Rendering Shadows makes whole screen dark

[peteofborg]

I had this problem for awhile since I started using newer video cards. When ever I attempt to render a shadow, it like shadows over everything and makes the who screen dark and don't see the shadows anymore. I have noticed it with several different video cards. The only time my shadows work was with an older G-force AGP card. My onboard video circuit or the PCI Express card have this problem.

Is there a setting with these Nvidia cards or a setting with Truevision that I can set to make the shadows look normal? I am not sure if its a problem with Truevision because it did work with the older video cards.

[analysis_junky]

Post your code, I think the problem might be there.

Also, do you see anything odd in the debug log?

[peteofborg]

I did not check the debug.log. However noticed the problem is not just with 6.3, had it since 6.2 and the 6.5 samples seem to be doing the same thing.
I took the code out of Stencil Shadows Sample and incorporated it into my program.

Init Engine Module:

    TV.Init3DFullscreen ScrWidth, ScrHeight, ScrBpp, True
   
    TV.SetShadowMandatory True
    TV.SetShadowParameters RGBA(0, 0, 0, 0.2)
    TV.DisplayFPS = False
    TV.ShowWinCursor True

Game Loop Module:

        Scene.RenderAllMeshes

        PaddleMesh.SetPosition PaddleX, PaddleY, PaddleZ
       
        For i = 0 To Total_Balls
            If Not BallStatus(i) = BallModeInactive Then
                If ShadowEnable = True Then BallMesh(i).RenderShadow
            End If
        Next i       
               
        If ShadowEnable = True Then FinalizeShadows
        RenderSurface.EndRender


I tried to render the meshes specifically and did not make a difference from render all meshes.

Using a Nvidia MSI NX8500 video card on a AMD Athlon X2 5400 CPU. My computer also has an ATI onboard video circuit, which I have not tried. But this should work with the more advance video card.

[analysis_junky]

I have read that TV.SetShadowMandatory has to be set before Init3DFullscreen or InitWindow...

Read this post
http://www.truevision3d.com/forums/tv3d_sdk_63/problem_with_shadows_and_nvidia_driver_9371-t14287.0.html;msg98655#msg98655

This may be a strange question but do you have a light created?

[peteofborg]

moving the statement prior to the tv init did make a difference, but the shadows are all funny elongated shapes. However I think this can be can be tweaked with playing with all the parameters. Thankyou.