Rendering mesh instances differently

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Rendering mesh instances differently

Zingzingzip(Posted 2007) [#1]
I've got loads of master instances of meshes for my different AI types, exported from 3DS Max. I instantiate shallow copies of them with CopyEntity() and I'd like to make one of these copies, instance X say, flash white, while not affecting instances Y and Z of the same mesh.

So far I've created a brush with the fullbright flag, and used PaintEntity() to apply it to X and all X's children. This definitely works and makes X (and X alone) fullbright. But X remains textured, even though the brush I've applied hasn't got a texture set up.

Presumably the texture is actually applied to the surfaces, not the mesh. Is there a way to de-texture instance X without having to paint the surface, because that would affect Y and Z too? I also don't want to have to take a deep copy of the mesh using CopyMesh.

Thanks for any help!


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2007) [#2]
I always missed a EntityTexture m,"" to make a brush use brush colors only. Other than that I can only suggest to use a tiny white texture and apply it to the entity. Since copied entities are using individual surfaces (and are threrefor alphasorted, unlike single surface meshes, somebody correct me if I'm wrong pls <:o) )


Zingzingzip(Posted 2007) [#3]
Cheers, I somehow failed to find EntityTexture. Got it working fine now -- with a tiny white texture!


big10p(Posted 2007) [#4]
Hmm, I just tried this: I created a textured cube, made a copy of it (CopyEntity) and applied a textureless brush to it (PaintEntity), and it seemed to work fine. The cube renders without a texture.


Zingzingzip(Posted 2007) [#5]
How did you texture the cube? If the textures were applied to the mesh, not the surfaces, then yeah I'd expect a simple PaintEntity to undo it successfully.