Torque Engine particulars

oXYnary

So for those of you that have had the fortune (or misfortune) of using the Torque engine. Can you tell me these two items that I have had a hard time searching for an answer to.

Tangent space maps: Red should be left or right? Programmer thought left but unsure. In case he was wrong and should be right, I just would need to flip the red channel in PS?

Smoothing Groups: I noticed the DTS export does include the smoothing groups from Max. I know in the UT engine its a no no because it splits the vertices at those points, thus creating twice the vertices for every split. Does the Torque engine work in the same way? I tried exporting with and without smoothing groups. Torque Show Pro tool shows the same poly count, but I see no where in it listing the vertice count. The file size was slightly larger in the smoothed version, but that's all I could see.

Thanks! Yes, I finally understand the pain I have seen in the past with threads about this engine.

CrazyButcher

flip should be sufficient

the vertex split has to do with the hardware rendering, therefore is engine independent, so yes always a split in any engine

oXYnary

Thanks Butch, so keep splitting to a minimum. As far as read is left or right though, does anyone know which it is? I know, I know, your going to say just make a sample of each and put in engine. I admit I dont even know how to get a darn light point to show up in it, so Iim flying blind relying on what the level already has (which as been top down).

Kawe

Im pretty sure Torque comes with pre-made assets. You could just load them up and have a look.

oXYnary

You mean like the space orc? How can I tell which direction from its normal map?

Kawe

Well, I think you can look in the red channel and compare with another texture that you know what it is. If everything that is facing right is more red than the stuff facing left then I assume it means the red channel is "right".

Stealing an example image of what I mean:
http://planetpixelemporium.com/tutorialpages/images/normalmap.jpg
Everything that's on the "right" side of what this normal map describes is red.

You could always try inverting the red channel and see how it looks.

byder

Haha! We have a saying in our Studio! Respect the Torque!!! (It means, Torque sometimes just does its own thing hey!)

With regards to your Smoothing Groups question, we found in TGE, that a single DTS with multiple meshes (internally) will load quicker & give better frame rates than a single DTS with a single mesh (internally). When it comes to smoothing groups it is normal of most modern graphic rendering to duplicate the verts at the edge of the smoothing group, and then label one vert with one normal and the other vert with the other. I cannot honestly say what Torque does, but knowing that your file size increase, increases the chances that that is what its doing!

Another thing you could do is to check your TriSrtips, they are also affected by the vert duplication!

Hope this helps!!!

~C