CRYENGINE | Forum

Posted: **Thu Jul 11, 2019 11:12 am**

Hi. I‘m currently having an issue. What I want is to always render an entity „on top“. What I mean is this: it should be shown always (also if there are other 3D models between the camera and the entity.

I already looked into the entity component flags but there seems to be none that would give me such a behavior. I also looked into the docs for RenderNodes. But I don‘t really get any approach how to do this.
Does anyone have any idea?

- Jannis

Posted: **Tue Jul 16, 2019 5:54 pm**

I still have no idea how to do this. I've looked into some flags for entity slots and render nodes. Here is my current approach:

Code: Select all

	if (std::strcmp(m_geometryPath, "") != 0) {
		m_pCachedStatObj = gEnv->p3DEngine->LoadStatObj(m_geometryPath);
		GetEntity()->SetStatObj(m_pCachedStatObj, GetOrMakeEntitySlotId() | ENTITY_SLOT_ACTUAL, false);
		GetEntity()->SetSlotFlags(GetEntitySlotId(), GetEntity()->GetSlotFlags(GetEntitySlotId()) | ENTITY_SLOT_RENDER | ENTITY_SLOT_CAST_SHADOW | ENTITY_SLOT_IGNORE_VISAREAS | ENTITY_SLOT_RENDER_NEAREST);

		if (IRenderNode* pRenderNode = m_pEntity->GetSlotRenderNode(GetEntitySlotId())) {
			pRenderNode->SetRndFlags(pRenderNode->GetRndFlags() | ERF_RENDER_ALWAYS | ERF_FOB_RENDER_AFTER_POSTPROCESSING);
		}
	} 
	else {
		FreeEntitySlot();
	}

It seems as if the line pRenderNode->SetRndFlags(......) doesn't do anything. I tried different flags and none of them seems to do anything. Only the flags that I set on the slot by GetEntity()->SetSlotFlags(.....) seem to work. As you can see, I tried to use the flag ENTITY_SLOT_RENDER_NEAREST. This has some funny results. The geometry seems to blur as the camera moves. And the object is only "rendered on top of everything else" if the center of the geometry is inside the cameras view. Also it seems as if the geometry moves as the camera is rotated.

So still I found no good way to render an object always on top. Does anyone know how to get the pRenderNode->SetRndFlags(.....) to work properly? The Flag ERF_RENDER_ALWAYS sounds pretty promising.

By the way: I checked after pRenderNode->SetRndFlags() if the flags are really set. Seems to bee all fine. However if I set any flag on the render node directly, it doesn't have any effect. I also tried it by removing ENTITY_SLOT_RENDER_NEAREST from the slot flags and adding ERF_FOB_NEAREST to the render node flags. Only the slot flag works (and if you look into EntitySlot.cpp the slot flag doesn't really do anything else than setting the render node flag). I don't know what's going on here.

- Jannis

EDIT:
By the way: does anyone know how to properly format code here inside the forum? If I write it inside of the code BB Tag, it seems to ignore tabs. And on smaller screens (mobile devices), it looks pretty unreadable.

Posted: **Wed Aug 14, 2019 8:24 pm**

Small push.
This problem really bothers me for quite some time now. Just to recap: I already tried:

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GetEntity()->SetSlotFlags(GetEntitySlotId(), GetEntity()->GetSlotFlags(GetEntitySlotId()) | ENTITY_SLOT_RENDER | ENTITY_SLOT_RENDER_NEAREST);

and:

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if (IRenderNode* pRenderNode = m_pEntity->GetSlotRenderNode(GetEntitySlotId())) {
			pRenderNode->SetRndFlags(pRenderNode->GetRndFlags() | ERF_RENDER_ALWAYS);
}

The first method sadly removes the shadow instantly and the 3D Model is also not rendered on top and the second method does not seem to do anything. However I could confirm that the flags were set on the render node.

- Jannis

Posted: **Thu Aug 22, 2019 9:15 am**

Hi there Dignity,

You can format your code by using the syntax bbcode like so:

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[syntax=cpp]

      ...

[ /syntax]

Regarding the render in local space;
Using the flag ENTITY_SLOT_RENDER_NEAREST is the correct method which should also imply ERF_FOB_NEAREST in the render node. But you also have to supply the CameraSpacePos for the slot in question. Objects rendered as nearest use Camera Space rather than world space coordinates. You can use the following method:

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pSlot->SetSlotCameraSpacePos(Vec3);

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