Hi vertigo, I haven't read all in the thread so might be stating what's been said before.
I also use a vertex lighting system on my static meshes. Which looks 'ok' - not fab, but I'm happy with it.
It would obviously be way too slow to light my dynamic meshes in a similar way (or to have dynamic lights), so for my dynamic entities I use the same routine, except aaplying the lighting result to individual vertices I use it to 'light' each mesh seperatly - using Entitycolor I can darken, lighten and even color my dynamic meshes in real-time (leaving the static set untouched). This works quite ok. So when a character walks from the outside (sun light) into a building (dark), it nicely changes shade...
Might be an idea?!
I made a routine GetLightColorAt(x,y,z) and returns an rgb value (checking all available lights, their individual color, range, shape, intensity and shadow casting options - and returns a net RGB value, I can post a copy if you like). With vertex lighting I apply the rgb to a vertex, for the entity I use the same routine but apply it with EntityColor.
Also, lighting my set (with ""ray-traced"" shadows) takes about 2 minutes. But once rendered, I save each vertex's rgb to a file. Loading this back, and simply re-applying it with a for..next loop takes less than a second!!!
D.
I also use a vertex lighting system on my static meshes. Which looks 'ok' - not fab, but I'm happy with it.
It would obviously be way too slow to light my dynamic meshes in a similar way (or to have dynamic lights), so for my dynamic entities I use the same routine, except aaplying the lighting result to individual vertices I use it to 'light' each mesh seperatly - using Entitycolor I can darken, lighten and even color my dynamic meshes in real-time (leaving the static set untouched). This works quite ok. So when a character walks from the outside (sun light) into a building (dark), it nicely changes shade...
Might be an idea?!
I made a routine GetLightColorAt(x,y,z) and returns an rgb value (checking all available lights, their individual color, range, shape, intensity and shadow casting options - and returns a net RGB value, I can post a copy if you like). With vertex lighting I apply the rgb to a vertex, for the entity I use the same routine but apply it with EntityColor.
Also, lighting my set (with ""ray-traced"" shadows) takes about 2 minutes. But once rendered, I save each vertex's rgb to a file. Loading this back, and simply re-applying it with a for..next loop takes less than a second!!!
D.