Hi! I have a serius problem with rendering (or light) in Direct 3D8, please help! I´m not a beginner. I have made a wall section with which contains 4x4 quads as a simple test (to fix the same problem in my bigger project). When I render these with DrawPrimitive as either triangle strip or triangle list, I can clearly see the triangels in the wall section. The wall face negative z direction and each quad have these vertices and normal if "sz" is size and are created as triangle strip: {-sz.x,-sz.y, sz.z},{-sz.x, sz.y, sz.z},{ sz.x,-sz.y, sz.z},{ sz.x, sz.y, sz.z},{ 0, 0,-1} I render every quad with a separate call to DrawPrimitive (to enable exchange of textures):

  

    for(int i=0; i<m_iPrimitives/2; i++)
    {
      device->SetTexture(0, CTextureBank::GetTexture(m_piTexture[i]));
      device->DrawPrimitive( d3dprimtype, uiStartVertex, 2 );
      uiStartVertex += 4;
    }

  

When I switch off light and only use ambient light source the triangels stay invisible (as I want to). But I want to use point light! Maybe I have set up my light wrong?

  

void CDirect3DWin::SetLight()
{
  const float MAX_LIGHT = 200;
  const float TIONDEL_DIV_MAX_LIGHT = 0.1f / MAX_LIGHT;

  D3DLIGHT8 m_Light;
  FLOAT m_LightValue = MAX_LIGHT; 

  ZeroMemory(&m_Light, sizeof(m_Light));
  m_Light.Type       = D3DLIGHT_POINT ; 
  m_Light.Diffuse.r  = m_LightValue*1.0f;
  m_Light.Diffuse.g  = m_LightValue*1.0f;
  m_Light.Diffuse.b  = m_LightValue*1.0f;
  m_Light.Range      = m_LightValue/2;
  m_Light.Attenuation2 = 0.55f;
  m_Light.Attenuation1 = 0.55f;
  m_Light.Attenuation0 = 0.55f/2;
  m_Light.Position = m_BeholderPos;
  m_Light.Direction = m_BeholderDir;
  
  m_pd3dDevice->SetLight( 0, &m_Light );
  m_pd3dDevice->LightEnable( 0, TRUE );
  m_pd3dDevice->SetRenderState( D3DRS_LIGHTING, TRUE );
  m_pd3dDevice->SetRenderState( D3DRS_AMBIENT, 
    D3DCOLOR_COLORVALUE(0.1f, 0.1f, 0.1f, 1));
  
  m_pd3dDevice->SetRenderState( D3DRS_NORMALIZENORMALS, TRUE);
  m_pd3dDevice->SetRenderState( D3DRS_DITHERENABLE,   TRUE );    

  D3DMATERIAL8 mtrl;
  ZeroMemory( &mtrl, sizeof(D3DMATERIAL8) );
  mtrl.Diffuse.r = mtrl.Ambient.r = mtrl.Diffuse.g = mtrl.Ambient.g = 
  mtrl.Diffuse.b = mtrl.Ambient.b = TIONDEL_DIV_MAX_LIGHT*m_LightValue;
  mtrl.Diffuse.a = mtrl.Ambient.a = 0.0f;

  m_pd3dDevice->SetMaterial( &mtrl );
}

  

Please help me solve this problem! I can´t go any further if I not solve this problem! Any help are much-appreciated! Thanks, Zeblar Nagrim, Lord of Chaos

You gotta use vertex normals. For each vertex the vertex normal is the average of the normals of all the faces which share that vertex. That will give you a very nice and creamy look.

I have found the problem. It was the light. When I set the ambient color value to same value as the diffuse color the triangle stay invisible. YES! Greeeeat!

Thanks anyway,



Zeblar Nagrim, Lord of Chaos