Hi, I am starting to work with the powerrender engine 4.0 (PE) and I have a couple of problems I cannot figure out. Here they are. 1. Can anyone elaborate a bit on the use of the BSP functionality, I have no clue How to use this 2. Normally, the view frustrum is limited by a near and a far plane. How do I determine this with the PE? 3. Does anyone know a good source how to use lightmaps, that goes beyond the blending of two textures. That''s it for now. Any help would be great and help me going on with my project Cheers Alex

1 - BSP objects are made with QERadiant, a free Quake3 mapping program. You should be able to get the latest copy at www.qeradiant.com I think. It''s kinda tricky to get set up, but I''ve done it by following the instructions in the Power Render Documentation. Unfortunately I have problems with QERadiant that''s not letting it work right now for some reason. Haven''t got that sorted out yet.

Anyway, you make an object with QERadiant, surround it with a sky shader brush to seal the level and compile it using the tools included with QER. Then you take the resulting *.bsp file and convert it to a *.psb file using the q3converter in Power Renders tools. Then the Landscape Editor can load this *.psb file and place it on the landscape wherever you want.

2 - view clipping can be controlled in the Landscape Editor, not sure if that''s what you''re looking for or not. I forget exactly which menu it''s on, but if you look in the Landscape Editor help menu, you''ll see a note about doing it.

3 - sorry, no idea Usually www.gamasutra.com or www.gamedev.net have good resources on that kind of thing though.

Hope that helps
OldRod

HI thanks for the reply.

Concerning the BSP-problem I am rather worried how to use it for moving around e.g. in a closed environment. the problem of culling and clipping. If you are moving let''s say in a house with several rooms with open doors. How do manage to draw everything correctly. Power engine does''t do this automatically for you, no?!

If you have any comment on this, this would be great. I have a demo called simpleland I guess. But I don''t understand the critical part of the code how it manages to deal with the problems of several open portals.

Anyway
thanks very much
Alex

That''s all done automagically, behind the scenes for you.

There are several BSP related functions used to make this happen, including:

PRBSP_InitEngine() done at initialization
PRBSP_Load() used to load a BSP file
PRBSP_CreateEntity() used to create a BSP entity
PRBSP_PositionEntity() used to position the BSP entity
LS_DrawWorld() draws all entities, including BSPs

Hope that helps. Did I miss anything?

I would like to include a PRO-Object which has quite some texture files associated with. To include the PRO-object, I used the PRO-Load command from the PR-engine, as in all the examples, but how do I manage to get all the textures. I have sed the texture path to the right path, but the texture seem to be missing. Some Idea?

HI, thanks for the tipp, I figured it out, that I was just wrong with mz perception, the object was so far away that I couldn''t see any colours.

Have a nice day and thanks again
Alex