Well i've started playing with jME again. There certainly have been leaps and bounds. Looks like alot of potential, but very little intuitive use. I hope the lack of ease of use makes it faster. Anyway I would like some help.
I'm using SimpleGame to prototype the basic objects that I need.
PointLight, wich needs to touch everything since it's the only source of light.
A sphere to be used as a SkyBox, wich needs to have the texture visable at all times.
Sphere to be used as a Sun, so it must let light out.
Sphere to be used for a planet.
Ok i've tried doing this in jPCT. It went fairly easy once I figured out a few small things. I'm not finding jME anywhere near as easy, and above mentioned not very intuitive. The thing is, jME looks so much better and has alot more flexing power. I realy want to do this project with cell shading later. Anwyay
I''ve managed to figure out how to texture the skysphere, but I can't see the texture from the inside.
I've added a PointLight with a RenderState to the RootNode, and it works. It's way so dark though. I've set all the specular, ambient,diffusion to 1.0f.
until I can see the skytexture from inside of the sphere i'm stumped. i've been hunting through the tutorials and docs, but it's not easy to find.
Sigh, just came to me. I can't see an object that's been scaled bigger than 1000.
I'm was setting the skysphere at a size of 20000. Or should I just use a different scale.
It's amazing what happens when you get an epephiny(spelling?).
Ok I got the inside sky, jupiter up and running. I'm having a problem with lighting though.
I'm not sure how to turn off the ambiant light, and I still can't brighten the Sol light source.
Ok i've been puzzling this stuff out. Finaly. As I thought jME runs better. I have some other questions though.
The Sol Sphere is only getting ambiant light, I figure this is becuase it covers up the PointLight.
My other problem is that the Sky Sphere get's cut at the 1000 mark. Is there a way to cut out the clip range for specific spatials?
Camera point, is there away to cut down the camera frustrum/angle?. when flying to close to jupiter it cuts out before I would like it too.
TextureState for RenderState, is there and easier way than that big 3 block of code. And do I need a new Texture state for every texture?
Now that I figured it out some of the parts of the API, it's coming very nicely.
It's clipping at 1000 because your camera far plane is set at 1000. You can change that to whatever you need in your setup code, just be sure to update the camera afterwards.
Yes, you need a TextureState for each texture (well, except when you are multitexturing, but doesn't sound like it).
Lighting is indeed tricky for those new to a scenegraph. If you setup a light and a lightstate on one part of your scenegraph, it will only light objects at that part of the graph and lower (children, grandchildren, etc.)
I figured any light state would only apply to "THAT" node and down. So once I figured the SkySphere was just out of clip plane range it wasn't hard to make sure everything had light. The PointLight is attached to RootNode, all the Spheres get light, just not as bright as they should.
Also is there any suggestion to get the Sol Sphere that covers the PointLight to recieve the light on the outside, not just the inside.
Don't use two sided lighting on your lightstate.