I need some help trouble shooting a bug. We’ve been playing with 3ds Max’s viewport shadows with FX shaders. In 3ds Max 2009, they work for some but not for others - and we haven’t been able to figure out what it is that makes them work sometimes but not all the time.
Fire up the Max file inside in 3ds Max 2009 (if you have it of course.) Then post here if you see the shadows in the viewport or not. Also post if you have installed SP1 for Max 2009 and also your video card model.
Thanks for testing. I forgot to mention that you need to put the FX shader in the zip file in the same dir as the Max file - but you probably understood that.
[QUOTE=bcloward;465]Thanks for testing. I forgot to mention that you need to put the FX shader in the zip file in the same dir as the Max file - but you probably understood that.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, double checked to see if it was pointing to the right place, but no go unfortunately.
Actually, if it helps, I’ve just noticed I can’t even get normal viewport shadows to work at all, so something is inherently wrong here, not necessarily the shader.
Only on 2008 here. Just out of interest I loaded the fx file and made a similar scene (obviously can’t load the 2009 one). Shadows work fine on 6600GT in XP32. Noticed they were getting cut off weirdly but realised that was at the edge of the light’s falloff. Was it supposed to show the falloff circle of the light? It doesn’t.
@robinb:
My scene is using an omni light. Try that. The shader is designed to use an omni so it probably won’t work correctly with a spot light. There isn’t any code in the shader to make a falloff, so what you’re getting sounds strange. Can you post a screen shot?
@Erilaz:
Hmm - that’s interesting. The problem that Jeff was having is that all shadows did work - except those using FX shaders. Did you set your viewport rendering to “best”?
@MoP:
If you’ve got a view minutes, go ahead and make a plane, a teapot, and an omni light and assign the FX shader to the two objects. Then turn on viewport shadows for the omni and set your viewport renderer to “best.” I’m not anticipating you’ll have any issues, but it will be helpful to know what you’re getting.
@Erilaz:
Hmm - that’s interesting. The problem that Jeff was having is that all shadows did work - except those using FX shaders. Did you set your viewport rendering to “best”?
[/QUOTE]
Yep, I checked all settings with both SM2 and SM3, tried changing driver settings, viewport settings, rebuilt the material from scratch, rebuilt the scene with different lights… No avail (I had a slow afternoon). :):
[QUOTE=bcloward;493]@robinb:
My scene is using an omni light. Try that. The shader is designed to use an omni so it probably won’t work correctly with a spot light. There isn’t any code in the shader to make a falloff, so what you’re getting sounds strange. Can you post a screen shot?[/QUOTE]
Ah yes, I should have realised it was an omni light. That works fine.
Here’s a screengrab of what happens with a spot though just for interest. I guess the shadow map gets cropped to the edge of the outer falloff and that gets hidden when the lightspot is drawn. Weird that it flickers rather than moves around smoothly as I move the light though.
I get some artifacts when moving the Omni close to the teapot… I can see the square edge of one of the six projections. Presumably just an acceptable artifact of the technique though.
