If you're a stager, you may want to keep reading. If you are not going to make a stage in your life, then leave xD
Well, if you're experienced with stages, you probably know how to make them so characters cast shadows on the floor. One of the possibilities is using what I called the MShadow model, just a modified (vertexed) Wifi Room model shaped as a rectangular piece of ground that made shadows visible. Well, in this tutorial, we're gonna use it, but only as a helper.
Sometimes, you may need a real custom shape. I've used vertexing on my MShadow models to make the shapes I needed, just like what I've been doing to the 2D pieces I vertexed to build some of my stages. But that's a little troublesome, specially if you're not familiar with vertexing, or if you want not to use lots of models just to make the shadows.
The ideal case would be building the shape with 3DS Max, and apply the material and shader needed to build a custom MShadow model once the mdl0 is made. But brawlbox can't do that currently. Shadow materials aren't messed up anymore, but you can't import them the way you can import any other material. There's some small difference and brawlbox crashes. Until that's fixed, I've made my own custom material by hexing. It's not that hard, but that's not what I'm gonna write here.
What we're gonna do is simpler. Go to this link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?6n7x3u9xrb2pfUse the material and shader on a custom shape made in 3dsmax. Be sure to rename the material as MShadow1 and the texture as TShadow1.
IMPORTANT. The shape(s) you make need to be singlebind. That means one bone per object (or one bone per skin, if you prefer). The model can have as many bones and objects as you want, and the different objects can use different bones as long as they only use one each. For this, all the different objects will need to use the same material. If you can't see the singlebind bone in brawlbox in all the objects that use the MShadow1 material when in mdl0 format, then you've done it wrong. You can include the shadow shapes in your stage model, they don't need to be in a separate model. And the objects not using the MShadow1 material can be multi-boned, there's no reason to worry about them.
Well, this doesn't work yet, the material I've given you isn't perfect. If it was, it would crash brawlbox as I told you before. This one doesn't. Anyway, this one is enough, cause, if you have my old MShadow model (included in the previous link) in the same modeldata, what's needed in the material to work fine is gotten from here. So, you need the custom model you make, with the custom material and shader I've given you, plus the invisible (0 size) version of the old MShadow model I've always used. Those together will let you have the exact shapes for your shadowed floors in one model.
Oh, one more thing. If you want your shadows in a different color or opacity, check these values here:
Maybe the explanation isn't clear enough, for any doubt if you try it and don't suceed, just ask. If nobody got it to work, maybe I'm wrong with something. So, I'll be thankful to those who try it and succeed if they claim here to be successful.
