Picking, terrain vs other meshes

[Rick]

I'm curious how other people determine if the terrain was picked vs other meshes. According to http://www.leadwerks.com/wiki/index.php?title=Raycasting#CameraPick the pick.surface will be null if it's not a mesh (ie. terrain). So I'm going off that, but is there a down side to that? Is this how we should tell if the terrain vs a mesh if being picked by the camera?

 

Also, the way I had to tell that was by using strcmp() against pick.surface since a simple check against 0 (null) didn't work. It works and I get why it works since TEntity is just a char*, but it does seem strange when you read it in code. Is there another way that looks like it makes more sense? Seems like there should almost be a IsEntityNull() method or something in the engine.

[macklebee]

check the class of the picked entity

[Rick]

What do you mean? I do wrap my mesh objects with user data of a class instance, but I don't for the terrain. I could check for null but wouldn't this basically mean I have to create a generic class that everything has SetEntityUserData in? Or are you talking a different kind of class?

[macklebee]

These are the classes I am referring to:Entity Classes

 

In bmax its GetEntityClass(TEntity)... in lua its entity:GetClass()

[Rick]

Is that undocumented? I don't see it on the wiki and doesn't seem to be in C++. What information does that return anyway? Like TCamera or TTerrain?

[macklebee]

Its undocumented. There is an example of usage inside the fpscontroller lua script.

[Rick]

Oh, well that sucks. It doesn't seem to be in C++. The way I have it works for this instance, so I guess I'll just use this. Thanks!

[TylerH]

GetEntityKey(entity,"class") should return "Mesh" or "Model" for a mesh type entity, and "Terrain" for terrain.

[Rick]

Have you tried this? Because I don't get a "Terrain".

[TylerH]

If it isn't class, it would have to be classname as the key. It works, I used it in Jeklynn Heights in C++ for the 3rd person camera collision. It would react differently to terrain and meshes, based on a check against the key.

 

Not sure if something has changed regarding this between 2.30 and 2.31, so I guess I can say I haven't tried it "yet/now".

 

Let me test...

[Rick]

I tried classname also and that didn't work for me.