>


  MDA
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               Yeah, I thought we had tried multiple things with that in the past over in CTP development times... Especially when OMB was around and creating the CTP_GenericDoors files.  As I mentioned earlier, I thought it was a hardcoded thing, but the quotes from Rolo made me question my memory a bit... I AM getting older each day and the memory on my system board is dusty, crusty, and missing a few bits here and there.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_NWN_baba yaga]

               @sen will sent you later this day a yousentit link;)
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_s e n]

               the sam is the plane that defines the transition: it glows on hover or tab just like the blue door glow, but it is not the blue glow im speaking, they are two separate things. the sam is activated when the door is open, otherwise is completely invisible. it can be coloured, it just "activates" when the door is opened
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Just chiming in to support S E N's clarifications about the SAM.

Also, a few other tidbits from testing:
SAM:
* All that need be changed on the SAM to change the color is to set the Self-Illumination to the color of your choice

Blue highlight aura:
* AFAIK so far, no way to change the color of the blue highlight aura via modeling

* All geometry attached to model base will be revealed in blue highlight aura, regardless of whether its Aurora Trimesh modifier is set to render or shadow...or not.  Because of this, non-visible geometry can be made to show up in the blue highlight aura.  The blue highlight aura is very distorted but one might be able to include something interesting in it.

* Visible geometry can be made to NOT show up as part of the blue highlight aura by turning it into "fake" (i.e. 1 bone) skin mesh.  The settings I used were adding one bone, in this case a parent object.  The mesh need not be attached directly to the Aurora base like a regular skin mesh.  In fact, for this to prevent highlighting it may be required that the skin mesh isn't.  All we're really doing is kicking it over into a different rendering pipeline which isn't picked up by the blue highlight aura code.  After all a body part, for instance, executes the same transforms on its mesh that a 1 bone skin mesh does.  There may be more than one way to do this, but skin seemed the least intrusive.  BTW, it doesn't appear that any weight settings on the Advanced Skin Mesh modifier rollout need to be tweaked.  Even with all geometry set like this there still may be some base blue glow that's applied by default and can't be removed.

That's it so far, anyway.

@Rolo Kipp - It looks like your portal graphics might be do-able without too much fuss but thinking about it this morning, it might be easier to use a placeable with a regular transition to achieve the same effect- without having to make a new door.  I haven't thought this through entirely though.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 17 octobre 2012 - 02:35 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               You can change the 'sam', make it white instead of blue, give it a texture or make it completely invisible, but that other glow that appears when you move the pointer near a door is hardcoded. It is a blue self-illumination of all the visible meshes of a door which is not controlled by any animations or 2da entries, so there's little chance it can be removed.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_s e n]

               OTR: that's interesting! But do I have to apply a skinmesh modifier to the visible geometries right? My doors use a single animated pivotting dummy to control all animations, so the geometry itself its already animation-free and linked to that dummy. (note the dummy is slightly offset on the y axis to allow centered pivotting with the door corner, since it uses both open 1 2 animations with the same direction, towards the outside of the building. I had fear that would cause issues with the dummies included in the dwk aurabase but (seems to me) to work fine, and doesnt teleport the char when using the door, be it from in front or from behind the door)
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_NWN_baba yaga]

               @sen
My stone castle tileset interior here in my projects. The shape of the doorframe is what i use for any other archdoors i use for the future too. For the citytileset i used this frame by just copying out the mesh and alligned it for the buildings....
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               Since I posted at the same time as OTR, I didn't read what he wrote about adding fake skin meshes. I didn't know about this way to get rid of the blue glow.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_s e n]

               Baba: I've opened that nice tileset but I dont understand what is the geometry of the arch: the doors look like they are standard 3x2
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

s e n wrote...
OTR: that's interesting! But do I have to apply a skinmesh modifier to the visible geometries right? My doors use a single animated pivotting dummy to control all animations, so the geometry itself its already animation-free and linked to that dummy. (note the dummy is slightly offset on the y axis to allow centered pivotting with the door corner, since it uses both open 1 2 animations with the same direction, towards the outside of the building. I had fear that would cause issues with the dummies included in the dwk aurabase but (seems to me) to work fine, and doesnt teleport the char when using the door, be it from in front or from behind the door)

The only thing I can really suggest is (if you want to make the blue highlight aura from specific geometry) give it a shot with the parent object as the bone.  Unless the parent and child geometry are animated differently, in which case I don't know what to tell you beyond "Get creative!"

However, I want to make it extra clear that you don't actually need to weight the meshes which use a single bone.  At least I didn't have to.  You're just pulling a trick on ole' NWN.

@Zwerkules - You might also be able to get away with the same thing as the skin mesh trick by putting the dangly mesh modifier on the geometry you don't want included in the blue highlight glow, but making sure the verts are colored so it won't dangle at all.  Or maybe set the Dangly Mesh modifier settings so nothing actually dangles.  I think that might be more prone to problems than the skin mesh trick.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 17 octobre 2012 - 11:40 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_s e n]

               I tried to apply the skin to the door mesh, which is linked to the bone (the pivot dummy that has the animations, the mesh itself isnt animated) and the blue remains, same if i like the mesh to the aura base. (also I had to weight the verts since te mesh isnt animated, or it would remain idle) so, cant replicate it ;(

I managed to removing the aura by having the door spawned as chunk by an emitter, problem is that i dont know if there is a way to have the spawned chunk follow the animation... and properly align at a given angle so.... emitters do the trick but is still undoable due to lack of control of spawn rotation and movement of the chunk once it is spawned)
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Well here is my test door if you want to play around with it.  It's the door the pops into the Evil Temple 2x3 group in City Exterior.  After creating, just use Adjust Location to move it out of the doorway so as to see it better.

As I said, "Even with all geometry set like this there still may be some base blue glow that's applied by default and can't be removed."

I managed to removing the aura by having the door spawned as chunk by an emitter, problem is that i dont know if there is a way to have the spawned chunk follow the animation... and properly align at a given angle so.... emitters do the trick but is still undoable due to lack of control of spawn rotation and movement of the chunk once it is spawned)

Good thinking!  Did you check Inherit on the emitter?  Last time I checked, I think emitter chunks inherited position but not rotation from the parent object they're "attached" to.  They'll always be oriented w/the ground.  Boy I hope I turn out wrong about that.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 18 octobre 2012 - 12:58 .