Shadow Poly Problem

Yes, it's me again :)

I have a shadow system on all my monsters and all is well except for maybe my method.

I am simply using a copy of "Monster A" for "MonsterA's" shadow and scaling it

 ScaleEntity shadow,1,.001,1

so it will animate properly given the anim seq the monster is using and add some cool visual factor to it.

The question I have is; my shadow obviously will have just as many poly's as the monster, is there a slick/easy way of "MultiResing" in B3D so I can reduce the poly's in the shadow?

thx

you can always use a shadow system like devil's shadow system then you won't have to worry about this problem. Also I would imagine you would have trouble doing alpha for the shadows considering some parts would be darker than others. your on your own if you are trying to reduce the polygons manually in blitz but I would suggest making the shadow as a seperate mesh in a modeling program if you don't want to mess with a shadow system. good luck

Devil shadow system is dead meat when you talking about animated characters..

oh

I didn't know about that. I have never tried that before.

yeah, I did the devil system, and it too slow for the amount of monsters I have...so I made my own geometry shadow...basic as it may seem, it works/looks great.

but thx for the input :)

Why not, to save having to use two animated characters, render the shadows first. Your flattened version, coloured black then produce your first render. Then, resize your character, putting back the texture, re-render the scene, just putting in the characters and hiding everything else. Two animated meshes, for the price of one :o) It will be quicker i'm sure.

To explain clearer:

1. Flatten your character and colour him black to give you your shadow.
2. Render the scene.
3. Set cameramode, NOT to clear the buffer.
4. Hide EVERYTHING, bar your characters meshes.
4. Resize your mesh and render again.

You avoid blitz having to animate two meshes.