Shaders With C++

[gamecreator]

Do shadmar's shaders work properly with the release version? I'm having trouble getting them to work properly outside of the editor.

[macklebee]

Maybe if you gave some actual information concerning the problem, someone could give advice on how to resolve instead of just guessing what the problem could be?

 

Is it a particular shader effect thats not working? Is something not loading correctly? Maybe post a small demo showing the problem.

[gamecreator]

Edit: I created a new project and in it the shaders work. So I think I can figure this out. Thanks.

[gamecreator]

Found out what was causing it.

 

camera->SetParent(controller_pivot, true);

 

I have my camera parented to a controller pivot (to follow behind my character, in third person). As soon as I comment this code out, the shaders work. I can set the camera's position manually, of course, but is there a way to work around this?

[macklebee]

hmmm thats a weird one. What happens if you add the posteffects via code after you set its parent? Does it still not work?

[gamecreator]

Yeah. The parenting is done in the initial setup code. I have this in my main loop to turn the shaders off and on at will:

 

if(window->KeyHit(Key::NumPad1)) camera->AddPostEffect("Shaders/PostEffects/00_Underwater+Caustics.lua");
if(window->KeyHit(Key::NumPad2)) camera->AddPostEffect("Shaders/PostEffects/04_pp_dof.lua");
if(window->KeyHit(Key::NumPad0)) camera->ClearPostEffects();

 

Works perfectly without the parenting. Mostly doesn't work with it set.

 

Edit: so this may be something to do with the pivot. I'm altering my test code now too and there it works even with the pivot parenting. Bah.

[gamecreator]

Ok. I took the time to create a new project from scratch, new map and for a while the camera parenting and shaders worked fine. But somewhere after I put the camera into the player class, it stopped working. Not sure why. Again, if you comment out the SetParent, it works.

 

Here's the project: http://www.mediafire.com/download/c88y8vof1382ara/ShaderTest.zip

 

Thanks to anyone who can take a look. And in the effort of saving everyone time, here's what player.cpp looks like:

 

#include "world.h"
#include "player.h"

using namespace Leadwerks;

playerclass player[10];

void playerclass::think()
{
}

void playerclass::initialize(float xx, float yy, int which)
{
  x=xx, y=yy;

  controller = Pivot::Create();

  model = Model::Load("Models/fir.mdl");
  model->SetParent(controller, false);
  model->SetRotation(90, 180, 0, true);

  controller->SetShadowMode(Light::Dynamic);
  controller->SetPosition(xx, 12, yy, false);

  //  Commented these out for now to make things easier to debug
  // controller->SetMass(1);
  // controller->SetPhysicsMode(Entity::CharacterPhysics);

  camera->SetPosition(xx, 17.5, yy-1.9, true);
  camera->SetRotation(10, 0, 0);

  //  COMMENT THIS OUT TO GET SHADERS WORKING
  camera->SetParent(controller, true);

}

playerclass::playerclass()
{
  x=0.0;
  y=0.0;
  speed=1.5;
}

 

Thanks!

[cassius]

You can do a 3rd person camera without parenting. Just place the player in front of the camera in the main loop.

[Josh]

I suspect the problem is one of his Lua-based effects. He's probably calling camera:GetPosition() and retrieving the local position instead of the global one, which will be different if the entity has a parent.

[gamecreator]

Good thought Josh but if I do the camera pivot in App.cpp, it works fine. It's almost as if the pivot being inside a class breaks it (the camera is global).

 

cassius, yeah, that's why I'm not too worried about this. It's just a little bizarre.

[shadmar]

No post shaders were in your uploaded project so all failed to load. But I just copied some off another project.

 

In underwater shader replace line 57: (your reflection camera scale doesn't seem to be 1 but 0.99999..) , and add (true) to getposition since your camera is parented:

  	 if camera:GetScale().y>.9 and camera:GetPosition(true).y <= height

 

dof shader... replace line 20 (since your refl. cam doesn't have a scale of 1, why is that??):

and camera:GetScale().y>.9

[gamecreator]

No post shaders were in your uploaded project so all failed to load

Seems Export doesn't include those.

 

I don't even know how to set the reflection camera scale so I assume it's something Leadwerks did. Still, I appreciate you taking the time to take a look. Thank you.