I'm making a space sim and I want two lights: directional light to represent the sun, and ambient light to make sure the not-lighted-by-the-sun side isn't black. To do this I implemented a version of Andy Pike's lighting code, then heavily modified it over and over hoping I can get it to work... I've successfully implemented the D3DLIGHT_POINT light, included (below) as commented code. I've viewed the meshes in MeshView (they're .x files) and they have normals. I also added a material, and changed virtually all of its settings trying to get something useful but nada. I also read another thread here (search function works today, yay!) after which I enabled automatic normalizing of normals to see if that helped (obviously it didn't): m_pD3DDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_NORMALIZENORMALS, TRUE). I get no errors in my log (so all the HRESULTS check out fine). I added the material using the code from the DX C++ help files... Also, in their Tutorial 4: Creating and Using Lights they setup #define D3DFVF_CUSTOMVERTEX (D3DFVF_XYZ|D3DFVF_NORMAL). So I checked my Mesh class and found I'm using #define MESH_D3DFVF_CUSTOMVERTEX (D3DFVF_XYZ|D3DFVF_NORMAL|D3DFVF_TEX1) so that's not it either. I don't know what's going on... Any help?

bool cApp::InitLights(void* Ptr){
	cApp *App = (cApp*)Ptr;

	LogInfo("<br>Initialise Material:");
	D3DMATERIAL8 mtrl;
	ZeroMemory( &mtrl, sizeof(D3DMATERIAL8) );
	mtrl.Diffuse.r = mtrl.Ambient.r = 1.0f;
	mtrl.Diffuse.g = mtrl.Ambient.g = 1.0f;
	mtrl.Diffuse.b = mtrl.Ambient.b = 1.0f;
	mtrl.Diffuse.a = mtrl.Ambient.a = 1.0f;
	mtrl.Specular.r = 1.0f;
	mtrl.Specular.g = 1.0f;
	mtrl.Specular.b = 1.0f;
	mtrl.Specular.a = 1.0f;
	mtrl.Power = 0.0f;
	if(FAILED(App->m_Graphics.GetDeviceCOM()->SetMaterial(&mtrl))){
		LogError("<li>SetMaterial Failed");
		return false;
	}else{
		LogInfo("<li>SetMaterial OK");
	}

	LogInfo("<br>Initialise Lights:");

	D3DLIGHT8 d3dLight;

	//Initialize the light structure.

	ZeroMemory(&d3dLight, sizeof(D3DLIGHT8));

	d3dLight.Type = D3DLIGHT_DIRECTIONAL;
	
	d3dLight.Ambient.r = 1.0f;
	d3dLight.Ambient.g = 1.0f;
	d3dLight.Ambient.b = 1.0f;
	
	D3DXVECTOR3 Dir = D3DXVECTOR3(-1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f);
	D3DXVec3Normalize((D3DXVECTOR3*)&d3dLight.Direction, &Dir);
/*	d3dLight.Type = D3DLIGHT_POINT;
	
	d3dLight.Position.x = 0.0f;
	d3dLight.Position.y = 10.0f;
	d3dLight.Position.z = 0.0f;

	d3dLight.Attenuation0 = 1.0f; 
	d3dLight.Attenuation1 = 0.0f; 
	d3dLight.Attenuation2 = 0.0f; 
	d3dLight.Range = 1000.0f;	

	d3dLight.Diffuse.r = 1.0f;
	d3dLight.Diffuse.g = 1.0f;
	d3dLight.Diffuse.b = 1.0f;
	
	d3dLight.Ambient.r = 0.0f;
	d3dLight.Ambient.g = 0.0f;
	d3dLight.Ambient.b = 0.0f;
	
	d3dLight.Specular.r = 0.0f;
	d3dLight.Specular.g	= 0.0f;
	d3dLight.Specular.b	= 0.0f;
*/
	//Assign the point light to our device in poisition (index) 0

	if(FAILED(App->m_Graphics.GetDeviceCOM()->SetLight(0, &d3dLight))){
		LogError("<li>SetLight Failed");
		return false;
	}else{
		LogInfo("<li>SetLight OK");
	}

	//Enable our point light in position (index) 0

	if(FAILED(App->m_Graphics.GetDeviceCOM()->LightEnable(0, TRUE))){
		LogError("<li>LightEnable Failed");
		return false;
	}else{
		LogInfo("<li>LightEnable OK");
	}

	//Turn on lighting

    if(FAILED(App->m_Graphics.GetDeviceCOM()->SetRenderState(D3DRS_LIGHTING, TRUE))){
		LogError("<li>SetRenderState: D3DRS_LIGHTING Failed");
		return false;
	}else{
		LogInfo("<li>SetRenderState: D3DRS_LIGHTING OK");
	}

	//Set ambient light level

	if(FAILED(App->m_Graphics.GetDeviceCOM()->SetRenderState(D3DRS_AMBIENT, D3DCOLOR_XRGB(60, 60, 60)))){
		LogError("<li>SetRenderState: D3DRS_AMBIENT Failed");
		return false;
	}else{
		LogInfo("<li>SetRenderState: D3DRS_AMBIENT OK");
	}

	//TEMP

	if(FAILED(App->m_Graphics.GetDeviceCOM()->SetRenderState(D3DRS_NORMALIZENORMALS, TRUE))){
		LogError("<LI>can't normalize");
		return false;
	}else{
		LogInfo("<li>normalized");
	}

	return true;
}

[edited by - kVandaele on May 19, 2004 10:56:05 AM]

You never set the light''s diffuse color, so all you''ll ever get is your ambient level.... other than that it seems okay.

You also need to ensure your texturestagestate''s include a modulate with DIFFUSE which holds the results of the lighting calculation.

// Use lighting * texture as color// Use material alpha * texture alpha as alphapDev->SetTextureStageState(0,D3DTSS_COLOROP,D3DTOP_MODULATE);pDev->SetTextureStageState(0,D3DTSS_COLORARG1,D3DTA_TEXTURE);pDev->SetTextureStageState(0,D3DTSS_COLORARG2,D3DTA_DIFFUSE);pDev->SetTextureStageState(0,D3DTSS_ALPHAOP,D3DTOP_MODULATE);pDev->SetTextureStageState(0,D3DTSS_ALPHAARG1,D3DTA_TEXTURE);pDev->SetTextureStageState(0,D3DTSS_ALPHAARG2,D3DTA_DIFFUSE);pDev->SetTextureStageState(1,D3DTSS_COLOROP,D3DTOP_DISABLE);pDev->SetTextureStageState(1,D3DTSS_ALPHAOP,D3DTOP_DISABLE);

that did it... but I had to disable the light''s ambient lighting as well as add the diffuse component. Why would a directional light have ambient lighting anyway? (i mean, then what is the ambient renderstate for? ... whatever)

thanks a lot. I''ll check out those renderstates (they look like some might be in the graphics engine though - meaning not in the light initialization)