Thanks for the explanation.
Just as you posted your first post today, I just finished figuring out how to get the consolidated version to work with the regular skinnedMesh thingy. I realized[using MGCB debug mode] I was over MaxBones limit of 72 which might have something to do with Reach compatibility (I’m proly using 120+ most of the time). I modified the ModelProcessor (1 line of code) to accept it, and made a version of SkinnedEffect.fx (with custom eye shading) and SkinnedEffect.cs which would work - and works with the regular model stuff which I thought would be good for tutorials.
In the mean time, I really love the idea of allowing users to put their own FBX files into a game and this version is very resilient. Normal maps would be really cool. It’d look just like the 3ds version.
In my class I pick the best technique based on settings (like if material alpha is low, I assume it’s a glass-like thingy and so pick a technique and crank up the shine amplifier) - I guess I prefer more techniques to specialize and try to group. So far I don’t sort the see-through stuff - just draw it last. Eventually I’ll have to sort it I suppose.
I guess some circumstances would call for a beast of a technique too. The optimizer is aggressive enough - I’m thinking it probably wouldn’t hurt to set aside common calculation functions as needed and call those from each technique combination.
I’m not sure what is the right way - but this is what I’m kinda doing so far.
Well if you look in that project in the VisualizationModelHelperClasses.cs and scroll down to the SpherePNTT class that is basically like a overkill generated skycube or you set it to tesselate the cube it makes a sphere. That takes a generic single texture of a left cross or 6 in one blender type texture it’s the sphere you see in the gif.
Im actually using it wrong in the project i sent you, as seen in the above gif. Its made for a skycube texture not as im using it but like i said its overkill so i could use it for whatever.
It’s not using a render target cube or anything to do reflection mapping for that there are some cavets i ran into as well, i dunno if they are fixed yet. There should still be a example in this issue at the bottom with a realtime mirrored sphere. Which is the basis for any kind of mirrored surface mapping.
Reflection mapping with cube and sphere maps is not so hard… If I remember correctly it is basically reflecting the view vector using the normal. Then using the resulting vector to find the correct sample position.
Hard part is getting the render target cube to work with it properly. At least for a real time reflection map.
I figure if you can do that then all the other related stuff is easier and straight forward.
That was really a test project to make sure it worked and it is pretty old, so all the stuff in that issue might not be a problem or there might be a easier way around it.
Oh I thought you were talking about not real time. Yeah you are right. It is a bit tricky to find the correct way to setup everything for a cube map when doing real time. But I think animation is waaaay more difficult to do
