Ok first floor (almost done) its kind of like one step forward and two steps back



I think the bollards is a normal issue I can sort that, my may concern is the transparency I think what happens here is the first floor is no a part of the ground floor group so I think that is why there is clipping.

I am going to try and make the 'glass' groups all the same name and see if that makes a difference I don't think it will I think the shader will still load the assets independently and the only way would be for me to merge the two models
anyone have any suggestions LOL

The only suggestion which i can give is to keep the glass separated from your building.
Similar like Bod does with his assets.
Ive made a simple building in order to see if i can texture large assets in substance and while doing so it is a nice way to get familiar with it.
There is however one thing which i want to try, i've done the windows in a similar way as you did, hence there are internal faces.
What i want to try is if i do it the way i did my window, if it then solves this clipping problem.

I've removed the internal faces and now the building remains visible without having glass in a separate group.
The problem however remains that entities disappear on certain moments.
It does not matter if both are set at not an occluder and not an occludee.
Why this happens is beyond me.

yeah me too still it proves that separate models has the issue too thank you for that

Well I keep trying to do this with one mesh and somehow does not function properly.
With cullmode=1 or with out
With transparency= 2, 3, or 6
all the glass has faces on each side and is not a single mesh for both side.


I am still going to keep these as building and glass separate. I have the glass with collision=11 to ease the burden.
I did redo the textures to PBR based, and got a nice reflection from the environment on the glass and tracks.

Glass and mesh the same object, glass made after building. No joy, as you can see the skybox thru the walls and first floor ceiling.

Same here.



Separate glass and building in a new set of objects. Looking great. Functions as advertised.



I honestly like the separate parts for building as it gives me control over the collision of each section.
Walls, windows, stairs, columns, roofing, doors can all have or not have specific collision. Textures can also be made to accommodate the separate pieces, allowing detail maps for each piece for PBR.

@Pirate Myke - so are you saying glass works when its a separate entity (no clipping) ?

Still clipping, it does not matter.
I'm going to wait for the final version to be released, this might be due to it being a preview beta.

The station looks really good Pirate Myke.

GraPhiX, the problem is in the FPE.

Add this in the FPE.



The result, no more disappearing entities.



This just shows how much we have yet to learn about GameGuru and that i really have to start with the next tutorial but i wanted to wait with that untill the DX11 version was released with the new bling bling.

Edit: to add, if that does not solve it, then it is because of the transparency setting in the FPE of your second floor.

Hi Earthling45 thank you for your continued help with this I really appreciate it unfortunately I already have those settings in the FPE and the transparency =6 in both models, what I did do was have different alpha levels in the _color I am redoing them now with the same alpha level see if that makes a difference.

@Pirate Myke yes it as always been done like that glass as separate models but even then there is still clipping, I want to make a model that you can just place on the map, for most users lining up assets in the editor is a right PIA simply because things tend to 'fly off' or not line up perfectly. Until we have finer control with lining up and so forth I would prefer to have my glass as part of the building.

LOL what would be nice (and I think Amenmoses as done it before) is drop all the components on the map and have a script that builds it

even if we could have 'anchor points' in the editor that we could attach to a part of the entity and have a matching 'anchor point' on another entity and they 'snap' together would be good

One thing of note the textures I am using are PNG am I right in thinking as long as the format supports transparency I don't have to use DDS, or should I be using DXT 5 compression ?

If you make the models with the origin points of the models in the same spot then use grid snapping mode to place them then they will automatically line up (you may have to hit enter to drop the second model to ground level as models auto stack in gameguru), once placed you can drag select/ctrl click select them and move them together into the correct spot, it's easy.

LOL thanks Belidos I know how to do it, I was talking about New users in general they expect to just drop assets in the map not fiddle about putting the asset together like lego (I am just trying to make it as easy as possible) a lot of people do not like the EBE if I make buildings that you have to put together like the EBE it will put them off

the only reason I have to do it modular is because of texture stretching on large assets which is fine if each floor is complete its not to bad, but if you have mainly a glass building you could end up putting a lot of glass panels in each section and that would probably be an annoyance (it would annoy me LOL)

I am using a lot of glass in my building simply because most office buildings use a lot of glass, the building I have at the moment is mainly single pieces which I have only done temporarily until I can get the glass right so that its easier for me there should be at least 10 windows per side on that building.
this also helps alleviate the texture issue too as glass does not seem to stretch (well not as visible) as construction materials mainly brick.

that building could easily be 20 storeys high (the door will eventually be blocked off) so the building could be a complete level, well this was my original vision, I have office sections ready to go in but there is no point until I can sort this glass issue out.

I am certain there is a way to do it I have got it almost working.

I have noticed like I mentioned before that if the glass is all in the same group it works, this of course is a problem if I am doing it via a modular approach because the models are separated. Anything within the confines of the glass group reacts as it should as soon as another asset comes into play with another group it fails.

I don't really have an understanding of how the shader works but it does create DBO files of each asset if I could build my office in the editor without the DBO being created automatically as I add individual entities, then as soon as I press test game the entities that are grouped in the editor only creates one DBO for that group I think it would work,

not sure I have explained that properly but logically I think that would work

This method works very well for me and I prefer it myself. But I can see where a new user would just want to plop things on a map and set and forget.
This has been an issues with the glass for 3 years now.

yes it as been a while, I actually think its on the feature vote list I don't think anyone has even voted for it probably because they don't know its there, I would hope and think Lee would include it in the DX11 upgrade surely its part of the shaders ?

This problem with fine placement made me start with windows and doors a year ago.
The doors work flawlessly, no more gaps or doors that do not work.
The windows are good, but an entity wich has a transparency setting in the FPE will be clipped, every entity without the transparency setting in the FPE like a barrel will not be clipped and remain visible.

GraPhiX, your solution to have them in a separate group is working well, it is an easier and better solution than the one i came up with for the window which also has internal faces but detached from the model itself.

In fragmotion it is also easy to make smoothinggroups for a model.
make new smoothinggroups, rename them and set the treshold at 60 instead of 180.
Select each group of the model to assign them to one of the smoothinggroups.
For the simple building i've made two groups, model and glass, then i've assinged the building to smoothinggroup 'model' and assigned the glass to smoothinggroup glass.

A question which i have is what the best value is for certain models, flat, curved, round, is there any documentation on smoothinggroups?

Smoothing groups are not the same as groups in Fragmotion.
Groups are submeshes in Fragmotion and will be exported as limbs
if you export .x with the export groups box checked. Smoothing groups
are how the data for hard and soft edges are stored for the model.
The term hard and soft edges is used by several modeling programs which
refers to the normals for the edges. If you watch this video it will help explain it.

Thanks, That is a good tutorial.

Now i'm starting to understand the smoothing groups more.