Culling mask for weapons

[saindd]

I have noticed that Torque uses quite a different approach when the weapon is near a wall. The weapon "collides" with the wall and is pushed back. While this is a nice approach, is it possible to use the traditional culling mask?

[andrewmac]

Could you elaborate on this idea? I've never heard of a culling mask before, so I googled it and found this video from Unity:

Could you explain how this concept would be applied to the issue you're experiencing?

[saindd]

Basically, you render twice: once without the weapon and then with it. Then just merge, with the weapon being with high priority. So it doesn't go through walls.

[JeffR]

So rather than the weapon being pushed back, you just want it to be rendered over everything else in the scene to avoid clipping?

[saindd]

Yes.

[buckmaster]

This is what other engines tend to do AFAIK - render weapons on top of everything else. It becomes especially obvious when you stand near a wall and your gun shadow goes all funny.

[andrewmac]

I'm pretty sure it already does this. I can't think of any examples where the gun doesn't render over things. The only difference is with T3D it pushes the weapon back as you get close to a wall. I haven't tested it, but I believe the only code doing this is this:

https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/blob/development/Engine/source/T3D/shapeImage.cpp#L2155-L2189

Be advised though, that removing that bit will let you shoot through a wall. Once you move the muzzle into the wall the muzzle starting point will be past the wall and your bullet will start after the wall. I think this can be avoided by just approaching the problem from here:

https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/blob/development/Engine/source/T3D/shapeImage.cpp#L1807-L1811

As far as I can tell removing that bit would prevent the rendered muzzle vector from being corrected for collision, but still leave the actual muzzle vector corrected. There is a chance drawing the weapon is depth tested ( I didn't look ), resulting in the weapon being clipped by the wall you're walking into, this can be avoid by turning off depth testing in the stateblock for the shape image.

[chriscalef]

+1 for this thread. I've always hated Torque's behavior but never enough to look into alternatives.

[saindd]

Thanks a lot for the detailed help, andrewmac. It's a great start!